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Join us as we delve into the world of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Jinguan Yang, a psychiatrist, will help us explore how TCM views the skin, muscles, collagen, blood vessels, and bones as mirrors of our emotional and physical well-being. Discover the insights TCM offers, shedding light on the impact of emotions on how we feel and how we look.

Jinguan Yang is a psychiatrist.

He discusses the KevinMD article, “The connection between organ systems and skin health in Chinese medicine.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast, get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome Jinguan Yang. He’s a psychiatrist and integrative medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is titled “The connection between organ systems and skin health in Chinese medicine.” Jinguan, welcome to the show.

Jinguan Yang: Thank you for inviting me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll talk about your article in a little bit. Just first off, briefly share your story and journey.

Jinguan Yang: Well, I was born in China, a small city, a capital city of Henan Province. And when I was 13 years old my father started persuading me to learn Chinese medicine with him, because he was afraid that I was going to be sent to the countryside to be re-educated by the farmers during the Cultural Revolution, when I wouldn’t have enough food and I would starve to death. And so if I could learn Chinese medicine and become a barefoot doctor, meaning carry boxes of needles, herbs, to help the farmers when they got sick, I might be able to survive it.

So anyway, that’s how I began to learn the family tradition when I was very young. And Chinese medicine, acupuncture, has been my family tradition for generations.

Kevin Pho: So whenever we hear about Chinese medicine, it can mean so many different things. Now for those who aren’t familiar with what you do, how do you define what Chinese medicine is?

Jinguan Yang: Chinese medicine, I like to see, number one, it is a medicine that we inherited from maybe previous civilizations. I don’t know how, because the understanding of human energetics, and to describe it in a concrete, visual way, requires technology that we don’t have today. So I believe it was the creation of a previous civilization where they had far more advanced technology that could actually visualize energetic aspects of our human body.

So now, to the second definition of Chinese medicine. It is a medicine for human energetics. Even though it recognizes our bones or muscles, the structure, it recognizes our bodies by chemistry to a certain degree, but they don’t care. Because when they see the human energies, which is the foundation of our life and function, they don’t care about anything else. They only focus on how we can fix the energetic problems, through food, through lifestyle, and through herbal remedies, through acupuncture. So that’s a second feature of that.

The third feature of that, it is a holistic medicine, because when you see the energetic connection of the human body you begin to see the connection we don’t see anymore with our current technology. For example, we began to see how the energetic channels centered in the organ system but reach far away to the superficial part of the body. Like the liver connects with your nails, the kidney connects with your hair, the lung connects with your skin. So through the energetic system, the concept of holistic medicine is not a concept, it is a reality. And that’s the third feature of it.

The fourth feature of it, it is real mind-body medicine, because at that level your emotion, your mental function, your physical function are in the same place. So what drives our heartbeat is also what drives our consciousness. What drives our vision also drives our executive function, and so on. So that’s real mind-body medicine, except they cannot be separated. So that’s one thing.

Another feature of it, it is a real natural medicine, because everything we do is related to our environment. We’re constantly exchanging our energy with the energy in our environment, so we’re really part of the overall energetic universe that we’re part of. And inside us we have everything that nature has. So in a way our body is a small universe itself, and it follows the same law of the universe. The same law that regulates the universe also regulates our body functions. So therefore we’re really part of nature, and nature is part of us.

I think that, if you want to use modern terms, it’s also lifestyle medicine, because it emphasizes so much: what do we eat, what do we think, what do we do, have everything to do with our health. And most importantly they emphasize the primary cause of health issues is emotional distress and stress.

So modern medicine is really catching up to what Chinese medicine has already recognized. Again, I can’t take the credit, I don’t think the Chinese should take credit for it, because it’s not the creation of the Chinese in the last thousand years, 3,000 years, even 10,000 years. We really inherited it from a civilization where they really had the ability to visualize and understand human energetics.

Kevin Pho: Your KevinMD article is titled “The connection between organ systems and skin health in Chinese medicine.” So tell us some of the common conditions that you see in your clinic that can be approached with Chinese medicine.

Jinguan Yang: Well, first, number one, pain. Everybody recognizes how acupuncture can be effective for treating pain, not just chronic pain but also acute pain.

I’ll give you two stories. One story is a police officer who is six feet, over 250 pounds, big guy, and one day, he was like in his 30s, and he had a bad sleep, that’s what he said. Suddenly he had sharp pain in his lower back, to the point he couldn’t stand up. So he was taken to the emergency room, they did everything, gave muscle relaxing pills, and he still couldn’t move, and he was bedridden.

His wife was my patient, and he always accompanied his wife to see me. That day he was absent, so I was asking about where was he, and she told me what happened. I said, if you could bring him to my office I will see what I can do for him. So they brought him to my office in the wheelchair, and I put two needles on the hand, where there were points that connect with the lower back. Again, we were just told that those were the points to use for lower back pain, and nobody could explain why, but I just tried it. OK, so I stimulated those two points and he was able to stand up right away and walk. So we did a few more treatments for a couple weeks and that was it. So that’s for acute pain.

The second patient was actually the former boss of my wife. He was very active, 70 some years old, successful businessman who goes to New York to visit his clients. And suddenly he developed, not suddenly, gradually he developed chronic lower back pain, or sciatic pain shooting down to his legs, and he had to stop every block to sit down, because that’s how much pain he was enduring. He was a stubborn guy, he didn’t want to take painkillers, because he said that numbed his mind, he couldn’t focus talking to his clients.

Anyway, so after four months, and again, he is not in any way innocent in terms of health, he had prostate cancer and he had spinal stenosis, he has some metastatic cancer issues, and his friend was a famous orthopedic surgeon and said maybe we could operate. And he didn’t want that, because his friend’s wife wouldn’t let her husband touch my patient’s back.

Anyway, so he was in my office after four months, nothing helped, and crying and describing how challenging it was. And I began to treat him, and when I was taking the history, I treated him with acupuncture, I also did a technique called Neuro Emotional Technique, which basically desensitizes him from past trauma.

But anyway, so after two or three weeks of treatment he was significantly better. And one day he was asking me, is it possible your acupuncture makes me less agitated or angry, or makes my mood better? I said, look, your pain is along the gallbladder and liver energy channels, and the gallbladder and liver regulate your mood, particularly anger. I said, I cannot imagine I can get rid of the pain along your liver and gallbladder channels without helping your frustration, your disappointment, whatever that emotion is.

Anyway, so those are two stories that show how acupuncture helps pain. On the same token, every organ system energetically regulates a different type of mood. The kidney for fear, and the lung for sadness, and liver for anger, and the heart for vulnerabilities and confusion, and the spleen for worry. So when those emotional problems come to me, that’s where we help them the best. Normally people say, I’m stressed. Stress really is a combination of all those emotions in response to what’s going on in their life.

And the third thing we help the most is digestive problems. Reflux, stomach pains, gas, constipation, diarrhea, IBS. And those conditions actually have a lot to do with emotional distress, energetic problems, because if you check them you don’t see anything wrong, it’s just energetically problematic. And that we see a lot.

In other words, I would like to say almost everything that causes energetic imbalance in the human body is going to respond really well with acupuncture. As an internist, if you’re primary care, almost the majority of your patients who come to you, what they complain about is an energetic problem. I’m cold, I’m having a fever, I’m tired, I’m having pain, or I can’t sleep, I’m depressed, I’m constipated, I have reflux, I’m nauseous, I’m coughing. All those symptoms are energetic problems by nature.

And a lot of the time we do all kinds of tests, we’re trying to look for chemical abnormalities, we can’t find them, we’re trying to find structural problems, and we can’t find them. Or we find some abnormality in structure, actually not necessarily the reason that caused the pain. Like lower back, we now know there’s a very poor correlation between what we see on x-ray, MRI for lower back, and the lower back pain.

So anyway, those are the conditions we commonly help people with, with acupuncture. And you probably heard infertility is another issue that acupuncture can be very helpful with. Even just one or two treatments can improve the IVF success from 28 percent to 40, 45 percent.

Kevin Pho: If I had a patient who was interested in Chinese medicine, or if I wanted to refer a patient to a Chinese medicine practitioner, what kind of qualifications should they be looking out for? What are some of the certifications should I be looking out for, to know that this is a reputable practitioner?

Jinguan Yang: I wrote an article called how to find a good acupuncturist. So in the United States you have three kinds of people practicing acupuncture.

One is licensed acupuncturists who were trained in the United States in one of the accredited master’s degree programs, and they have over 2,000 hours of credits. And if they study herbal medicine, another 500 or a thousand hours. And then they have to pass national examinations, then get licensed. So that’s one kind of acupuncturist you’re going to be seeing in most of the clinics.

The second kind is people who already graduated from the Chinese medicine school or medical school, they have enough credits already, they come to the United States, they take the national exams, and then they’re licensed to practice.

And the third is medical doctors who are licensed physicians, that take 300 hours of continuing medical education courses, and they are licensed to practice acupuncture, only 300 hours. And there are a number of programs in the country, but the majority of people who took those courses end up not feeling comfortable or not finding places to practice it, but they got education on that.

So whoever they are, when you go to see an acupuncturist, in my opinion, you’re not going to see a technician, you’re not going to see someone who just knows how to insert needles on your body superficially. They all do the same thing, but the key issue is, first of all, they have to care, how much they care about your condition. Number two, do they understand Chinese medicine as a medical system and acupuncture as a treatment modality? Or do they only know how to do the acupuncture as a treatment modality without knowing the entire medicine?

How do you tell? You tell by what questions they’re asking. Do they look at your tongue? Do they take your pulses? Do they tell you what your energetic imbalance is like? If you’re hearing them talking like giving a weather broadcast, then you say, that might be the right one, because weather is energy. So if they say, well, you have spleen dampness, or you have a dryness in the lung, or you have liver heat, that sounds right. That means they’re doing the energetic analysis on you. They combine what organ system is involved, what type of energetic imbalance, and then you know they understand the medicine.

If they say, OK, well, why do you treat me this way, I’m treating your sciatica, I’m treating your depression, I’m treating your anxiety, or I’m treating your IBS, Chinese medicine doesn’t have this concept. We don’t treat those diagnoses, we treat energetic imbalance, whatever they cause. For example, people who have liver qi stagnation can manifest as migraine headaches, as depression, as insomnia, as IBS, as fibromyalgia. OK, so it’s the same energetic imbalance, but it can manifest in different diagnoses or different symptoms among different people.

So that’s what you want to look for. You want to see that they really take time asking the questions, give you the diagnosis, then they give you a strategy and plan to say, OK, this is what we have to do with acupuncture, this is what we have to do with herbs, this is how long it might take so that we can see some results. In the meantime, you need to make some changes in your diet in this way, in your sleep in another way, in your exercise in another way. That’s all kinds of lifestyle consultations that come with it. That is what you should look for.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Jinguan Yang. He’s a psychiatrist and integrative medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is “The connection between organ systems and skin health in Chinese medicine.” So let’s end off with some of your take-home messages that you’d like to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Jinguan Yang: Well, since the article was talking about skin conditions and the organ system, I think I should really describe those connections in Chinese medicine energetically. Each organ system supports a part of our skin.

So if we look at it, it’s not just skin or appearance. For example, our hair is nourished by the energy and essence of our kidney, and our skin is nourished by the energy from the lungs, and our muscles are nourished by the energy of the spleen, and our vessels, our complexion, is supported by our heart, and the bone is supported by the kidney again, and our nails, the liver.

And so this something we care about, the beauty on the outside, has everything to do with how healthy we are inside, energetically and nutritionally as well. So that’s where acupuncture as a therapy for beauty, health, and happiness is a very important addition.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing your time, perspective, and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Jinguan Yang: Thank you.