by Dr. Josh Axe
Grounding and earthing. This therapeutic practice involves activities like walking barefoot outside, lying on the grass or the beach, or wading in a lake or ocean to do what our ancestors did naturally all the time: connect physically to the earth. The benefits, which include enhanced red blood cell fluidity42 (great for cardiovascular health), reduced muscle pain after exercise,43 and reduced stress, depression, and fatigue,44 derive from the fact that the earth emits electric charges that have positive effects on your body. Although research is still in its infancy, it appears that the electric charge affects the living matrix between your cells, resulting in decreased inflammation.45 It couldn’t be simpler to do—and it may actually allow your body to recalibrate its internal settings and enhance your health.
Crystals. Similar to grounding, crystals are lovely stones taken from the earth that carry electrical energy. Although there’s no contemporary research on their effectiveness, they have been used throughout history to improve health. And while I don’t believe they are miraculous in any way or that they are an actual cure for any health issue, I do believe they have subtle health benefits. There are a number of types of healing crystals—from clear quartz, which is known as the master healer, to obsidian, which protects you from emotional and physical negativity—but the idea is to select the one that’s right for you. You can read about the different qualities of each type and purchase one online that seems to suit your needs. Or you can choose a crystal by going into a store and holding different stones in your hand, one at a time. Many people say they can sense which one is right for them. To benefit from your crystal’s energy, you can meditate with the stone, put it in your bath, carry it in your pocket, or place various stones around your house.
Rain, ocean, and other nature sounds. Research is revealing that physically connecting with the earth is healthy, and listening to its sounds can be, too. Natural sounds have long been linked with relaxation, and now studies are starting to validate that long-held theory. Research has shown that the sounds of streams, birdsong, and fountains improve both adults’ and children’s cognitive performance,46 for instance. And in a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers used fMRI brain scans and heart rate monitors to determine how various sounds affected people. What they found: When listening to artificial sounds, like traffic and highway noise, people’s cognitive attention was focused inward, as it is when we’re worrying or ruminating, and their reaction times were slower than when they listened to natural sounds, which elicited more external-focused attention. On the flip side, the study found that natural sounds were more likely to trigger a relaxing, parasympathetic nervous system response, and an associated drop in heart rate, blood pressure, and stress levels.47 People seemed to reap the greatest benefits from natural sounds that were familiar, so it makes sense to find a playlist, app, or noise machine that has sounds you’re used to, whether it’s rain or waves or burbling creeks. Or, if you don’t live in a city or near a busy street, just throw open your windows and enjoy the natural, relaxing symphony outside your home.
I understand that life is busy, and it may feel overwhelming at first to adopt a new lifestyle habit—or even find a good acupuncture or chiropractic practitioner. But each of the strategies I’ve outlined above enhances qi by giving you calm, sustainable energy. And when your qi is strong, you’re better able to handle all your other responsibilities. In other words, these approaches make you feel better, and in doing so they actually make life feel easier. Commit to even one of them for a few weeks, and you’ll see what I mean. When you take the time to calm your mind, reset your body, and feed your soul, you bring your whole being into greater harmony and enhance your ability to enjoy, appreciate, and fully engage in life.
PART III
Ancient Prescriptions
CHAPTER 11
Understanding the Five Organ Systems of TCM
How to Use the World’s First Truly Holistic Approach to Health and Diet
When I first opened my functional medicine clinic in Nashville many years ago, I was on a mission to change healthcare. After seeing how ancient remedies saved my mom’s life, I was inspired to do everything I could to help my patients prevent illness by using food as medicine and heal the root cause of their diseases with an array of ancient remedies. From early on, I was gratified to see that the majority of the people I treated had incredible results. But not everyone responded as robustly as I hoped—and I wasn’t sure why. Interestingly, a health problem of my own helped lead me to the answer.
Three years after opening my clinical practice, I was working sixty or more hours a week and on the go all the time. I’d discovered my life’s purpose, and I was impatient to help as many people as I could. When I wasn’t at the clinic, I read book after book about nutrition, medicine, and personal growth—all in the interest of getting better at the art of healing. I’d work all day, come home for dinner, then open my laptop at 7 p.m. and work till 10 p.m. or later. One day, out of the blue, I developed digestive issues—alternating loose stools and constipation—and they didn’t go away. My symptoms didn’t make sense. I had an extremely nutritious diet, full of fresh vegetables, bone broth, salmon, and other ancient health foods, with no unhealthy processed foods. I tried to tweak my eating in various ways, but nothing had a lasting effect on my gut problems.
During my search for a cure, I met Gil Ben-Ami, a local acupuncturist who also practices herbal medicine and had studied in Israel under one of the world’s leading TCM teachers. Gil told me that an imbalance in my liver was the root cause of my gut issues. My impatience, overwork, and frustration were putting undo stress on this vital organ. In TCM, he explained, those emotions, along with anger, are toxic to the liver. And when the liver becomes overstressed, it starts to affect the digestive system, including the pancreas, spleen, and stomach. Gil advised me to do the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do on my own: Work fewer hours and unplug for an hour or two every day. “You have to turn your brain off,” he told me. “Read a novel. Schedule daily downtime.” He also suggested I spend more time in prayer while walking in nature, and practice giving my worries over to God rather than trying to control everything in my life. He had me come for acupuncture sessions twice a month, and he recommended herbs, like astragalus and milk thistle, to support my liver.
His advice to unplug wasn’t easy to follow. I felt guilty for not spending every waking minute on my practice and lazy just lying around the house reading non-work-related books. But after a few weeks, I noticed something interesting: The more relaxed I became, the more creative and productive I was at work. Chelsea noticed the change, too. She told me that I was more carefree and connected at home. In other words, by working less and bringing more balance into my life, I became a better doctor and a better spouse. What’s more, after following Gil’s plan for three months, my digestive symptoms cleared up, and my usual high energy and good health returned.
As Gil advised me on my health issues and became a good friend, he provided the missing wisdom I needed to discover the root cause of my patients’ symptoms—and my own! I knew about TCM’s five elements, but he explained this system in greater detail, focusing specifically on the way the five organs affect one another within this nourishing or depleting cycle, and how toxic emotions can affect your organs. I was fascinated—and eager to learn everything I could about the five elements protocol. I started reading everything I could get my hands on, from Chinese medicine textbooks to clinical studies from around the world proving this ancient approach’s effectiveness. As I slowly began to integrate the five elements approach into my practice, my patients who had not responded to my initial treatments started getting better as well.
Now I want to share these concepts, in simplified form, with you. This isn’t a crash course in Chinese medicine. The practice is far too complex. I’m still learning more about it every day, as are the world’s most renowned Eastern medicine practitioners. But I want to demystify this ancient system, which has been misunderstood in
the West for far too long. What’s more, by having a grasp of how and why this system works, you can begin to use this ancient form of healing to guide your everyday health, diet, and lifestyle choices—and feel comfortable seeing a TCM practitioner when health issues arise.
How the five organ systems create a cycle of nourishment or harm
In chapter 3, I explained the five elements: fire, earth, wood, metal, and water. If you took the quiz in that chapter, you’ve already identified your dominant element or elements. You may also recall that each element is connected with particular organs. It’s these organs—or, more specifically, organ systems—that I want to explore in more depth. Here’s a graphic that depicts the connections between the elements and the organ systems.
As you can see from the graphic’s arrows, each system influences the next. Your digestive system influences your immune system, which consists of the lungs, colon, and skin; your immune system influences your hormonal, or endocrine, system; your hormonal system directly affects your detoxification system, including your liver and gallbladder; and your detoxification system influences your neuro-cardiovascular system, which in turn feeds back into your digestive system. These organ systems affect one another in two ways. The first is the nourishing, or generating, connection. In Chinese medicine this is known as the mother-child organ relationship, in which one healthy organ system helps feed and nourish the next one, just as a mother nourishes a child.
Here’s another way to think of it, using the metaphor of the five elements:
Wood generates fire. Think of burning logs to fuel a stove.
Fire creates earth. As a fire’s ashes blend with the soil, they nourish it and make it more fertile.
Earth generates metal. As earth ages, rich minerals form deep below its surface.
Metal generates water. Think of this as a natural spring emerging from deep within the mountains.
Water generates wood. Water is necessary for plants and trees to grow.
Similarly, each organ system nourishes the next. For instance, your digestive system nourishes and supports your immune system, which means that when your gut is healthy, your immune system can function optimally. Indeed, we know this is true from scientific research, which has confirmed that 70 percent of your immune system resides in your gut.
But the nourishing cycle is just one aspect of the relationship. The other is a cycle of weakness and damage, which can lead to disease. For instance, if an imbalance or weakness arises in your digestive system (earth element) due to poor diet or excessive worry, it will deplete your immune system. In other words, signs of digestive weakness, like gas and bloating, can eventually lead to immune-related issues, like inflammatory bowel disease or autoimmune disease, or even lung symptoms, like sinusitis or chronic lung congestion. As a result, in order to heal the root cause of an immune-related condition (your metal element), you need to strengthen your digestive system. By examining your pulse and tongue, TCM practitioners can identify the source of the problem.
Imbalance can also occur when one organ system becomes too dominant or overactive and overwhelms another system—although in this case it doesn’t usually affect its nearest neighbor. This is called the invading cycle, and it follows the thin, straight arrows going across the middle of the diagram on here. For instance, when your water element (adrenals) becomes overactive due to chronic stress, your fire element (which includes your thyroid) may become weak, causing thinning hair, anxiety, and hypothyroidism. I saw this pattern in many of my patients. I learned that when someone has hypothyroidism, the problem isn’t usually the thyroid itself. The root cause is more often overactive adrenals pumping out too much of the stress hormone cortisol and overwhelming the thyroid. Or, in the case of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, two underlying problems are often to blame: The adrenals are stressed, and the immune system (metal element) is weak (remember, metal nourishes water), which causes autoimmune disease, which impacts the thyroid.
It’s easy to understand the invading cycle if you think of it from the five elements perspective. It’s kind of like a physiological game of rock, paper, scissors:
Water invades fire, dousing its flames.
Fire invades metal, melting it with its heat.
Metal invades wood, like an axe felling a tree.
Wood invades earth, like roots holding a tree in place and absorbing the soil’s nutrients.
Earth invades water, like a dam in a river, slowing or stopping its flow.
In most cases, people have two or three of these invading patterns going on at the same time, along with one or two of the pernicious influences I explained in chapter 2, like cold or dampness or stagnation. For instance, if you have digestive issues, it’s often caused by a combination of wood (an overactive or malfunctioning liver or gallbladder) invading fire (your spleen and digestive system), plus several pernicious influences, like a spleen-pancreas qi deficiency, dampness, and sometimes too much cold internally as well. I know this is a bit complicated—and there’s no need for you to understand all the connections. It takes years of study. But I do want you to have a sense of how this ancient system works, to help you see that it’s actually a far more comprehensive and holistic approach than what we have in the West. The five elements’ broad mind-body-spirit approach is more effective than Western medicine for supporting health, because the system is based on a complex, interconnected web—one that reflects the true nature of the body itself.
As Plato said, “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” The “whole” includes not just the body, but the mind, emotions, and spirit. That’s why TCM and other ancient approaches are known as holistic medicine. Understanding the links between every organ system in your body is a way of seeing the bigger picture, including emotions, that allows you to treat illness at its source.
And there’s another unexpected benefit I haven’t pointed out yet. In my practice I’ve observed that merely taking a TCM approach to patients’ illnesses can offer emotional healing. Here’s what I mean. In Western medicine, you’re diagnosed with a single condition, be it ulcerative colitis or hypothyroidism, and typically told there is no cure. Over time, that condition can become part of your identity. If you have diabetes, you might even start saying, “I am a diabetic,” as if you’re a different species.
But let’s say you have hypothyroidism and you see a holistic physician who understands TCM. You’ll be diagnosed with a qi and yang deficiency, the root causes of hypothyroidism—both of which can be corrected. You won’t be labeled as someone with a chronic disease, but rather told that you have a correctable imbalance. You’ll understand that you have the ability to change your internal environment, and to heal. Because of this, you’ll stay hopeful. In other words, this ancient system empowers you. And that can be surprisingly meaningful for your health.
Research shows that people who think positively about their lives, including their health, are actually healthier overall—with lower blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, and incidence of heart disease. In fact, a large study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that optimism was correlated with a decreased risk of death, a link that persisted even in people with cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and infections.1 And you’ve surely heard of the placebo effect, in which patients given a sugar pill in place of a real drug actually feel better. They improve because the mind itself has the power to heal the body.
TCM harnesses this power by helping you believe in your body’s innate ability to heal. In that way, it’s similar to Biblical medicine, which teaches that faith and hope can help you heal. Just as beneficial, your faith in your body’s self-healing ability can work hand in hand with the ancient herbs, holistic treatments, and lifestyle approaches I’ve shared in prior chapters—and together, they can create an upward spiral of health and healing.
Bringing harmony to the five organ systems
In Western medicine, we view an organ according to its immediate and isolated function. The spleen, f
or instance, is an organ on the outside of the pancreas that is involved in the destruction of old blood cells and the production of certain types of white blood cells. But ancient medicine views the spleen, pancreas, and stomach together as a holistic system responsible for the entire digestive process. So as you read the following sections, keep in mind that when your TCM practitioner refers to an organ, whether it’s the heart or lung, this refers not only to the anatomical structure, but also to a network of interrelated organs. Opening your mind to Chinese and other forms of ancient medicine doesn’t necessarily mean fully rejecting the Western paradigm. But it does mean broadening your perspective to include new ideas and concepts.