Robert Cran Clinic blog

How can I lose weight with Chinese medicine properly?

The Pill

So you've tried some sensational herbal pill which carried fantastic claims and one or a number of certain scenarios happened:

Follow up:

1. You lost weight.  Great!  And then you put it back on again.  Not so great.  And, to make things worse, now you're confused.  Actually that's also great news, because now you're ready to learn sense
2. You didn't lose weight.  Well, keep on repeatintg this, but different people are, well, just bloomingwell different.  That means they have their weight for different reasons and need to lose it in very different ways.  It just can't be done with one ball-park pill.  Especially if the dude selling it clearly just wants to make money fast!
3. You lost weight, but you also got headaches, nausea, vomiting, body pains, irritability. In short you just got a big attack of Yuck!  You have been the victim of a con:  the magic pill you bought, thinking it was all natural ingredients, was from a disreputable source and contained powerful pharmaceutical chemicals with nasty effects.
4. You didn't lose weight, and you also got headaches, nausea, vomiting, body pains, irritability. In short you just got a big attack of Yuck!  You have been the victim of a con:  the magic pill you bought, thinking it was all natural ingredients, was from a disreputable source and contained powerful pharmaceutical chemicals with nasty effects.
5. You gained weight.  Well, keep on repeatintg this, but different people are, well, just bloomingwell different.  That means they have their weight for different reasons and need to lose it in very different ways.  It just can't be done with one ball-park pill.  Fact is, your particular Chinese medicine Syndrome needs to be addressed by a completely different strategy from taking that sensational pill, going on a raw diet and just generally being neurotic about food.
6. You lost weight.  You now have a body to die for.  You have several marriage proposals per day and have employed a PR person to deal with them all.  Great, you're one of the very few.  Just bear in mind it's wholesome to stick with just one spouse; makes the mind very nice and relaxed.

The reality

Since people with the same issue, disease, or whatever, differ so greatly it should be obvious that they actually manifest their issue/disease in very different ways.  It follows, then, that they need to be treated with fundamentally different strategies.

This is a fundamental truth, a law that cannot be avoided.  This is the Achilles' Heel of younger approaches to human pathology: they usually try to avoid this law in the optimistic hope that a single cure for a single disease can be found.

Syndromes commonly found for overweight

A number of different Patterns can show up in a selection of people all of whom are complaining of being overweight.  Here are a few typical Patterns, though there are many variations, each of which needs its own different treatment approach; a Chinese doctor's clinical judgement is essential:

Stomach Heat

This is a very common pattern:  the patient has an excessive appetite and so puts on much weight.  A basis of the treatment strategy will therefore be to give herbs that Clear Stomach Heat in one or a combination of various diffrerent ways.

As the pattern progresses it becomes complicated with Damp Heat in various presentations, which also needs to be dealt with.  Thus Dampness and Heat, affecting one or more organs in addition to the Stomach, need to be Transformed and Cleared.

The causes of Stomach Heat

Another dimension to treatment is to try to address the cause of the Stomach Heat.  This pattern occurs most commonly in younger people who have more energy to produce Heat and who are often living life at a faster pace than is ideal for them; conditioned by a huge complex of family, social, educational and work pressures, all of which produce emotional Heat in the body.

All this is less easy to address and does often need the patient to be willing to change:  to adjust their ways of relating to people, situations and the world in general; perhaps to review their priorities in life; maybe learn to take time out to exercise, to stretch, to think, to just be themselves for a change.

Of course Stomach Heat can also come directly from food.  So, for instance, a person who loves spicy food is creating Stomach Heat by the kind of food they love; because this food is Hot in nature, it is pleasant and makes for more appetite.  And so on...

Wrong treatment

A person with Stomach Heat may have tried purgatives inappropriately to flush out the extra weight they have put on (Chinese herbal medicine does have purgative strategies, and these are reserved for special situations only).  Or they may have put themselves on various diets, including raw diets, which make them feel better for a short time.  In any case, prolonged disruption of a good digestive system also takes its toll.

This all results in Patterns of weakness, or Deficiency.

Phlegm Dampness and Spleen Qi Deficiency

Phlegm Dampness can happen from Stomach Heat, or from various other routes.  The variety here serves to remind us again that different people are just different!

Spleen Qi Deficiency can also occur as a result of prolonged Stomach Heat or wrong treatment of it.

It can also occur because of constitutional factors, weaknesses which need to be nourished properly and strengthened, not drained.

These Syndromes, which are actually different, but can have a certain degree of overlap, can also occur through eating irregularly for whatever reason, and this includes inappropriate food such as an excess of cold or raw food like fruit and salads.

Treatment of Phlegm Dampness focusses herbs to Transform Phlegm and Dampness.  Spleen Qi Deficiency requires additional herbal measures to Tonify or Strengthen the Spleen Qi.

Yang Deficiency

This is a group of Patterns which surprise the patient because they often respond particularly unfavourably to more vigorous exercise or to restrictive or draining diets.  This is because the Pattern is by nature quite deeply Deficient; any attempt to use Draining strategies only serve to worsen the underlying Deficiency.

The only way to rectify this situation is to conserve and build the strength of the body's Kidney and Spleen Yang.  This is done by selecting combinations of herbs that Warm and Tonify the Yang, and by favouring less strenuous exercise and good, solid, hot and nutritious food.  The antithesis of faddy diets!

Yin Deficiency

A person who is Yin Deficient will normally become particularly lean, not overweight.  However, in certain situations, such as the progression from Damp Heat leading to consumption of Yin, or when the person has depleted Yin by dieting and draining or prolonged raw food regimens, the Dampness can remain locally, prevented from dissipating due to the disruption of normal mechanisms through Deficiency of Yin.

Paradoxically treatment strategy here must consist of rebuilding the Yin, using herbs which in other people would actually increase their weight.  Indeed, correct treatment of the Yin Deficient overweight patient may intially cause a further increase in weight, until mechanisms have settled.

Blood Stagnation

Prolonged overweight, lack of exercise, leading to significant circulatory and cardiac abnormalities results in a Pattern of Stuck Blood, also known as Stagnation or Stasis of Blood.  In this case it is vital for treatment to Invigorate Blood as a primary strategy to prevent deeper repurcussions of a very sluggish body.

Here it is important that the patient helps themselves pro-actively by taking up exercise, which may be very foreign to their normal habits.  In other words, a normal cardiac regime.  In this respect Chinese medicine and modern industrial medicine are in complete agreement; the differences consist in the materia medica used and their variety and clever combination.

Chinese medicine is the art of medicine combination

Which brings us nicely to one of the essences of Chinese medicne: its unparalelled expertise in the combination of drugs/medicinals in ways that exactly match you, the individual, rather than the abstract theory.

Reference

An excellent clinical account of some ramifications of Obesity and theri treatment with Chinese medicine appears in the new Practitioner reference text by Will MacLean and Jane Lyttleton, "Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine:  the Treatment of Disease with Traditional Chinese Medicine, Volume 3:  Qi, Blood, Fluid, Channels".