Always Tired, Qi and Blood Deficient? How to Nourish Yourself in Daily Life — Doctor Luo Dalun: Bring Tonic Foods into Your Kitchen and Everyday Routine

Opening: The Xue Lizhai series is finished — what is the greatest lesson?

For a long stretch of time, Doctor Luo Dalun has been walking through the medical cases of the great Ming-dynasty physician Xue Lizhai (Xue Ji). Now that the series has come to a close, he pauses to summarize — and asks his listeners one question: how should we actually nourish ourselves?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When you look at Xue Lizhai’s cases, you realize how crucial upright qi (zheng qi) is. In case after case, Xue Lizhai didn’t chase the pathogen at all — he didn’t try to fix the surface symptoms. What did he see? That this person’s upright qi was insufficient, that the spleen and kidneys were weak. So what did he do? He supported the upright qi — and, remarkably, the diseases gradually healed on their own. So what does Xue Lizhai’s body of work teach us? That a person’s upright qi is the most important thing there is.

Does that mean we should never dispel pathogens at all? Not quite. Doctor Luo puts it plainly: you have to hold the right balance —

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When the pathogen is very obvious, you may need to dispel it, you may need to use some method. But if the person’s upright qi is badly deficient at the same time, then supporting upright qi comes first. Between supporting and dispelling, you hold the balance — but always remember this: upright qi should always be supported. When upright qi is deficient, you must support it. You can dispel the pathogen at the same time, or you can first build up the upright qi and then drive out the pathogen.

Zhu Danxi held the same view: support the upright qi, and once it is strong, even a light touch of technique will send the pathogen away. But if the upright qi is already in tatters, on the verge of collapse, and you still go on attacking the pathogen, the body cannot take it — the foundation is too thin. So supporting upright qi is the key.

So how do we actually support and nourish ourselves in everyday life? Doctor Luo gives a complete, practical program.

Step One: Stop harming your upright qi — much of the deficit is self-inflicted

Before you start nourishing, think about how the qi was lost in the first place. Doctor Luo says the first thing to take seriously is this: stop harming your upright qi. Don’t keep piling on the damage.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How did your upright qi become deficient? Your emotions are bad. Every day you’re gloomy, angry, jealous — “Why is that colleague of mine doing better than me? It drives me crazy.” “The way my mother-in-law talks — it drives me crazy.” You stew in anger all day, every day, agonizing over things. Can your upright qi possibly stay full? When liver fire (gan huo) flares, what does it wound? It wounds upright qi. Lose your temper once or twice and you’ve got energy to spare — you jump three feet in the air. But keep stewing like this for three years, five years, ten years — you won’t be jumping anywhere; you’ll be lying in bed, gasping for breath.

All those bad emotions — gloom, obsession, the inability to let go — in Chinese medicine they add up to constrained liver qi (gan qi bu shu), which runs sideways and attacks the spleen-stomach. The spleen and stomach get injured, the absorption of nutrients breaks down, and the whole body’s original qi (yuan qi) runs low. That is where physical decline begins.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: And then there is all the waste: staying up late every night, binge-watching dramas, carousing until two in the morning — and then I “nourish” myself with sea cucumber, ginseng and deer antler. Does it work? At the time you feel fine. Before, staying up left you drained; now you’ve got energy. But keep this up and your body is finished. Good sleep and good habits are crucial. Don’t run yourself down with dissipation and indulgence, don’t exhaust yourself agonizing over every thought, don’t be consumed by burning desires — living like that every day, your body will never be well.

Irregular eating is another big upright-qi thief. Doctor Luo shared an amusing observation:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Yesterday I heard from a friend that models — those beautiful, six-foot-tall fashion models — many of them have bad breath, really heavy breath. Why? A doctor told me: lots of models come to see him with exactly the same problem — eating at the wrong times, ruining their digestion. Models never eat normal meals. Between shows they grab a takeout box when they can, sometimes they skip food entirely, then go out for a late-night bite. Life is irregular, the spleen and stomach get hurt, stomach qi stops descending properly, the ascending-descending mechanism fails — and that produces heavy breath. People are amazed: models are so lovely and elegant, and yet so many of them have this problem. Yesterday we joked, “Oh no, if you marry a model you’ll have to put up with that.” I said, no need — just fix the body and it goes away.

People in many professions eat irregularly, skip meals, swing between starving and stuffing themselves — watch out for this. That is step one: stop harming your upright qi.

Step Two: Food therapy first — bring the tonic into your kitchen

So how do you actually supplement? Doctor Luo’s first recommendation is: food therapy. Chinese medicine has a saying, “medicine and food share the same origin” (yao shi tong yuan) — many foods carry medicinal properties and tonic effects of their own.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Many items in the Chinese materia medica are, in fact, foods. Take huai yam (Chinese yam): it’s a food, and at the same time it treats illness. Zhang Xichun treated many severe illnesses with yam alone — asthma, uncontrollable thirst — he just boiled yam slices in water and had the patient drink it. We studied cases like that and applied them for our own patients, with excellent results. Yam supports upright qi; once upright qi is full and the spleen-stomach qi is strong, the spleen — earth — nourishes the lungs — metal — so lung qi is full too, and the pathogens are all expelled. This shows how remarkable the concept of medicine-and-food-sharing-one-origin is. The ancient Chinese were very clever.

So if you can solve the problem in your kitchen, that’s the best solution of all. Yam, lotus seeds, coix seeds (yi mi), euryale seeds (qian shi) — keep them stocked in the kitchen and use them regularly; even that is better than not using them at all. Choose authentic, geo-authentic (dao di) herbs — their medicinal power is stronger and the effect is excellent. You can use them slowly, as a long-term daily tonic, a little every day; or you can use them urgently — say you catch a cold today and feel chilled all over, quickly drink some huai yam powder and push the pathogen right back out.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Building upright qi is not something to rush. It’s not “eat a huge amount today and your qi is full tomorrow.” It is a slow, gradual process — go gently, little by little. It may take a while, but it is always good for you.

Astragalus (huang qi) is another treasure. Doctor Luo is careful to distinguish its two very different uses:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Grab a big handful of astragalus and boil 200 grams a day — that’s for treating disease. Treating something like rheumatoid arthritis uses 200 grams of astragalus. The ordinary, everyday way is just a tiny bit steeped in water. Change a little every day, don’t rush — three months, five months, and slowly you’ll see the body begin to change. This is the slow-building kind of merit — it’s about using it quietly in daily life.

Codonopsis (dang shen) is a very gentle cousin of ginseng — similar effect to ginseng but far lighter, and you can put a little in your soup. As for ginseng itself — if there is genuine deficiency of original qi and upright qi, you can use it a little at a time:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Take Emperor Qianlong: he never used a lot — every day one qian (three grams) of ginseng, paired with three grams of dwarf lilyturf (mai dong), brewed in water and drunk daily. He drank it every single day. Over a long time, taken slowly like that, it does the body good. For all tonics, don’t imagine you can stuff it all in at once and have the body change overnight. This is a matter of daily accumulation, a little at a time.

Then there is sea cucumber — the coastal people’s tonic wisdom:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: People by the sea — where I’m from in Dalian, all over eastern Liaoning — they’ll tell you about sea cucumber: start eating it at the beginning of winter and keep going until spring, one a day. Gradually you stop catching colds; the whole winter passes without a single cold. The upright qi becomes very strong and the blood and qi flourish. I heard about this as a child: fishermen really do eat one a day. A couple of days ago I ran into a friend — ruddy complexion, abundant qi and blood, and he works far harder than I do. His wife told me: “We just listened to you. You said sea cucumber was good, so he started eating it. Our family is very frugal — we eat it every other day, one piece, and the two of us split it, half each.” And they just persisted. Now he’s clearly ruddy and full of qi and blood. All up and down the northeastern coast people eat like this. Fishermen face bitter winter wind wearing thin clothes and don’t feel the cold — their qi and blood are that strong. But if you said, “Today I’ll eat ten sea cucumbers and get it all in at once” — that’s like ginseng, you’d down ten at once and wreck yourself; the body can’t handle it. There is no fast track here. It must be a little every day.

Prepared rehmannia (shu di huang) is another everyday soup-stock treasure:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Put two pieces of prepared rehmannia in your soup — excellent. Why? Everyone past middle age needs to nourish the kidney essence. The old saying goes, “After forty, yin qi naturally halves” — by then your essence has been heavily spent, and people past midlife need nourishment, men and women alike. A little prepared rehmannia to tonify kidney essence does no harm at all. Cantonese people brew soup all the time — raw and prepared rehmannia with pork ribs. Drink one bowl and nothing seems to happen, but the trick is that you drink it constantly, day in, day out.

At this point Doctor Luo raises a fascinating observation — about Hong Kong:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Hong Kong has the world’s longest life expectancy — longer than Bama in Guangxi, longer than Okinawa in Japan. Hong Kong is so crowded, people live squeezed into tiny apartments, they work all day, many elderly people still labor hard — why do they live so long? People say hygiene, vaccinations, and so on. But I think one important reason is soup. Every time I go to Hong Kong, before every meal I have soup first. One bowl does nothing — but drink it every day, for a lifetime, with raw and prepared rehmannia simmering in it — does it work? Of course it works. So bring tonic methods into your life and nourish yourself through life itself. That’s food therapy, and it’s wonderful.

And two slices of dang gui (Chinese angelica root) in your chicken soup are better than none. Doctor Luo says he’ll gradually cover all of these upright-qi-supporting foods — some (like dang gui) he hasn’t taught yet — but the qi-tonifying and essence-tonifying basics are all here now. The food-therapy mindset matters most: don’t keep accounts, don’t demand that results appear immediately. Know that the direction is right, go a little at a time, let quantity turn into quality — and the body will gradually fill up.

Step Three: Herbal pastes and patent medicines — those who know how to use ready-made formulas get twice the result with half the effort

Beyond food therapy, there are some ready-made tonic preparations you can use.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Go into a pharmacy and you’ll find tonic wines and herbal pastes. Take Gui Ling Ji wine (Tortoise-Spirit Collection Wine) — that’s what Emperor Qianlong drank. It’s packed with nourishing herbs; a tiny bit every day does the body good. Then there are the herbal pastes (gao fang) — in the south of the Yangtze they have this custom: as winter approaches, you ask a Chinese medicine doctor to write a prescription, combine all kinds of tonic and blood-regulating ingredients into a thick paste, and take one spoonful daily at home. Yu Ling Gao (Jade Spirit Paste) is one: you cook and steam it yourself and take a little every day. Then there is donkey-hide gelatin (e jiao): melt it in a little yellow rice wine, steam it, chill it in the fridge until it sets like jelly, and take a spoonful a day — for women it’s especially good for nourishing the blood. That’s a simple homemade paste. A truly complex paste should be prescribed by a Chinese medicine doctor — and once it’s right, you eat a little every winter.

Gui Yuan Gao (Consolidate-the-Origin Paste, made from walnuts and e jiao) is also worth trying:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I really have seen a couple like this — every year when winter came they ate Gui Yuan Gao. And their bodies were indeed far better than their peers’: abundant energy, not a single gray hair, in great shape. So these paste preparations are something everyone can use.

Then there are the patent medicines — which Doctor Luo has talked about all along. But patent medicines require proper pattern differentiation first: either have a doctor diagnose you, or study Chinese medicine yourself and analyze your own body.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For instance, a person with qi deficiency will certainly benefit from Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan (Tonify the Middle and Augment Qi Pill) — a little every morning, and once upright qi is full, you can clearly feel your voice gaining strength. For a man with kidney qi deficiency — urine that always dribbles, daytime sleepiness, ice-cold hands — take Gui Fu Di Huang Wan (Cinnamon Bark and Prepared Rehmannia Pill). How many times did Gui Fu Di Huang Wan appear in the Xue Lizhai cases! Xue Lizhai said he saw such cases as a child: his father treated people with this condition and gave them Gui Fu Di Huang Wan; the body slowly recovered, and those people went on to live very long lives. That’s why Xue Lizhai came to value this formula so much and prescribed it constantly. Men can take it regularly as a tonic — it does them good.

What about women? After menstruation has stopped, depending on your body’s condition, a moderate course of Wu Ji Bai Feng Wan (Black-Boned Chicken and Phoenix Pill) or Ding Kun Dan (Stabilize the Kun Pill) can nourish qi and blood and help the body flourish:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you can’t nourish yourself, what state does a woman end up in? Every day is exhausting, the body is tired beyond measure, the face has no color, thin and frail. Can that body be healthy? Nourish yourself a little, let your qi and blood flourish — wouldn’t that be wonderful? So if you can grasp your own constitution, using patent medicines to regulate yourself is a very good way to nourish.

The logic of patent medicines is actually simple:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Kidney qi splits into yin and yang — Liu Wei Di Huang Wan (Six-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill) for yin deficiency, Gui Fu Di Huang Wan for yang deficiency. That’s simple. For the spleen and stomach, use Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan or Gui Pi Wan (Spleen-Restoring Pill) — Gui Pi Wan tonifies both qi and blood and calms the spirit. These are the formulas Xue Lizhai used; now you know them too. If your emotions are unsettled, add Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan (Augmented Free and Easy Powder), and arrange them across different times of day — morning, noon, evening. Use them for a while and you’ll see clear improvement. If the formula matches your pattern, the effect is actually fairly quick — and combined with the food therapy above, even better.

Expelling pathogens is fast, nourishing is slow — don’t expect results in a week

On the matter of tonic care, Doctor Luo emphasizes one thing above all: never chase fast results.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The ancients said it: expelling pathogens is very fast — a few days, sometimes the same night. For example, with yang-ming excess in the bowels and dry, bound stool, one purging and you instantly feel light as a swallow — restored. Dispelling is fast. But nourishing is slow — dripping water wears through stone. Go slowly, and in the end the person may not even feel anything happening, yet they enter the realm of longevity, living to a ripe old age. Along the way you do notice things: the complexion reddens, qi and blood flourish, the spirit is full, the eyes shine. Gradually — and in the end, longevity is the real goal.

Step Four: Exercise is also nourishment — Baduanjin, standing meditation, walking

The last tonic method may surprise people: exercise.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Baduanjin (Eight Pieces of Brocade), standing meditation (zhan zhuang), exercise, running — these are also a form of nourishment. When we sit still for long periods, garbage accumulates inside the body; qi and blood circulation becomes sluggish, and in the fine branches of the circulation, waste piles up and stagnates. If we exercise appropriately and get the qi and blood moving, it helps push the waste out — dispel stasis and generate the new. Fresh blood reaches local tissues and supplies them, and new tissue grows. Exercise is a key weapon for dispelling stasis and generating the new.

Doctor Luo then tells the story of his own teacher, the famous old physician Zhao Shaoqin — a widely told anecdote in Chinese medicine:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Our teacher, Zhao Shaoqin, when treating high fever from kidney disease, required every kidney patient to walk one hour a day. Can you walk but not keep it up? “Sorry, no consultation — go walk. I won’t write you a prescription, it would be useless.” If you can persist — start with less the first day, walk a little more the next — and eventually reach a full hour a day, then your kidney disease can be treated; it will absolutely get better. Teacher Zhao treated walking itself as a therapeutic method. His three methods: first, eat vegetarian; second, take my herbs; third, walk. These were the three treasures of his kidney-disease treatment.

So take Teacher Zhao’s thinking to heart — treat exercise with real respect, practice some qigong forms, have some physical activities. Don’t imagine that eating tonic food every day while never moving — sitting there resting, eating ginseng, sea cucumber and yam day after day — will make you healthy. No. Sit still and eat like that and your body will have problems — you’ll just get fatter and fatter.

Closing: when upright qi is full, the body repairs itself

Doctor Luo finally ties all these methods together. If a good Chinese medicine doctor lives nearby, you can also seek their help — that falls into the realm of treatment; if you can’t find a good doctor, fall back on these gentle methods of self-care.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Say someone is qi-and-blood deficient, with a distracted, wandering spirit. Prescribe Gui Pi Wan and it may take a month or two to show effect; prescribe Gui Pi Tang (the decoction form) and within days — a week at most — there will be a clear change. When the formula matches, even a decoction works quickly. Once your upright qi is sufficient and qi and blood circulate smoothly, the blood stasis inside will dissolve, phlegm-dampness will be transformed and expelled, and as the qi and blood move, the body can dispel stasis and generate the new. Vitality grows stronger and stronger, and the body gradually becomes healthy. Many diseases you’ll find simply disappear — how did they disappear? The body regulated itself back to health, because the body has this power of repair.

So: always protect your upright qi — upright qi is forever the most important thing. In protecting it: first, don’t harm it; second, learn to nourish through life itself, solving the problem in the kitchen — that is the highest art; third, don’t demand quick results, take it a little at a time, this is what life is; and one step further, if you have herbal pastes or patent medicines, clarify your constitution first (or have a doctor analyze it), then take them, and the effect will be excellent too.

Adapted from Doctor Luo Dalun’s closing lecture of the Xue Lizhai medical-case series — the way of supporting upright qi and nourishing the body: stop harming upright qi, lead with food therapy, use ready-made formulas well, and keep exercising. Bring nourishment into every day of your life — when upright qi is full, your body will walk itself toward health.