Going Bald? It Might Be the Sweets. Can You Read Diabetes From the Eyes? Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Fifteenth Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing — How Each Flavor Injures an Organ, the Dull Colors That Mean Death, the Eye as a Map of the Five Viscera, and the Eight Wind-Eight Evil Points That Cure a Swollen Ankle Overnight

Patient search terms: what to do about baldness / what causes hair loss? / how to get rid of too much body hair / what to eat for leg cramps / lips that curl upward / bone pain / pulse beating too fast / what to look for when feeling the pulse / spotting diabetes from the eyes / reading health from the pupil / shining a flashlight into the eyes / too much white of the eye / sprained and swollen ankle / gout / insect bite, dog bite, snake bite / tetanus / bloodletting for swelling and pain

Corresponding medical names: the Su Wen · Wu Zang Sheng Cheng Pian (On the Generation of the Five Viscera, chapter ten) · guan ge (barred-and-repelled) · fu mai (covering pulse) · nei guan wai ge (inner bar, outer repulsion) · yin and yang separating (yin yang li jue) · the heart is matched with the vessels and governed by the kidney · the lung is matched with the skin and governed by the heart · the liver is matched with the sinews and governed by the lung · the spleen is matched with the flesh and governed by the liver · the kidney is matched with the bones and governed by the spleen · the injuries of the five flavors · eating too much salt makes the vessels congeal and the complexion change (duo shi xian ze mai ning qi er bian se) · eating too much bitter dries the skin and plucks the hair (duo shi ku ze pi gao er mao ba) · eating too much pungent makes the sinews tense and the nails wither (duo shi xin ze jin ji er zhao ku) · eating too much sour makes the flesh crease and the lips curl (duo shi suan ze rou zhi zhou er chun jie) · eating too much sweet makes the bones ache and the hair fall (duo shi gan ze gu tong er fa luo) · the correspondences of the five flavors · the heart desires bitter, the lung pungent, the liver sour, the spleen sweet, the kidney salty · sweet to relax tension (gan yi huan ji) · the child can make the mother full (zi neng ling mu shi) · firming the spleen (shi pi) · the five colors that decide life and death · blue-green like wilted grass, yellow like zhi shi, black like soot, red like stale blood, white like bleached bone · blue-green like kingfisher feathers, red like a rooster’s comb, yellow like crab paste, white like lard, black like glossy crow feathers · like white silk wrapped over cinnabar (ru yi gao guo zhu) · color and flavor correspond to the five viscera · all vessels belong to the eyes (zhu mai zhe jie shu yu mu) · eye diagnosis (mu zhen) · the pupil belongs to the kidney · the white of the eye belongs to the lung · three-white and four-white eyes · the yang ming channel · the pupillary light reflex · xiao ke (wasting-thirst, diabetes) · all marrow belongs to the brain · all sinews belong to the joints · all blood belongs to the heart · all qi belongs to the lung · the eight crevices of the four limbs (si zhi ba xi) · ba feng ba xie (Eight Wind and Eight Evil points) · injury to the form shows as swelling, injury to the qi shows as pain (xing shang ze zhong, qi shang ze tong) · gout

Opening: yang wants to come in, but yang cannot come in

Last lecture ended at the barred-and-repelled pulse (guan ge). This time Doctor Ni draws the "yin-yang repulsion" as a picture. He takes the lower burner below the diaphragm as an example: the large intestine and small intestine both sit below the diaphragm, the small intestine belongs to fire, and the spleen sits in the middle —

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Inside the small intestine there is originally fire, but because the spleen is in the middle, you have fire here and fire here — two fires facing one earth. So the fire can balance the earth. And the earth cannot be too excessive — it needs wood to restrain it; wood balances this earth. The spleen governs dampness; the spleen dislikes dampness. Fluids are very heavy, so they accumulate in the small intestine. So there is a great deal of fluid and moisture inside the small intestine — that is normal. That is yin.

With fluids cushioning the small intestine, food can move down smoothly. But when something goes wrong, the picture reverses:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Then yang comes — yang comes to cut off yin — and dries out the small intestine completely, all the fluids are gone, and it becomes very dry. Food arrives in the small intestine and cannot be pushed out; it is stuck in the small intestine. That is the inner bar with outer repulsion (nei guan wai ge) — yin is sealed off inside. And that is the covering pulse (fu mai).

Yang wants to come in, but yang cannot come in — and on the pulse this appears as that "barred" phenomenon. Yin and yang each staying in their own place is normal; once they seal each other off and can no longer drive each other back, there is serious trouble.

The pulse too fast: nine or ten beats per breath — death is not far away

How severe does the covering pulse get, and how do you judge it? Doctor Ni gives the simplest quantitative standard — count the pulse:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The covering form is very fierce — more than four times over. For example, a normal pulse is four to five beats per breath; five is the most standard value. When it reaches nine — six is one times over, seven is two times over, eight is three times over, nine is four times over — that is the sign of guan ge; yin and yang are separated extremely badly, and such a patient dies very, very quickly.

So when you feel a patient’s pulse flying, you should already know what it means. And here Doctor Ni flags a mistake beginners often make — whose breath do you use to count?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You feel the patient’s pulse and it is very fast — but in your mind, it is not the patient’s breathing you use, you know. The patient’s qi may be very short, and then you cannot count clearly. You must use your own breath as the standard. Slowly regulate yourself into an even rhythm, and then measure against your own one inhalation and one exhalation — if he beats nine or ten times, the pulse is very fast, and that is about it.

The generation of the five viscera: the heart is matched with the vessels, and its governor is the kidney

Page 78: we enter the Wu Zang Sheng Cheng Pian (On the Generation of the Five Viscera). The title asks the question: what do the five viscera generate?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The heart is matched with the vessels; its bloom is on the complexion, and it is governed by the kidney. The lung is matched with the skin; its bloom is in the body hair, and it is governed by the heart. The liver is matched with the sinews; its bloom is in the nails, and it is governed by the lung. The spleen is matched with the flesh; its bloom is on the lips, and it is governed by the liver. The kidney is matched with the bones; its bloom is in the hair, and it is governed by the spleen.

The heart matches the vessels, the lung the skin, the liver the sinews, the spleen the flesh, the kidney the bones — each viscus has its match; that is the "generation." And the truly hard part is that little phrase "governed by" at the end:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Why is the heart governed by the kidney? Because the one that can restrain the heart is the kidney. So when we treat the heart, we often use kidney medicines. For example, when the blood is insufficient — anemia, not enough blood — we add something like shu di (prepared rehmannia), a kidney-tonifying herb, to build the blood. Because this water is what controls the heart.

Water controls fire; kidney water controls heart fire — so to treat the heart, you work through the kidney. When the heart races too fast and palpitates violently, that too is the kidney’s business.

The five viscera police each other: one thing subdues another

Lung problems are governed by the heart (fire controls metal); liver problems are controlled by the lung (metal controls wood); the spleen’s condition is governed by the liver (wood controls earth); the kidney is governed by the spleen (earth controls water). When this section is done, Doctor Ni says — that’s the whole point. The five elements form one circle, every link holding the next, and nobody gets to run wild.

Too much salt: the vessels congeal and the complexion changes

Precisely because the five viscera police each other this way, the second passage says — when you eat too much of one flavor, what gets hurt is precisely the organ that flavor’s element conquers:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If you eat things that are too salty, water goes to control fire, the blood vessels congeal and the complexion changes — the person’s color becomes darker.

Eat too much salt and the vessels congeal and the complexion changes — sluggish vessels and a darkened face. That is the chain reaction of salt entering the kidney and water controlling fire.

Too much bitter: the skin dries and the hair is plucked — and by the way, hair removal?

Eat too much bitter and fire controls metal; the lung governs the skin and body hair — the result is pi gao er mao ba: the skin dries and the hair falls. Doctor Ni casually brings up a topic every young woman cares about:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You say, "I am a girl and I have too much body hair; I want to remove it — I’ll eat something bitter." I am not telling you to go do hard labor. We have many bitter medicinals — just drink them, and that is it.

Too much pungent: the sinews tense and the nails wither; too much sour: the lips curl upward

Eat too much pungent and metal goes to control wood — the liver governs the sinews and its bloom is in the nails; both sinews and nails belong to the liver. So eating too much spicy food makes the sinews tense and the nails wither — cramps, dry and withered nails. Eat too much sour and wood controls earth — the spleen governs the flesh and its bloom is on the lips; eat too much sour and the flesh creases and the lips curl upward.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Of course, some people curl their lips without eating sour at all — that is not this case. Do not say they ate too much sour. No.

Too much sweet: the bones ache and the hair falls — the secret of balding men

Now comes the best part. Eat too much sweet and earth controls water — the kidney governs the bones and its bloom is in the hair, so the result is bone pain and hair loss. Eat too many sweets and your bones ache and your hair drops out. Doctor Ni says he has observed a very common phenomenon:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Lots of men go bald. Why do men go bald? They sneak off to a place where no one can see them and eat sweets. Women are better — they eat sweets right in front of you. When she eats it in front of you, she will not eat too much — just a little piece of cake or something. But men? In front of people it is embarrassing — how can a grown man eat sweets in front of you? So he hides behind and eats; he hides behind and eats a lot, no one sees, he eats a lot — and then he comes out and his hair has fallen out. So a balding man: the root cause is sweets.

At this point Doctor Ni tells a scene from his own clinic — a patient came asking what to do about baldness and growing hair back:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: I said, it is simple. First I give you one condition, and you must follow this non-negotiable condition — stop all sweets. Can’t do it? Then keep losing your hair. No solution. I explained it to him, and as soon as I said it, he admitted it right away.

Too many sweets — bone pain and hair loss. This is what the five flavors can injure.

The power of destruction is always greater than the power of construction

So why do we need to know all this? Doctor Ni says — besides nourishing yourself by following the five qi of Heaven and the five flavors of Earth, it helps in treatment. A patient tells you his bones hurt terribly; we know the kidney governs the bones, so we tonify the kidney and nurse the bones back. But if you do not tell him to eat fewer sweets, he goes home and keeps eating them:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Just like I said — I help him grow his hair back, but he goes home and keeps eating sweets. So which is greater, the power of destruction or the power of growth? The power of destruction. You disagree? Think about the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11 — how long did it take to build those two towers? To knock them down was very fast. So the power of destruction is always greater than the power of construction. Destruction needs no brains — smash a car, give anyone a hammer, and anyone can smash it. But to design and create a car — that is not simple. Chinese medicine is creation.

Surgery cuts something out — that is destruction. Chinese medicine finds a way to grow it back — that is creation.

The correspondences of the five flavors: the heart desires bitter, the lung pungent, the liver sour, the spleen sweet, the kidney salty

Page 79: the correspondences of the five flavors (wu wei suo he) — which flavor each viscus loves:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Because of what came before, the heart desires bitter, the lung desires pungent, the liver desires sour, the spleen desires sweet, the kidney desires salty — these are the correspondences of the five flavors.

Once you know this, it works wonders clinically. For example, wood controls earth — the liver governs the sinews, the liver’s color is blue-green and its flavor is sour:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The liver governs the sinews. When the sinews tense — cramps — eating sweet can relax them. Because when the liver is too strong it affects the earth. Once you strengthen the earth, the liver cannot overcome the spleen earth. At that point you firm the spleen — we call it shi pi — and then the wood will not go and attack the earth.

And how do you firm the spleen? Doctor Ni teaches the trick of "the child can make the mother full" (zi neng ling mu shi):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Who is the child of the spleen earth? The lung. So we look through food for everything white — does white enter the lung? Apricot kernels, lotus seeds — many of them are white. When you look at the medicinals sold in the market, the white ones usually enter the lung; what enters the lung can firm the spleen, because the child can make the mother full.

The five colors decide life and death: dull and lusterless means death, bright and luminous means life

Next comes the centerpiece of inspection — the five colors. Why can people see color? Because people receive the five flavors of the Earth; the qi of the five viscera carries flavor within, and that is why color is visible. First the death colors:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Blue-green like wilted grass means death; yellow like zhi shi means death — you who have not studied medicinals, have you seen zhi shi (the dried immature bitter orange)? Zhi shi looks exactly like that withered yellow. Black like charcoal — like charred, burned charcoal. Red like pi xue — stale blood, a very dark red with no luster. White like bleached bone — white with no sheen. These are all death signs.

Remember the master principle: dull and lusterless — deep, dark, lifeless — all of it is death; bright and luminous is life. What do the life colors look like?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Blue-green like kingfisher feathers — like a bird’s feathers, blue-green, vivid and gleaming. Red — like the sheen of a rooster’s comb. Yellow — like the paste inside a crab. White — like lard. Black — like glossy crow feathers. The same blue-green, red, yellow, white and black: whenever you see the dull, lusterless ones, that is all death; the bright, luminous ones are life.

Why must you learn to read color? Doctor Ni says — later we will introduce the so-called "color-pulse" (se mai) diagnosis, a very advanced method: inspect the color, then feel the pulse, and you can make an excellent diagnosis from both together. That is why you need to know how these colors change.

The normal colors of the five viscera: like white silk wrapped over cinnabar

The first paragraph of page 80 discusses normal inspection — when the five viscera function normally, what color appears on the surface:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: What is born from the heart looks like white silk wrapping some red cinnabar within. What is born from the lung looks like white silk wrapping something pale red. What is born from the spleen looks like white silk wrapping a gourd fruit — not a dull yellow, but yellow with a moist whiteness in it. What is born from the kidney looks like white silk wrapping purple. In every case there must be a little brightness and luster inside. These are the normal colors born from the five viscera.

Color and flavor correspond to the five viscera: white to the lung and pungent, red to the heart and bitter…

The second paragraph concerns the choice of medicines and food:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Color and flavor correspond to the five viscera: white corresponds to the lung and pungent; red to the heart and bitter; blue-green to the liver and sour; yellow to the spleen and sweet; black to the kidney and salty. White corresponds to the skin, red to the vessels, blue-green to the sinews, yellow to the flesh, black to the bones — because the lung governs the skin, the heart governs the blood vessels, the liver governs the sinews, the spleen governs the flesh, and the kidney governs the bones.

And then the most critical eight characters of the whole section — all vessels belong to the eyes (zhu mai zhe jie shu yu mu): every blood vessel converges on the eye. Doctor Ni says that Chinese medicine later developed a whole system of "eye diagnosis" from this line:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Go and look — whether foreigner, Chinese, Spanish, European, Black, White, Native American — no matter who the person is, when they open their eyes for you to look at, the pupil right in the center is always black. Black governs the kidney. So when you read Chinese medicine books, be flexible — whenever you see black, that is the kidney.

The rings of the eye: the black pupil is the kidney, the second ring the spleen, the third ring the liver, the white the lung

Doctor Ni takes the eye apart ring by ring:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The pupil shows the kidney. The second ring — who restrains the kidney? Who controls the kidney? The spleen earth. Earth controls the kidney — otherwise the kidney would run wild and kidney water would wander everywhere, with no one to restrain it. So the second ring is the spleen — the place where we look at the pancreas. The third ring — who controls the spleen? Without the liver, without wood going to restrain earth, the earth falls into disorder too; with no fluids inside, the earth also runs off.

When the earth runs off, Doctor Ni gives the most vivid example imaginable — a mudslide:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Look at a mudslide. Why do mudslides happen? The wood has been destroyed. Originally there were big trees with deep roots. Then they planted betel nut palms instead, and you get mudslides. So wood can govern earth. When we look at the eye, the black in the very center is the kidney, the second ring is the spleen earth, the third ring is the liver, and the white of the eye — the lung — isn’t it white? The lung is white. No matter what kind of person you are, blue-green, red, yellow, white or black, everyone has white in the eye — it is only a question of how much.

People with too much white of the eye are dull? Three-white and four-white eyes are ominous signs

Within the lore of the eye there is also a whole art of physiognomy, and Doctor Ni states it without mercy:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The more white of the eye, the duller the person; the less white, the smarter — the ones where you can barely see any white, with black pearls rolling around, those are the smartest. How can so much white show? Those are short-lived, or fierce and evil appearances. White showing at the edge of the pupil — three-white above or below, or four-white with the iris floating in the middle — these are all fierce, evil appearances; such people do not die a good death.

The bigger the iris the better; the less white around it, the better. And the bags under the eyes:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The bags under the eyes sit on the yang ming channel; the yang ming channel deposits its branches here, so this is the place of the spleen and stomach. In a normal person the bag has texture — the spleen earth is dense, packed tightly. The liver region has looser, more widely spaced wood grain.

Shine a flashlight: if the pupil contracts, yang is present; if it does not move, kidney yang is gone

The center of the eye is the kidney; the kidney is a yin organ, and yin and yang are naturally connected — so yang can knock on yin’s door:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In the old days we used a candle; now we use a flashlight. Shine it and the pupil contracts at once — that means yang is inside. Western medicine knows this too: when the pupil becomes huge and does not react to the flashlight, the kidney yang is gone — the pupil dilates, and the person dies. So when you see a dilated pupil, it is really about the kidney.

The pupillary light reflex — a sign the Western emergency room uses every single day — was fully explained by the eye theory of the Yellow Emperor’s Classic two thousand years ago.

The smaller the pupil, the higher the wisdom: the kidney governs storage, and if it cannot store, you are finished

The rings of the eye also have their proportions:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The spleen zone occupies one third, the liver zone two thirds — the liver is a little bigger than the spleen. And the pupil should be small — the smaller the pupil, the higher the wisdom, because it is more concentrated, more able to store. The kidney governs storage; if it stores less, the pupil is huge — it cannot store. Now, to make the pupil smaller, to let the kidney store yang, you work through the spleen — shrink the spleen first, and that is it.

In practice: hands broken and mute — how do you diagnose? Look at the eyes!

Doctor Ni says inspection is a skill you must master, because in the clinic you meet all kinds of strange patients:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Suppose the patient’s hands are broken — you cannot feel the pulse, there are no two hands — and he is also mute, very tiring. You ask him and he cannot tell you; there is no pulse, not even hands. What do you do? You should know a bit of every method of Chinese medicine, and then you will make fewer mistakes. The heart — from the inner canthus of the eye, the blood vessels there, that is the heart; the jing ming area is the heart — that is where you look for the heart. So the five viscera can all be seen on the eye.

And immediately he runs a live diagnosis:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Teacher, this person runs in; neither hand can take a pulse, so we have to pick up his eyeballs and look; and he is mute too. His eyes look like this — the pupil is very small, very smart. Hey — why is his spleen zone so huge and his liver zone so small? The earth is too exuberant. When the earth is exuberant, according to the Yellow Emperor’s Classic, will it not insult wood in return? When the earth itself is diseased, then the wood that normally restrains it comes to restrain it, threatening the liver. Earth exuberance is the spleen — the pancreas — the spleen — diabetes (xiao ke, wasting-thirst). Quickly — you can see it at once.

Then shine the flashlight: close, far, off — the pupil does not move at all. The kidney yang is gone; yang no longer seeks yang; the kidney yang is insufficient.

All sinews belong to the joints: treat blood-vessel disease through the heart, qi-vessel disease through the lung

This passage also lays out several "summa" of the body:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: All vessels belong to the eyes. All marrow belongs to the brain — all the marrow inside the bones is governed by the brain. All sinews belong to the joints — sinews all grow beside the joints. All blood lives in the vessels and all of it belongs to the heart. All qi belongs to the lung. The eight crevices of the four limbs — the eight joints of the hands and feet. Why do we need to know this? Because sinews and bones are connected: when the blood vessels have a problem, we treat the heart; when the qi vessels have a problem, we treat the lung. That is the idea.

Bonus: Ba Feng Ba Xie — the life-saving crevices at the ends of the limbs

Finally, Doctor Ni brings the "eight crevices of the four limbs" down to a very practical needling method — the ba feng ba xie (Eight Wind and Eight Evil points):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The hand has eight crevices, eight slits in between. The foot has eight crevices too — that is ba feng ba xie. Why do we use them? Because they are at the ends of the four limbs, where pathogens like to stay. When you swell up — insect bite, dog bite, snake bite, or a sprain, or tetanus, an infection, and the hand swells up; including gout — when qi and blood cannot pass at the extremities, and you take medicine, the medicine has a long way to travel to get there.

When qi and blood cannot reach the extremities, the medicine’s reach is too short — so needle right at the extremity:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Ba feng ba xie are places where yin and yang meet; the yin channels and yang channels arrive at the extremities. Needle straight into the middle of the bone crevice. There is no specific point — just go in like this. If it is a sprain swollen very large, and you say the qi is not enough with one needle, you can put another needle between the joints as well. Once you do this, the swelling is completely gone by the next morning — a sprained ankle, the foot swelling, gone.

When the form is injured, it swells; when the qi is injured, it hurts

The swelling is gone — so is it all better? Doctor Ni says — you still have to see whether it hurts:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The swelling is gone and the form is healed, but there is still pain — that means the qi has not yet opened. So qi governs pain and form governs swelling. When the form is injured, it swells — for example internal bleeding, a broken bone, a dislocation, a pulled muscle — you can see it swell; internal bleeding is all form. Qi you cannot see; qi is blocked inside, the form has not changed, and there is pain inside.

And does the needle hurt? Doctor Ni gives his guarantee:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If it is on the foot, we needle into the crevice between the toes. Don’t worry, teacher — will it hurt a lot? No. He is already swollen and in pain; when you needle him he feels no pain at all — and the moment the needle goes in he feels wonderful, something keeps moving inside. Why? The qi opens up right away. Because this is where qi lives.

The joints at the ends of the limbs are exactly the "crevices" where qi gathers — and Doctor Ni adds one last casual remark: this even makes sense in feng shui and geography — a house built on such a nodal, creviced spot stays warm in winter and cool in summer.

Closing: the five flavors nourish, the five colors diagnose, the five forms return to the viscera

This lecture opened with the barred-and-repelled covering pulse and walked through the whole Wu Zang Sheng Cheng Pian: each viscus has its match and its governor; eating too much of a flavor injures the organ that flavor conquers; the correspondences of the five flavors define what each viscus desires; the brightness or dullness of the five colors decides life and death; color-pulse inspection sees through the whole body — and it all lands on the most practical eye diagnosis and the ba feng ba xie needling method. Doctor Ni’s class is always like this: reciting the classics with one hand while pulling out the clinic’s best tricks and life’s wisdom with the other. Next lecture, we continue with the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing, compiled by Doctor Luo Dalun (Lecture Fifteen)