Ravenously Hungry While Sick — Is a Big Appetite a Good Sign? Doctor Zhu Danxi on Not Breaking the Taboos During Serious Illness: Recover by Keeping the Taboos and Protecting Your Stomach Qi

Opening: after you fall ill, there really are things you must not touch

Have you ever wondered — once you get sick, can you really do and eat whatever you please? The ancient Chinese thought this through long ago: after you fall ill, there are some things you should avoid doing, because doing them wounds the body and the illness will not get better. These are called taboos (jin ji).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is one of the truly clever things about ancient Chinese culture — the rules for nursing yourself through illness were worked out and written down in advance. Don’t dismiss it as an old fossil. Modern medicine has its taboos too: a diabetic can’t eat a lot of sugar — isn’t that a taboo? The Chinese talked about taboos earlier and more thoroughly than anyone. What we’re discussing today is an essay Doctor Zhu Danxi wrote specially on this subject — Da Bing Bu Shou Jin Ji Lun (On Not Breaking the Taboos During Serious Illness).

Sun Simiao only said “keep them” — Doctor Zhu Danxi explained “why”

Taboos have existed since ancient times. The Medicine King Sun Simiao had long said that when you fall ill you must keep taboos — but he only told you to keep them. He never told you why. Doctor Zhu Danxi said: then let me talk with everyone about the why.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The why? The main reason is fear of wounding the stomach qi (wei qi). What is stomach qi? It is the clear, pure, harmonizing qi (qing chun chong he zhi qi) — the very foundation of our existence. Every day we eat food; only if we can digest and absorb it do we have a source of nourishment, only then can we live. As the saying goes, “this is what people depend on to stay alive (ren zhi suo lai yi wei sheng zhe ye).” Once the stomach qi is wounded, the body does not recover easily. So every rule of nursing yourself through illness ultimately revolves around the stomach qi.

Six things that wound the stomach qi — how many have you done?

Doctor Zhu Danxi listed the things that wound the stomach qi one by one. Let’s check ourselves against them:

Number one: overthinking that injures the spirit. Minding one thing all day long — how to scheme, how to make more money, how to climb one more rung — excessive rumination. Chinese medicine says “excessive thinking harms the spleen (si shang pi).” Think too hard, and the spleen and stomach get hurt.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Isn’t this exactly what modern people do? They get sick and still can’t let go — “how do I get my position promoted one more level?” Spending every day fretting like that — how could the spleen and stomach ever get well?

Number two: hard physical toil. Working yourself to exhaustion day after day. In ancient times, toil meant heavy physical labor, consuming you daily; today the toil of most people comes down to one word — burning the midnight oil. Staying up late, working overtime.

Number three: unbridled appetites. You cannot control your desires, you have no restraint.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The ancients’ word “appetites/desires (shi yu)” has two meanings. In the broad sense it means all intense desires; in the narrow sense it means the pursuit of sex. Modern people live too comfortably — the degree of indulgence exceeds imagination, and people who have the means to indulge are the most dangerous of all. A laborer hauling bricks on a construction site every day burns off his energy and has no means to indulge anyway. But once a man becomes a general manager, a chairman, with the company making money and everyone orbiting around him, all kinds of desires easily surface. This wounds not only the spleen and stomach — it also wounds the kidney essence (shen jing). Very serious.

Number four: unfulfilled wishes. You want something and cannot get it — you live in the constant regret of wanting and never obtaining.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you don’t understand this, think of a young man in unrequited love — desperately in love with a girl who ignores him. What state is he in? No appetite for tea or rice, no desire to eat, wasting away day by day, growing thinner and more haggard. That is “unfulfilled wishes (si xiang bu sui)” — a psychological state that wounds the body. Nowadays? “I want to set a small goal of one hundred million — but why can’t I ever get that one hundred million?” That, too, is an unfulfilled wish.

Number five: wrong food and drink. Eating the wrong things — this is what truly wounds the spleen and stomach. You gorge on delicious food when you see it, tearing into all the meat at the buffet — illness enters through the mouth (bing cong ru kou). Many of today’s illnesses are eaten into existence.

Number six: taking the wrong medicine. When you should clear heat, you take hot herbs; when you should warm the yang, you take cold herbs — wrong medicine also wounds the spleen and stomach.

The doctor is ri bu xia ji: prescriptions cannot keep up with the speed of your self-destruction

Once the body is wounded, you should rest and nourish it properly. But what happens if you refuse to keep the taboos?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhu Danxi said: at that point the doctor becomes “ri bu xia ji” — so busy day and night that he cannot keep up, writing prescriptions until his hands give out, yet the prescriptions cannot keep pace with the speed at which you are wrecking your own body. Many people in poor health want to find a famous doctor, one prescription to fix their body — impossible! On one side the doctor writes formulas to regulate and nourish; on the other side you keep destroying yourself. This illness will never heal. So what is the core? Adjust your way of living. Don’t touch what you shouldn’t touch.

Story one: the uncle of the Zhu family — mysteriously confident, deaf to advice

Doctor Zhu Danxi told a story from his own family. One of his elders of the uncle generation — looking at his frame and complexion first, this man was solid in form and color (xing se ju shi) — a sturdy, strong body. He had caught intermittent malaria (jian nüe) — a long-running malaria — and on top of that dysentery, with diarrhea; yet he considered himself strong, his appetite was excellent, he had no restraint whatsoever, and he ate with abandon.

One day he came to Doctor Zhu Danxi and said: I may be sick, but my appetite is excellent, I can really eat; the problem is I’m sweating every day — I suffer from this sweating. Can you help me stop the sweating?

Doctor Zhu Danxi saw at once that something was off. He replied: sweating with malaria is not a bad thing — for the malaria to get better, you really do need to sweat a little, to push the pathogen out. That’s no big matter. What worries me most is that you can eat so much, that your appetite is too good. As for your diarrhea — I don’t actually believe it is dysentery.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How did Doctor Zhu Danxi judge it? This is a strong stomach with a weak spleen (wei qiang pi ruo): your stomach heat is up — and stomach heat makes you “digest swiftly and always hungry (xiao gu shan ji)” — the function is overactive, a little food is never enough, you constantly want to eat. But the spleen is sick; it cannot transform and transport. The stomach keeps taking in food, piling it up, and the spleen, too weak to work, lets it all pour out in diarrhea. People think it’s dysentery — it isn’t. The spleen and stomach are already sick. At this point you should regulate the spleen and stomach, eat less, nourish the spleen qi, stay home and cut back on outside business (sheng chu ru), avoid wind and cold — and once the sweat has fully broken, the illness will resolve. Treated by Doctor Zhu Danxi’s method, this illness would clear up very quickly.

But this uncle of the Zhu family had a temper. In those days Doctor Zhu Danxi was not yet famous, and the uncle would not listen at all. He even argued with great confidence: “The common saying goes ‘no one ever died of eating their fill (wu bao shi li)’ — nobody ever died from eating too much! I can eat now, my appetite is fine — what are you worried about?”

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: That’s what you call mysterious confidence — heaven knows why he felt so sure of himself in front of Doctor Zhu Danxi. Doctor Zhu tried again: other people with dysentery can eat because their stomach qi is still fine — can you compare yourself to them? The way you’re gorging now is certainly not good for you. But the uncle would not listen: “No problem, no problem. Don’t you worry about it.”

And what happened? He gorged himself daily (zi kou da jiao) — fine food devoured in quantity every day, eating hard because his appetite was good; and when thirsty, the thirstier he got, the more raw cold fruit he ate. Raw cold fruit needs the spleen and stomach to slowly digest it — and his spleen was already that sick. This was heaping frost on snow (xue shang jia shuang) — the complete opposite of proper recovery care, not a single taboo kept.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The result: he dragged on for a very long time, and the illness grew worse and worse. When he finally wanted treatment, Doctor Zhu Danxi took one look — “already beyond the reach of medicine (yi bu ke zhuo shou)” — no formula could even get a grip. He dragged on and eventually died. What a pity! Even within the family of the great Doctor Zhu Danxi there were people this stubborn — “I don’t know medicine, but I know better than you; taboos or no taboos, I don’t care” — and the illness was never cured. Remember this: no matter how good the doctor, he cannot cure a patient who refuses to keep the taboos.

Story two: the patient surnamed Zhou — radish porridge, healed in half a month

Doctor Zhu Danxi also recorded a patient surnamed Zhou. This man was also solid in form and color — sturdy and strong — and he truly had dysentery — diarrhea — yet he could eat tremendously, his appetite excellent, gorging without discrimination (da jiao bu ze), picking nothing, good or bad, eating with abandon. This had already gone on for five days.

Doctor Zhu Danxi was called in, and this time he did not mince words (the previous patient was an elder, so he had been polite; this one got the direct treatment). He scolded him outright: when you are sick you should regulate, tonify and nourish — build your upright qi up properly, take it slowly, and don’t rely on formulas alone. “Qi ke zi wei qiang zei?” — How can you let rich flavors ravage your body day after day, piling more burden onto it?

Then Doctor Zhu Danxi gave him only one instruction: eat cooked radish cooked into rice porridge, that’s all.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: No rich, sweet, greasy food of any kind — every day, just cooked radish with porridge. Why? His frame was solid and strong, so there must be a great deal of accumulated phlegm inside him — radish moves qi and transforms phlegm (li qi hua tan), and clears and opens the intestines and stomach; porridge nourishes the spleen and stomach. Keep the diet simple, don’t add confusion to the spleen and stomach, let him recuperate slowly — and then treat very little (shao yu tiao zhi) — just a tiny bit of a small formula. And the result? He was well within half a month.

The same illness — one man died refusing to listen, one healed in half a month

The two illnesses were nearly identical, yet the outcomes could not be more different:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The patient surnamed Zhou kept the taboos. Doctor Zhu Danxi barely treated him at all — a few small doses and the illness resolved. What does this show? Medicine only gives the pivot of the body a push — it nudges things along. The real recovery comes from changing your own habits and slowly nursing yourself back. This relationship is the opposite of what we usually assume. We always think the prescription matters most and everything else doesn’t — that is a mistake.

What Da Bing Bu Shou Jin Ji Lun talks about is the “big taboos”

Doctor Zhu Danxi wrote the essay Da Bing Bu Shou Jin Ji Lun (On Not Breaking the Taboos During Serious Illness) precisely because when you face a serious illness, keeping the taboos matters most of all.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Note well: the taboos Doctor Zhu Danxi means are not the small, technical taboos of daily life — some Chinese medicine practitioners say you can’t eat catfish, can’t eat seafood. Those are certainly taboos too, but they are details. Doctor Zhu Danxi is talking about the big directions: keep the diet light overall, empty the desires somewhat, and don’t over-spend your upright qi. These big taboos can serve perfectly well as principles for healthy living — when your body needs recuperating, follow this direction.

Where does the taboo thinking come from? — Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism and Confucian self-cultivation

What is Doctor Zhu Danxi’s overall way of thinking? Restraining sexual desire, controlling the desire for food, controlling the desire for fame and profit.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Where does this thinking come from? Basically from Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism, from the old Confucian practice of self-cultivation (xiu shen) — Doctor Zhu Danxi’s teacher Xu Qian was a direct-line student of Zhu Xi’s school, and Doctor Zhu himself was a neo-Confucian scholar. When this thinking is applied to medicine, to the recuperation of the body, it truly has very important, positive meaning.

As for the small taboos in the details of Chinese medicine — which constitution can’t eat what, which illness forbids what — we can talk about those slowly another time. People differ in cold and heat, deficiency and excess, so the taboos each person keeps will differ. But overall, there is only one direction:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Protect the upright qi, give the spleen and stomach a chance to recover — this is certainly correct. People who are sick should especially remember Doctor Zhu Danxi’s words: keeping the taboos is giving your body a chance to get better on its own. Tomorrow we’ll continue with the stories of Doctor Zhu Danxi’s cases. Friends, we’ll see you tomorrow.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary in the Doctor Zhu Danxi series of lectures.

What to take away

• Being ravenously hungry while sick is not necessarily a good sign. A huge appetite with a sick spleen is often “strong stomach, weak spleen” (wei qiang pi ruo): stomach heat makes you constantly hungry, while the sick spleen can’t transform the food — so it all pours out as diarrhea. It’s not always dysentery; the spleen and stomach are already sick.
• Sun Simiao said to keep taboos; Doctor Zhu Danxi explained why: to protect the stomach qi (wei qi). Stomach qi is the clear, pure, harmonizing qi through which you digest food and stay alive. Every rule of convalescence revolves around it.
• Six ways to wound the stomach qi while sick: overthinking (excessive thinking harms the spleen), hard toil (today: staying up late and overworking), unbridled appetites (broadly all desires, narrowly sexual desire — it wounds kidney essence too), unfulfilled wishes (wanting what you can’t get — the lovesick young man wasting away), wrong food (illness enters through the mouth), and wrong medicine (hot herbs when you should clear heat, cold herbs when you should warm the yang).
• If you keep breaking the taboos, no doctor can save you. When the doctor is ri bu xia ji — unable to write prescriptions fast enough to keep up with the damage you’re doing to yourself — the illness never heals. “No matter how good the doctor, he cannot cure a patient who refuses to keep the taboos.”
• Medicine only gives the pivot a push. The uncle of the Zhu family gorged himself and died; the patient surnamed Zhou ate only cooked radish with porridge and healed in half a month. Real recovery comes from changing your habits, not from the prescription.
• Doctor Zhu’s taboos are the big directions, not the small details. Eat light, empty the desires, don’t over-spend your upright qi — these are principles for healthy living, rooted in Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucianism and Confucian self-cultivation.