Your Lungs and Large Intestine, grief and immunity – are they linked?
“I’ve had this terrible cold I can’t seem to get rid of,” she said at the start of the consultation. So I put acupuncture pins in to help with that and everything else that was going on. After the session she mentioned her father had passed away some weeks ago, for which I was very sorry to hear. I mentioned to her then that that would be why her immune system is having such a hard time getting rid of the cold. It’s because she is grieving.
The Lungs in Chinese medicine are associated with grief and sadness so whilst she feels as she does, which is a completely normal and healthy response to what’s happened, her Lungs may be weaker and will struggle getting over the illness by themselves, so they could do with some help. Help in the form of the right kinds of immune-boosting foods such as garlic, ginger and lemon as well as possibly some herbs, acupuncture and let’s face it – chicken soup.
These kinds of scenarios (like my grieving client who could not shake her cold) make perfect sense to a Chinese medicine practitioner. When we know the broader details about your current life and health challenges before the treatment session, we can take them into account and put in some acupuncture points for the mind and spirit to help ease them in their time of trouble and despair. It helps to keep their energy moving and flowing and not getting too stuck on the one thought or action. We call energy Qi (pronounced “chee” or “kee”).
So that’s in essence why our Traditional Chinese Medicine treatments are considered to be holistic – because we treat the body as well as the mind and the spirit. The body, mind and spirit are one. They are interconnected, they interact with each other all the time and each has an impact on the others.
The Lungs in Chinese medicine are said to be the receptor of Qi. They take in the air, the oxygen that our blood and brain need. They’re vital for our survival. They’re the last organ to mature before babies come into the world (aside from the brain of course) and when babies are born early and their lungs haven’t matured, they are considered more delicate and more likely to catch colds and other bugs.
The Lungs are considered Yin, and as with everything in Chinese medicine, they have a Yang partner and that is the Large Intestine.
So things that affect the Lungs will also affect the Large Intestine. Strange you might say, but I see this very clearly when little ones catch a cold and it goes to their lungs and obstructs their breathing so they’re wheezing and are inflamed in their chest. Lo and behold they often also become constipated. I find that if we can clear the poo, they end up breathing more easily, their Qi is flowing again and their immune system is able to more easily fight off the bug.
The emotion that’s associated with the Large Intestine is the same as the Lungs – it’s also sadness and grief. It is said in Chinese medicine that disease can be caused from internal causes and that these can manifest from an imbalance in our emotions. So with the Large Intestine in particular, if the bowels are stuck, it is said that there’s an inability to “let go” of something. Of course they could be stuck for another reason, like I mentioned earlier with the common cold going deeper into the body and causing constipation. So as a practitioner that’s what you have to work out: is it a physical cause, an emotional or internal cause, or is it a combination of both?
It’s good practice to sit on the toilet some time between 5am and 7am. This is when there is the most Qi in the Large Intestine channel and it should be the easiest to poo at this time. All of the meridians have a high tide so to speak, in terms of where the Qi is residing mostly in your body. And interestingly with the Lungs it is 3am to 5am. This is a wonderful time to meditate they say, or as many people who’ve had a cold will know, it’s the time you start coughing your lungs up as there is a lot of energy in the Lungs again and they are ready to work hard for you and get all that phlegm out.
So yes both the lungs and large intestine (lower case) function as the organs you know of and perform their roles in terms of our scientific knowledge, but in Chinese medical terms the Lungs and Large Intestine (with capitals) are three-dimensional and do a whole lot more than just those physical actions. Cool huh!
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