Spring Headaches, Summer Diarrhea, Winter Joint Pain — How Does Wind Injure People? — Doctor Ni Haixia on the Jin Gui Zhen Yan Lun of the Huang Di Nei Jing

Patient search terms: why do I get headaches in spring / wind in summer falls on the zang organs / shoulder and back pain in autumn / aching limb joints in winter / can overeating cause appendicitis / do you get pimples when your clothes stay wet with sweat / what is the diaphragm for / how are the cun, guan and chi pulses divided / which color belongs to which organ / what should I watch out for in winter

Corresponding medical names: the Jin Gui Zhen Yan Lun · the eight winds and the five winds · the five organs responding to the four seasons · spring qi makes disease settle in the head · the diaphragm separating clear from turbid · cun, guan and chi pulse diagnosis · the five organs paired with the five colors

Opening: a story about overeating

At the start of this lecture, Doctor Ni Haixia tells a vivid story about the harm of overeating, using the fruit farmers and fishermen of Hainan Island:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: In the old days, Hainan Island’s highest point was the Five Finger Mountain. Fruit farmers grew fruit in the mountains, and fishermen caught fish by the sea. When the fruit season was rich, the farmers brought their fruit down the mountain; the fishermen brought up a lot of seafood, and the two sides began to trade. The fruit farmers had not eaten seafood in a long time, so they ate a huge meal; the fishermen had not eaten fruit in a long time, so they ate a huge meal too — starving, they swallowed everything without chewing. The very next day, a whole crowd of them ran to the hospital emergency room, all with acute appendicitis. When they were opened up, the fishermen had melon seeds and tangerine seeds inside them, and the fruit farmers had crab shells, shrimp shells and fish bones.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: So you must not overeat — overeating is never good. Chew your food slowly and carefully, do not rush, do not binge. When you eat too much, yang qi is suppressed and can no longer clear things away, so they accumulate — that is how disease comes about.

Heaven has eight winds, and the five organs give rise to five winds

Now to the main subject — Chapter Four, the Jin Gui Zhen Yan Lun (The True Discourse of the Golden Cabinet). The emperor asks: Heaven has eight winds, and the channels have five winds.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: About the eight winds, if you look it up in the books: the southeast corner has the weak wind (ruo feng), the northwest corner has the marsh wind (ze feng), the wind from the north is the most severe (the great firm wind, da gang feng — the one that injures people), the wind that blows from the northeast is the fierce wind (xiong feng), the due-east wind… Heaven and earth have eight winds, and within the channels there are five winds — the wind issuing from the five organs produces the five winds.

The five organs respond to the four seasons, and Doctor Ni Haixia goes through each one:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The east wind is born in spring, and the disease falls on the liver — spring qi makes disease settle in the head; when you are caught by wind and cold in spring, the disease sits in the head, and many people suffer severe headaches. So in spring we must protect the back of the neck (the nape) especially well and not let it be touched by wind. The south wind is born in summer, and the disease falls on the heart — in summer, wind makes disease fall on the zang organs, because summer is naturally the season of heat and heavy sweating; once wind strikes, the disease enters deep, so we must guard the chest and ribs. The west wind is born in autumn, and the disease falls on the lungs — the disease sits in the shoulders and back; most people who are caught by wind in autumn get shoulder and back pain. The north wind is born in winter, and the disease falls on the kidneys — the kidneys govern winter, and the symptoms appear in the crevices of the lumbar bones and in the joints of the four limbs. The center belongs to earth, and the disease falls on the spleen — the spleen governs the lower abdomen, the problems of the belly; the spleen is the center that produces dampness (earth holds much fluid so that it can give life to all things), and when it is struck by wind and cold, dampness can no longer be held — anything must have yang to hold it or it will leak away. When yang is insufficient, dampness is expelled through the small and large intestine: this is dong xie (acute watery diarrhea).

Injury in one season ripples through all four seasons

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Spring qi makes disease settle in the head; summer qi makes disease settle in the zang organs; autumn qi makes disease settle in the shoulders and back; winter qi makes disease settle in the four limbs — the aches of the limb joints are mostly wind caught in winter. If in winter you do not do an qiao (the ancient pressing-and-stretching exercises — in other words, do not over-exercise in winter), and you are not struck by wind and cold, then in spring you will have no nose problems; and if spring leaves the neck unharmed, summer will bring no chest and rib disease — it all runs in a chain. Once a person is injured in one season, it affects the spring, summer, long summer, autumn and winter that follow. Why know this? To know where the cause of disease lies. In real treatment, most of the principles come from the Huang Di Nei Jing — the theory is the same; if you can grasp one idea, treatment goes quickly. But some people are very good at treating disease without knowing its source — and what the Huang Di Nei Jing teaches is precisely the source of disease.

Bonus: leave your wet clothes on, and you grow pimples

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Take something as small as a pimple — where does it come from? You sit there or wear your clothes and you sweat; the sweat meets the clothes and creates dampness — the clothes are wet, you keep sweating, and this wet sweat is entirely of your own making, so pimples easily grow. So as soon as you sweat, change your clothes — change the wet ones for dry ones. Mothers are always right; the disobedient child is the one who keeps growing pimples. It is perfectly normal for a child to change clothes three or four times a day.

Essence is stored in the kidneys:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: A person’s essence (jing) is the root of life — you must not read “essence” narrowly as “sperm”; it is the finest substance of a person, the very foundation of the body. When in winter you store essence, in spring you do not suffer warm disease (dong cang yu jing zhe, chun bu bing wen) — if you know how to store your essence in winter, you will not get warm disease in spring. And if you do not sweat — if you catch cold and no sweat comes out — then in autumn you will develop feng nüe (wind malaria).

The yin and yang of the body: how are they divided?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Speaking of a person’s yin and yang: outside is yang, inside is yin; the back is yang, the abdomen is yin. How do you remember it? Very simply — whatever is light in color belongs to yang, and whatever is deep in color belongs to yin. A woman’s milk is discharged from the chest, and it is white, so a woman’s chest is yang and her back is yin. A man has no milk in his chest, so his chest is yin and his back is yang. When you look at corpses, those lying face-up are all female and those lying face-down are all male — back in the days of the Cultural Revolution on the mainland, many people fled toward Hong Kong, swam out into the sea and died there; looking at all those floating bodies, you could tell them apart exactly this way.

The zang organs are yin, the fu organs are yang:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Among the organs, the zang are yin and the fu are yang. The liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys are all yin (the zang); the gallbladder, small intestine, large intestine, stomach and urinary bladder — the six fu — are yang. When I first taught acupuncture I said “the zang are yin, the fu are yang” — that comes straight from the Huang Di Nei Jing; this is the very source.

Above the diaphragm is yang, below it is yin:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Above the diaphragm there are only two zang organs — the heart and the lungs (the liver has half of itself above the diaphragm); below the diaphragm is yin. Winter disease is in yin, summer disease is in yang, spring disease is in yin, autumn disease is in yang. The heart is yang within yang; the lungs are yin within yang (the chest cavity of the upper jiao); the kidneys are yin within yin (the abdomen); the liver is yang within yin (the liver carries a little yang inside it); and the spleen is the supreme yin within yin (yin zhong zhi zhi yin). Yin and yang can be divided without end, finer and finer — this passage is about how the zang organs are distinguished by yin and yang.

The diaphragm: the place that separates clear from turbid

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: In the Chinese medical view of the diaphragm — apart from speaking of the san jiao — you must first know what a normal person is. Western medicine studies disease; it has forgotten the definition of a normal person. The diaphragm is the place that separates clear from turbid: all the turbid things in the body — the turbid qi of a normal person can rise only as far as here and no further; to cross this boundary is abnormal. Western medicine thinks the diaphragm moves up and down with breathing (lung capacity) and does not know that its most important function is to separate clear from turbid — when clear and turbid are not separated, when turbid can rise, when turbid is above and clear is below, disease develops. So you must know what the normal state is; treat the pathological state back into the normal state and you will know what normal is — otherwise, without lab reports, how would we know a person has returned to normal?

The example of the yangming headache:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Normally the turbid matter of the large intestine is stopped by the diaphragm and cannot rise above it. Now suppose the large intestine becomes too dry and hot, and the turbid qi follows the yangming meridian upward, to the stomach, all the way to the top — the foot yangming meridian points (Chengqi ST1, Sibai ST2, Juliao ST3, Touwei ST8, Xiaguan ST7, Jiache ST6) should stay in their positions, but now the turbid qi is too abundant, it rises, it no longer stays on the meridian, and it runs into the space between the two eyebrows, becoming a hard, painful lump — that is the place where yang is excessive. That is why we say the yangming headache is not to be smashed — you let the turbid qi descend so that clear and turbid can separate.

Pulse diagnosis: cun, guan and chi, and the guan ge

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Take the hand — the left palm. Going up from the thumb: this is Lieque (LU7) and Taiyuan (LU9). Above is cun; at Jingqu (LU8) is guan; below guan is chi (at the Lieque position). Using guan to divide, the guan sits exactly at the guan ge — above the guan is the yang pulse, below the guan is the yin pulse. If the yang pulse is gone, or the yin pulse is gone, you know immediately that the problem is at that position. Where the yin pulse and the yang pulse meet — that is the guan (and this speaks of the spleen). When the seasons change, the change is gradual — it is not that today is summer and tomorrow is autumn; it turns slowly, slowly.

The five organs respond to the four seasons: eastern green enters and connects with the liver

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The emperor asks: the five organs respond to the four seasons, each receiving what belongs to it. Eastern green enters and connects with the liver, opening at the eyes — essence is stored in the liver; its disease is fright and shock (jing hai); its flavor is sour; its category is grass and wood; its domestic animal is the chicken; its grain is wheat; in response to the four seasons it is above as the Year Star (sui xing, the planet Jupiter); its note is jue; its number is eight; its smell is rank (sao). Spring qi is in the head.

The five directions paired with the five colors:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Look at a map — Taiwan is in the east, with the East China Sea; to the west is mainland China; north and south — use this to distinguish: the east corresponds to green (the liver), the south to red (the heart), the west to white (the lungs), the north to black (the kidneys), and the very center to yellow (the spleen). When we studied acupuncture, we matched these five colors to the five organs, and all of them were already familiar.

What to take away: overeating suppresses yang qi so waste cannot be cleared — it accumulates and disease begins, so chew slowly and never gorge. Each season has its own wind and its own organ to guard: protect the back of the neck in spring, the chest and ribs in summer, the shoulders and back in autumn, and the lumbar spine and limb joints in winter; an injury in one season carries through the whole year. Sweat left against wet clothes breeds dampness and pimples — change clothes as soon as you sweat, and store your essence in winter so warm disease does not come in spring. In the body, light color is yang and deep color is yin; a woman’s breast is yang and her back yin. The diaphragm is the boundary that separates clear from turbid — turbid qi may rise no further; the hard headache between the brows is exactly that turbidity pushing up, and the cure is to let it descend, not to smash it. On the pulse, the guan is where yin and yang meet — the spleen; and in the map of the five organs, east is green and enters the liver, opening at the eyes.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) Huang Di Nei Jing lecture series (Lecture Five)