Can a Pulse Reading Detect Diabetes? A Soft Heart Pulse and Eating a Lot Yet Staying Thin Should Put You on Guard — Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Twenty-Fourth Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing: Five-Organ Pulse Diagnosis and How Disease Spreads and Changes

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Corresponding medical names: Su Wen · Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun (On the Essentials of the Pulse) · the three positions and four channels (san bu si jing) chart of the Nan Jing (Classic of Difficult Issues), Difficulty Eighteen · pulse diagnosis with organs on the outside and bowels on the inside · xu jing wei bao (emptiness and stillness are the treasure) · the pulse depths of the four seasons (spring floating like a fish swimming among the waves / summer on the skin / autumn beneath the skin / winter pressed to the bone) · zhi nei zhe, an er ji zhi (to know the inner, press and measure it) · zhi wai zhe, zhong er shi zhi (to know the outer, finish from the beginning) · five-organ pulse diagnosis (heart: bounding-hard-long = tongue curling, unable to speak; soft-scattered = xiao ke wasting-thirst diabetes; lung: bounding-hard-long = spitting blood; soft-scattered = guan han pouring sweat, never sweat again; liver: bounding-hard-long with green complexion = liver disease; soft-scattered = yi yin overflowing fluid; stomach: bounding-hard-long with red complexion = zhe bi pain like a broken hip; soft-scattered = shi bi food impediment; spleen: bounding-hard-long with yellow complexion = little qi; soft-scattered = swollen lower legs; kidney: bounding-hard-long with yellow-red complexion = zhe yao back pain like breaking; soft-scattered = xue shao anemia) · a wiry pulse carrying a little slowness is stomach qi · the tongue is the outward sign of the heart · the lung governs the skin and body hair · blood activated by water (75% water, 25% blood) · water and fire mutually supporting (shui huo xiang ji) · tonifying the kidney to treat anemia · salty flavor enters the blood, herbs must be processed (pao zhi) · a hurried pulse (ji mai) means accumulation · xin shan (heart hernia) with something tangible in the lower abdomen · the heart and small intestine interior-exterior paired, mother and child organs · stomach pulse excess = distension, deficient = diarrhea · the small pouch below the stomach keeps one-fifth of food in renewal · seven days without food · tiao qi (regulating the qi) · zhi si di er hou sheng (placed in a position of death and then living) · how disease spreads and changes (wind becomes cold-heat, dan becomes xiao zhong, jue becomes dian ji, prolonged wind becomes sun xie, wind in the vessels becomes li) · tan (phlegm) is damp-heat of the middle burner · night snacking breeds dan and then xiao zhong (diabetes) · fu gui bing (the rich person’s disease) · inherited lifestyle vs. inherited genes · vaccine side effects · type 1 diabetes · the eight principles (ba gang: yin yang, exterior-interior, deficiency-excess, cold-heat) · abscesses, cramping sinews and bone pain are seeds of cold qi and changes of the eight winds · the error of the warm-disease school’s cold-cool herbs · classical formulas: pao fu zi (prepared aconite) and bai zhu (atractylodes) · jun chen zuo shi (sovereign, minister, assistant and courier) · activating blood and resolving stasis (huo xue hua yu) · chest and diaphragm stasis from falls

Opening: before you touch the pulse, set three rules

This lecture continues straight down the Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun. Doctor Ni begins by settling an old account: this definition of pulse taking was laid down in the Huang Di Nei Jing — by Qi Bo. And before you take a pulse, a few rules have to be fixed first, or the pulse is taken for nothing.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Taking the pulse must consult the three positions and four channels chart of Difficulty Eighteen. What do we mean by yin and yang? You see, I write all the organs on the outside and all the bowels on the inside, and in the middle there is a big sinew — the place of the Pericardium channel, where Daling (PC7) and Neiguan (PC6) are; that is the sinew. When you put your three fingers on, if the pulse is closer to the bone on the outer side, that is the heart’s pulse; if it is closer to the sinew, that is the small intestine’s pulse. So the moment you touch down — oh, the heart pulse is gone and the pulse has run over beside the sinew — that is the small intestine’s pulse.

Outside is yang, inside is yin; yin and yang support each other — so to examine an organ disease you read the outer edge of the pulse, and to examine a bowel disease you read the inner edge (beside the sinew). That is the use of the four channels in the first part; the chart is in Difficulty Eighteen.

The second rule is the attitude of the pulse taker:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The way of pulse diagnosis — xu jing wei bao, emptiness and stillness are the treasure. You must calm your mind completely, free of stray thoughts, focused. That is best.

The third rule is the depth of the pulse in the four seasons:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In spring, the pulse floats — like a fish swimming among the waves; a light press and you feel it, like a fish swimming in the water. In summer, it lies on the skin, floating on the surface. In autumn, it goes beneath the skin. In winter, you must press heavily all the way to the bone, beside the bone — like a hibernating insect; when winter comes it goes into hibernation. So zhi nei zhe, an er ji zhi — to know the diseases of the interior, press heavily to the bone and measure; zhi wai zhe, zhong er shi zhi — to know the exterior, whether there is a cold on the surface of the skin, lay the fingers lightly on the skin. That is the great law of pulse diagnosis: the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter, plus depth and shallowness.

The heart pulse: one touch tells you whether your tongue will curl — and whether you have diabetes

The rules set, Qi Bo begins on the pulses of the five organs. The first is the heart pulse:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If the heart pulse bounds, is hard and long, the disease is the tongue curling and inability to speak. The long pulse starts from here, nine fen; if it passes the crease of the cun position and runs toward the thenar eminence, the pulse is too long — that is an excessive pulse. A heart pulse that has become very large and long means the heart yang is very exuberant and yang will rise upward. Our tongue itself is the outward sign of the heart — the tongue is the surface of the heart — so if the heart pulse is excessive, the tongue curls up and the person cannot speak. On the other hand, if the heart pulse is soft and scattered? The disease is xiao ke — what we now call diabetes: a big appetite, eating and eating, yet still thin no matter how much is eaten. So with a single finger on the heart pulse, you can detect diabetes, you can detect the symptoms of wasting-thirst.

The lung pulse: too full and you spit blood; too deficient and sweat pours — whatever you do, do not induce more sweating

The second is the lung pulse, on the outer edge of the lung position:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If the lung pulse bounds, is hard and long — very large and long — the patient will spit blood. This is excess inside; there is accumulation in the lung, the patient coughs blood, spits blood — it may be lung cancer or something of the kind. If it is soft and scattered, the disease is sweating that will not stop; we call it guan han, pouring sweat, a great loss of fluids. This is what is meant by deficiency and excess.

Why does lung deficiency cause endless sweating? Because the lung governs the skin and body hair; when the lung is deficient, the exterior is deficient. Doctor Ni adds a clinical rule of the highest importance:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When the lung is deficient and sweating heavily, it is already deficient inside. If at that moment you again heavily induce sweating — you give sweating herbs — because the fluids are gone: our fluids must moisten; the sweat in the muscles has all run out; if there is still a little sweat and a little fluid in the fluids, that is still all right. But if you induce sweating again, and drain the sweat out of the fluids, the patient begins to cramp and spasm. That is exactly why we have sweating herbs — herbs that induce sweat, to release the exterior — and we have attacking-downward herbs. Ordinary doctors do not dare use sweating herbs, the herbs that induce sweat; they do not dare use ma huang and gui zhi casually — but actually it is because the diagnosis is not clear. When the diagnosis is clear, ma huang and gui zhi work beautifully.

The liver pulse: a green face means the liver can no longer hold things in

The third is the liver pulse. If the liver pulse bounds, is hard and long — pressing upward, rushing downward — but no green appears in the complexion, the organs are fine:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You have to digest what Chinese medicine says: the liver is green; all the green nourishment — a normal liver keeps it inside the liver, so it should not overflow, should not leak out. If you have a hard mass inside, a tumor, cirrhosis, the green can no longer be held inside, and it leaks out. So when you see the color appear, it means the organ has a problem.

Conversely, if a person’s face is green, yet the qi and bearing are good — no liver disease — then it is most likely an injury: kicked by a horse, hit by a car, that sort of thing. Doctor Ni also teaches a trick for reading people:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When you take the pulse you must also look at the face. If a girl is very pretty, and you look at her face and forget the pulse — that is not good either. Look at her hand: if the hand is very red, that is liver disease; if the hand is pink, it is not liver disease — it is trauma, an injury. Such illnesses come from falls, crashes, weakening injuries. When a person falls from a height, whether you land on your feet or not, you are bound to injure the chest — because our ribs are on top and the pelvis below, with one spine holding them; below the ribs is the diaphragm. When you are jolted, when the upper body presses down, most of the bleeding is in the chest cavity. Blood stops beneath the ribs, causing panting and counterflow. Why do you need to know this? Because you will use it in prescribing: some blood-activating herbs move the blood very fast; some stasis-resolving herbs — we want to put the blood-activating and the stasis-resolving herbs together, and they will not obediently park themselves in the flanks; if you want them to reach the flanks, they will not be so obedient, so you use other herbs to assist, to carry them to that place. That is why we have jun chen zuo shi (sovereign, minister, assistant and courier) — combined with other herbs, you can disperse and dissolve it. You prescribe a formula; you know his stasis is stuck in the chest and diaphragm; but what you prescribe is medicine for varicose veins — he takes it for a long time, the legs become more and more beautiful, yet the chest and diaphragm stasis is still right there. So the pattern identification must be precise.

And if the liver pulse is soft and scattered? That is deficiency, the disease yi yin (overflowing fluid):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Yi yin means the water overflows and spills out — it makes you thirsty, drinking very fast; the water easily seeps into the flesh and injures the skin. Normally the water should be in the stomach and intestines, but here it all overflows, running outside the stomach and intestines. Why can yi yin be seen on the liver pulse? Because the liver itself is the middle diaphragm — the liver and gallbladder are the diaphragm; when the water comes out it stays right in that neighborhood, and you can feel it there. A normal liver pulse should be wiry — wiry with a little slowness, slow yet forceful; that slowness is stomach qi; a pulse carrying a little slowness is the normal pulse. But now it is not wiry; it is very soft and scattered — that is yi yin.

The stomach and spleen pulses: pain like a broken bone, and poor digestion

The fourth is the stomach pulse. If the stomach pulse bounds, is hard and long, and the complexion is red:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The disease is zhe bi — the pain is very severe, as if a bone were broken, and the color is red, because the pain produces this phenomenon. A long stomach pulse means the pulse at the guan position extends far up and down. The stomach itself is earth. If it is excess, earth insults fire; fire is red, so the color runs up onto the face. That is excess — we judge from the pulse right here. If the stomach pulse is soft and scattered? The disease is shi bi — digestion is not very good. A normal stomach pulse should be slow yet forceful: slow yet forceful means very soft; when you feel it, it is soft, neither fast nor slow, very gentle — it feels comfortable — that is slow. But forceful: however hard you press, it bounces back with that much force. If it is weak, then when you press a little harder it runs away, the pulse is gone — that is deficient. Soft and scattered — the stomach’s digestion has a problem. So now you know: every morning drink a glass of cold water; even better, add a pinch of salt; even better, take Liu Wei Di Huang Wan, three or four pills at a time. Speaking of taking medicine, here is a funny story about prescribing for foreigners: our Chinese herbs are not refined into little pills, so I often say, prescribing for foreigners is very entertaining. The foreigner says how many should I take? I say you take thirty pills. What? He misunderstands — when they get medicine, it is a tiny little concentrated pill, and only for very toxic drugs do you take one tiny pill. I say take thirty pills; he cannot imagine it. I explain it very simply: if Chinese medicine says that eating one orange will surely cure you, I go to the market, find a big orange, and give it to you to eat — so the dose is large; I would not give you an orange slice — that orange slice is the poison. Then he understands. Otherwise how do you explain it to him? Very tiring.

The fifth is the spleen pulse. If the spleen pulse bounds, is hard and long, and the complexion is yellow, the disease is little qi:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Anything that bounds, is hard and long is an excess pulse. But here the color is yellow. Normally we carry a little yellow on the face, and it should be a shining yellow; you must not be bright fresh yellow — fresh yellow is mostly heat; if it is dull dark yellow, that is a yin disease, a serious illness in the body.

If the spleen pulse is soft and scattered, and the color lacks luster, that is a deficient pulse; generally the disease is in the inner side of the feet — swelling of the inner lower legs. Why? Because the spleen channel passes through that place.

The kidney pulse: back pain like a fracture, and anemia — why tonifying the kidney treats anemia

The sixth is the kidney pulse, at the left chi position, on the outer edge:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If the kidney pulse bounds, is hard and long, and the complexion is yellow-red, the disease is zhe yao — very severe lower back pain. Because the pain is extreme, the pulse qi is very large, and the pulse qi runs counterflow; the spleen color appears on the face, because earth conquers water — it reflects onto earth. If the pulse is soft and scattered, that is a deficient pulse; the disease is xue shao (scanty blood) — to this day never recovering — that is the phenomenon of anemia.

On the subject of anemia, Doctor Ni puts forward a key Chinese-medicine viewpoint — to treat anemia you cannot simply prescribe blood-tonifying herbs:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When Chinese medicine treats illness, when it meets anemia it is not that simply prescribing blood-tonifying herbs will cure it. Because earth can govern water: when you prescribe blood-tonifying herbs, most of them will tonify earth. The formation of blood is that water activates it — the Huang Di Nei Jing holds that the heart governs the blood; the reason the heart can govern the blood is that water manages it. Water rises to the top of the heart; water above, fire below; when water and fire meet, they mutually support. Taiwan also has water and fire sharing a source; many places have water and fire sharing a source — look at Yellowstone Park in America: bang, hot spring water shoots up — a place where water and fire share a source; that underground water is like the blood vessels in our body, still very hot. If there is no water to support this blood, the blood will scatter and dissipate, because the fetal heat will disperse. So when you test blood, actually there is water in it — Westerners do not consider water to be disease. Truly, our body is 75% water and only 25% blood. Water comes to control fire and becomes a gurgling spring. If water is insufficient, fire flares upward — heart fire flares upward — and that is anemia.

That is why Chinese medicine treats anemia with kidney-tonifying herbs — this is the reason. And when the blood has a problem, you must not eat too salty:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Too salty injures the blood, so some of our formulas must be processed. For example, if the original flavor is very salty, after processing the flavor becomes comparatively light — most tonic medicines we process, so the taste is lighter, but the aftertaste and the qi are thicker, and much of the saltiness is removed.

A hurried pulse means accumulation: heart pulse hurried, something tangible in the lower abdomen

On page 129, the Yellow Emperor asks another question: when you diagnose a hurried heart pulse, what disease is this?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You must remember: not only the heart pulse — anywhere, at any of these two pulses, when you feel a hurried pulse (ji mai) — a hurried pulse is very strong and hard; you press to the bone and it is still there — whenever you meet a hurried pulse, there is accumulation inside; something has accumulated in there; we call it ji (accumulation); this is ji mai. Qi Bo answers: if the heart pulse beats very rapidly, the disease is named xin shan (heart hernia), and the lower abdomen will surely have something tangible. Because the heart and the small intestine are interior-exterior paired, the lower abdomen must have form. Why does a hurried heart pulse mean something tangible in the lower abdomen? You only need to look at the navel — in front of the navel there is a person, a round one with many creases here; the liver is here, the heart here, the lung here — the liver channel, spleen, lung, kidney are on top. So with the navel as the center, below the navel is the place of the heart’s movement and palpitation — this is ‘the lower abdomen has form,’ speaking of the lower abdomen at the Guanyuan (CV4) position. Why is it so? Because the heart is the mother organ and the small intestine is the child — therefore the lower abdomen has form. The heart and the small intestine are at the same place, the cun position — this will be used again and again later.

The Yellow Emperor asks again: when you diagnose the stomach pulse, what is the condition of the disease?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If the stomach pulse is excess — you feel the stomach pulse strong and forceful — that is distension; if deficient, the pulse comes without force, and when you press lightly the pulse is gone — that is diarrhea.

A little pouch under the stomach: you can live seven days without food

On the subject of the stomach, Doctor Ni tells a physiological fact most people never notice — why food is constantly renewed:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In a normal person, one-fifth of our food is always stopped in the lower part of the stomach. When you eat a meal, one-fifth of it stays right here, and four-fifths goes down. At the second meal, fresh food goes down; the one-fifth of the fresh food of the second meal pushes that away, and the other four-fifths follows the previous meal’s one-fifth down together. So this food is constantly being renewed. And because there is a little pouch here, the body allows you to go seven days without eating — drinking only water — and still live.

Of course that is the standard case; some people are even more remarkable — the grandmother buried alive for 63 days in the earthquake who came back alive:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The papers are full of earthquakes; there was a grandmother buried for 63 days who came back alive — very remarkable. If such an accident ever happens to you, you must think of the Huang Di Nei Jing — the Huang Di Nei Jing says, what do you really do? Tiao qi — regulate the qi. So when you are trapped, you must not move around wildly. Sit calmly and peacefully, and be happy inside: now no one is bothering me, everyone is trying to save me — look how important I am. Then breathe calmly and slowly; do not talk, do not move much — talking consumes qi. Slowly quiet down and meditate; let the intention and the breath slowly move; let the qi of the earth and the qi of heaven match into your body, let heaven and earth intersect on you. It is like the man in India who sat under a tree for more than half a year, not eating, not drinking, not urinating, not defecating — just sitting there like that, and still alive. So the 63 days she could survive — this grandmother is very remarkable. This is what is called zhi si di er hou sheng — placed in a position of death and then living. Since death was coming anyway, she was not afraid of death, and she relaxed. People who die are all very tense: oh no, I am trapped in here, outside it is pitch black, I cannot see anything — very panicked, breathing hard, tense the whole time — and they die inside. So the Huang Di Nei Jing is very good: if you have read the Huang Di Nei Jing and you still get tense — you have read the spirit but not reached it; you have read the form, you have read the conduct, but not reached the spirit.

How does disease spread? Wind, dan, jue, prolonged wind, and wind in the vessels

Next Qi Bo speaks of the spread and change of disease — if a disease is not removed, how does it transform:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Wind becoming cold-heat — when the wind of external cold blows, it becomes cold-heat; the patient feels sometimes cold, sometimes hot; some people are afraid of cold. If dan becomes xiao zhong — dan means there is internal heat in the body; people whose chest cavity is already full of damp-heat, over time it becomes xiao zhong, becomes diabetes. Tan (phlegm) is damp-heat — damp and hot — very deep here in the middle burner.

Speaking of phlegm and xiao zhong, Doctor Ni singles out a bad habit that modern people commit almost every day — night snacking:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: After dinner, eating again, eating very late — night snacking. After you finish your midnight snack, there is a lot of food in the stomach, and you go to sleep — you lie down to sleep, and the stomach and intestines also go to sleep; the speed of the stomach and intestines slows down, and the food stews inside the stomach and intestines. Try it: after food is cooked and chewed — whatever the food itself is, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy — after you bite it, put it in your mouth and do not move it; wait five minutes, and it will turn sweet. So after your midnight snack, whether you ate stinky tofu or anything else, it is all blocked in the stomach; over time it becomes dan, and then over more time xiao zhong — diabetes.

That is why diabetes used to be called the rich person’s disease (fu gui bing) — Doctor Ni tells a classic story of ‘an inherited lifestyle’:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Some people get diabetes now because when they were young their father worked in a factory, leaving early and returning late every day; the family never met. Father comes home at nine or ten, very hungry, wants to eat something, and incidentally checks whether the kids’ homework is all right — the children are perfectly normal; home life is perfectly normal. After eating, everyone goes back to sleep. After a while, when the money is made, then it comes to diabetes — cannot eat; on the contrary, they cannot enjoy it anymore. But the child is already used to it: every night at nine or ten I have to eat a little something, to be with my father — ten, twenty years of it; when he marries, when a daughter marries out, when a son takes a wife, the habit is still there — and the child also develops diabetes. Western medicine says it is genetic — a heredity? How could it be heredity? It is an inheritance of lifestyle. And they call it heredity. I hate that kind of behavior.

Doctor Ni also sharply criticizes Western medicine’s classification of diabetes and its handling of vaccine side effects:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Western medicine divides diabetes into type 1 and type 2; type 1 they consider insulin-dependent, requiring lifelong insulin injections. But what they do not say up front: who is so unlucky as to be born with diabetes? Type 1 diabetes starts in childhood — after injections of vaccines, some become brain tumors, blood cancer most of all; and some get type 1 diabetes. Not everyone who gets the same vaccine develops the disease; some special people do — one or two out of a hundred. The drug companies are very fast: they only report the good; the bad they do not report. The data are made by them, the investigations are investigated by them — this is absolutely unacceptable. Type 1 diabetes, from the standpoint of Chinese medicine, has never occurred from ancient times to today — we have malignant tumors. This disease — dan, plus sneaking food at night. Look at the eunuchs: they do not wait on the emperor; when the emperor eats, they cannot eat, they just watch from the side. The rich man eats, and the servants and attendants wait on him; only when the banquet is over do they start to eat; after eating they go straight to sleep, and the next morning they get up early to carry water, wash the chamber pots, wash the clothes. The disease is in dan. This is the inheritance of lifestyle. So after you treat diabetes, what must happen? The way of living must change: from after dinner until sleep, no eating; the next morning, only then do you eat.

Then the remaining transformations:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Jue becoming dian ji — if the hands and feet are cold all year round, and when it is a cold condition you do not treat it, the heat cannot go down; heat runs counterflow; if the counterflow reaches the head, it produces dian ji (epilepsy). If there is prolonged wind — you are often blown by wind, always living in a windy environment — sooner or later it becomes sun xie (undigested diarrhea). External wind becoming li — if wind becomes cold-heat and is never removed, the wind stays on the body for a very long time and becomes the li disease; the skin becomes very rough and also suppurates. So the changes and transformations of disease are countless, without end — even Qi Bo cannot describe them all.

So what to do? Grasp the eight principles:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You must all remember: master yin and yang and the five elements, plus deficiency and excess, plus exterior and interior — whether the exterior is outside or inside — plus cold and heat. If you can grasp these, that is the eight principles (ba gang) of Chinese medicine. Diagnose this way, and you will never be wrong. What Qi Bo is speaking of is exactly these eight principles. If you want to divide it more finely, it is countless.

Abscesses, cramping sinews and bone pain are all cold — the warm-disease school is wrong to use cold-cool herbs

On page 130, the Yellow Emperor asks: all the abscesses and swellings, cramping sinews, bone pain — where do these diseases come from? Qi Bo answers: they are the seeds of cold qi, the changes of the eight winds — cold qi dwelling long without leaving, combined with the abnormal changes of the winds of the four seasons. Doctor Ni seizes this sentence to deliver a thorough rebuke of the warm-disease school:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The warm-disease school of the south is wrong. Facing abscesses, cramping, spasms, bone pain, you still use cold-cool herbs — but the disease was originally caused by cold qi; again you prescribe — we must prescribe to remove that cold qi. We have a great deal of pao fu zi (prepared aconite); many of our herbs are very hot precisely so that they can remove it. If you do not use hot herbs, how can you treat these diseases? Not one of them will get well. Look at all the people with abscesses — the pus is very deep, the virus very deep. When the southern school sees it, they just use some detoxifying, cold-cool herbs to treat it — it will not heal. The classical-formula school uses two herbs: pao fu zi, used well, and bai zhu (atractylodes) — bai zhu drains dampness; pao fu zi heats it; the whole wound closes up, and then the depth is pushed out. But the south does not know how to use hot herbs. Look — here in the Huang Di Nei Jing there is proof.

Closing: one finger, reading the whole body

The point this lecture lands on is really a simple truth: the pulse is not mysterious — the rules are there: organs on the outside, bowels on the inside; spring, summer, autumn, winter set the depth; one finger presses down, and the heart pulse’s wasting-thirst, the lung pulse’s pouring sweat, the liver pulse’s accumulation, the kidney pulse’s anemia — all of it can be traced. And behind the pulse lies life itself: whether you snack at night, whether you sweat at the slightest effort, whether your hands and feet are cold, whether you are exposed to wind — the pulse is the ledger that life writes down; disease is the transformation of living habits. Taking the pulse is only seeing the illness; changing the habit is the cure.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing (Twenty-Fourth lecture)