Personal Endeavors & Changes

I have some exciting personal news to share.

This fall, I have just returned to graduate school to pursue a Master of Social Work (MSW) on the path toward becoming a licensed psychotherapist. Alongside this training, I am assisting in a first-grade classroom, which has already been such a source of joy as the children work on their reading and share moments of awe and wonder.

My husband and I are also expecting our first child in November! I am very grateful for these blessings in life, and I look forward to continuing to serve my community through Chinese medicine while expanding my psychotherapeutic training in the years ahead.

Newsletter Frequency & Subscriptions

Regular, weekly Wednesday newsletters will still be available here through The Herbal Pulse, but frequency may be slightly lessened. Paid subscriptions for the Friday newsletter have been paused for now and will likely restart in the new year.

Clinical Session Availability

My clinical availability for Chinese medicine sessions will decrease in September and October, and sessions will pause entirely during November and December. If you would like to schedule a session and are not seeing a time that works for you, please send me a message through Practice Better. I will do my best to accommodate additional scheduling needs whenever possible.

Because of these life transitions, I will not be scheduling client sessions in November or December, and I will not be teaching herbal classes this fall or winter.

I plan to send an update early in the new year with information about my schedule, availability, and offerings moving forward.

Thanks for being a part of my newsletter community and clinical practice. I look forward to seeing many of you in session before the end of the year!

Warmly,

Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

It can be frustrating to feel like you’re getting somewhere with your health and seeing improvement, only to eventually have your problem come back.

Chinese medicine helps us understand how a symptom can improve without the underlying pattern being fully resolved.

And when the underlying pattern is not addressed, it is very common for the symptoms and discomfort to eventually show themselves again.

So what does this mean? What can you do?

Read more

This approach to food is different than simply looking at foods as carbs, proteins, fats, and sugars.

So what does “balance” really mean?

I’ve previously shared some of the qualities of food we consider through a Chinese medicine lens, such as temperature, directionality, flavor, organ affinity, and seasonal association.

When it comes to balancing the selections of food on our plates, Chinese medicine does not mean every meal needs to contain an equal amount of warming and cooling foods.

Instead, balance depends on the combination of energetics of the food and how the foods are prepared and combined. We also look at the individual’s constitution and current imbalances to determine how to change or nudge the overall influence of the whole meal.

We always want to prioritize the overall influence of the whole meal, rather than only considering the effects of each singular ingredient.

Let’s look at a simple strategy for doing this:

Read more

I gently share that I do not make these kinds of recommendations.

Why?

I do not make generic macronutrient suggestions across a diverse array of people because Chinese medicine is focused on the individual and the energetic influence of specific foods.

Yes, I agree with lots of different kinds of practitioners (and scientists) that protein is important.

Protein provides amino acids, which are the building blocks for much of the body. Adequate protein is necessary for many aspects of good health, like building and repairing muscles, tendons, skin, and organs. It is also essential for maintaining muscle mass with aging and helping to regulate appetite and blood sugar.

But Chinese medicine shows us how this perspective is limited. It overlooks nuance that is so important.

In the Chinese medicine framework, each kind of protein has a slightly different effect on the body.

Let’s consider some examples:

Beef

Beef is neutral to slightly warm in its energetic influence. It has an affinity for the spleen and stomach, and it tonifies qi, nourishes blood, and strengthens muscles.

Chicken

Chicken is warming, more warming than beef. It has a direct relationship with the spleen and stomach, and it strongly tonifies qi, supports yang, raises the middle (often in support of digestion).

Pork

Pork is more neutral (even slightly cooling according to some sources). It has an affinity for the kidney and spleen, and it more directly nourishes yin and blood, and it moistens dryness.

Lamb

Lamb is heating (hotter than chicken and beef). Like pork, it directly relates to the kidney system and spleen as well, but is different in that it warms yang, dispels cold, and is even noted for its capacity to strengthen the lower back.

Fish

Fish is considered more neutral energetically, but this depends on the species (salmon, for instance, can be more warming and activating). Many fish species also support the spleen and kidney, and they generally tend to tonifies qi and nourish blood and essence.

Eggs

Eggs are neutral in temperature, but they become more warming/heating when they are fried (as do all foods). Eggs are very nourishing for the blood, and they have an affinity for the heart, liver, and kidney systems. Eggs can build blood, yin, and essence.

Yogurt

Yogurt is cooling to cold (depending on how cold it is when you eat it). It has an affinity for the stomach, and the live cultures support digestion. Yogurt can be nourishing for yin and fluids, but can also create dampness in certain situations.

We must consider nuance.

As you can see from these small descriptions, there is a big difference in the kind of health support each protein source can offer.

If someone is experiencing a lot of excess heat internally that is leading to heat-related symptoms, I might suggest they stay away from lamb for a while.

A different person who is suffering from symptoms rooted in damp accumulation will want to take care to eat yogurt in moderation, if at all, for a while.

In this way, you can begin to see that some generic recommendation like “eat 30g of protein at every meal” is much too flippant for an individual seeking care.

We want to select protein sources that will touch and nudge our bodies in individually supportive ways, and proteins are just one category of food. We can take the same kind of nuanced approach with various grains, vegetables, and fruits as well.

This might sound complicated at first, but in my experience, this is very intuitive for people once they learn a little bit more about Chinese medicine. It is fairly easy to eat with this kind of nuance once you get started.

Are you curious about how to work with food energetics in your daily life?

The cultivation of individualized dietary practices is a major part of my clinical work with clients. Strategic dietary changes can lead to profound shifts in health.

If you are interested in reviewing Chinese medicine food energetics that can support you specifically or if you would like to do an audit of your day-to-day food choices, you can send an email reply to this newsletter to ask about appointment options or read about how I work with people and schedule at artaobiherbs.com.

This week’s Friday newsletter will cover some ways to combine various food energtics into meals to create balanced, digestive-supporting combinations. 🙂

Subscribe to read!

Subscribe now

Warmly,
Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

Two women can both have period pain, but for different reasons. For example, one woman may have imbalances of cold and stagnation going on, another could have blood stasis, and yet another, deficiency.

The herbs are selected based on the reason, the imbalance, rather than just simply on the symptom (e.g., pain).

This is how clinical herbalism becomes wholly individualized.

Here are some examples of how I think about herbal combinations that can help with certain presentations of menstrual pain:

Read more

Heating pads, ibuprofen, tough emotions, canceled plans, and the assumption that painful periods are simply part of life have become remarkably common.

But common is not the same as normal.

And this idea that cramps and pain are just part of having a period is a commonly shared idea that I wish more women knew is not simply inevitable.

From a Chinese medicine point of view, dysmenorrhea (intense pain), digestive and emotional symptoms, and irregularity associated with the menstrual cycle point to pathology that can and should be addressed.

Sometimes these patterns of imbalance are straightforward; sometimes they are more complex (especially if the pathology has been around for a long time), but this discomfort should not be accepted as an unchangeable part of a woman’s life.

This is a big deal, considering that research studies offer stats showing that somewhere between 50-90% of women worldwide experience intense period pain.

Where does period pain come from?

Chinese medicine asserts that the etiology of painful periods is rooted in a few main kinds of imbalance. Sometimes, these imbalances occur on their own, but more often than not, when a woman is suffering from menstrual pain, she is experiencing a combination of imbalances at one time.

My favorite textbook on women’s health, Obstetrics & Gynecology in Chinese Medicine by Giovanni Maciocia, outlines these primary root causes very clearly, as do many classical Chinese medicine texts, such as the Huangdi Neijing (from the second century AD) and the Jingui Yaolue (from the 3rd century AD).

In a simple sense, significant pain suggests that something is preventing the smooth flow of qi and blood in the body, including the uterus.

Qi (energy) moves the blood (think circulation), and blood nourishes the qi, so these two are always in a bidirectional relationship. You cannot affect one without influencing the other.

So we want to look at what affects blood and qi with a direct connection to the menstrual cycle. When we cast a net into Chinese medicine for that kind of information, here’s what we find:

• Emotional strain and trauma experienced

• External cold

• Accumulation of dampness

• Overworking and overexertion

• Chronic illness

• Excessive sexual activity

• Undereating and malnourishment

• A history of constitutional deficiency

We are not simply looking at the pain.

From there, bespoke herbal formulas can be selected or designed to address your imbalances specifically. When these herbs are combined with dietary strategies, which tend to center warm and cooked foods, blood-building ingredients, and recipes that support the function of sleep, women often experience menstrual pain relief within a few cycles (sometimes the very next period, often within 3-4 cycles).

Pain isn’t the problem, but it’s a signal to pay attention to.

The point of noticing pain is not simply to make the pain go away.

Yes, we want to do that.

But if we’re only trying to extinguish the pain, instead of addressing the root cause of the pain, we can easily find ourselves in patterns of behavior that look like regularly taking ibuprofen or Midol each month when we start to feel cramps coming on.

There’s another way.

We can look under the hood to find what specifically is leading to that pain and invest a few months into the resolution.

You may need to slow down, exercise less, or say no to some of your social plans.

You may be encouraged to eat more red meat than you thought necessary.

Your personalized recommendations may involve an herbal formula that you need to drink twice a day.

You can do those things, even if they feel weird at first.

Are you struggling with menstrual pain?

You don’t need to suffer alone or forever. 💓

Menstrual pain, menstrual irregularity, and difficult cycles are some of the main health challenges I see in my practice.

You can send an email reply to this newsletter to ask about appointment options or read about how I work with people and schedule at artaobiherbs.com.

On Friday, I’ll write in more detail about some of the specific formulas I reach for often when supporting people through menstrual issues and talk about how the herbs in those blends work together to bring harmony to the body.

Subscribe to read!

Subscribe now

Warmly,
Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

The collection tends to include some of the following: magnesium, vitamin D, probiotics, various adaptogens, digestive enzymes, collagen, and/or several herbal tinctures.

The logic is often explained to me as 1) something is wrong and I don’t feel good, so 2) I’m going to throw everything at the issue with hopes that 3) something is bound to help.

People keep these on hand and take them regularly with good intentions, and while many of these products can be helpful in the right context, more is not necessarily better.

In fact, I often recommend that people take less. I favor a more streamlined approach, and Chinese herbal formulas can cover a lot of needs in one blend.

Read more

Earlier this week, we looked at what healthy digestion actually looks like.

Today, I'd like to move from talking about observations to practical action by sharing a few of the foundational digestive-support strategies I frequently recommend in clinical practice.

Read more

As you probably know, the digestive system is at the center of health.

The strength or weakness of our digestive processes influences every other element of health.

Many people assume their digestion is healthy simply because they don't have acid reflux or severe stomach pain.

But the absence of acute symptoms is just a starting point.

Healthy digestion includes a healthy appetite.

If you regularly do not have any appetite when you wake up in the morning and it does not “kick on” within that first hour of waking, we may want to investigate what could be going on with your digestion.

Signs of a healthy appetite include: feeling hungry at regular intervals (regular meal times or similar), enjoying food, feeling satisfied after eating, not constantly craving snacks, carbs, or sweets.

We do not want you to be ravenously hungry, but that gentle hum of hunger should be buzzing around regular intervals.

Healthy digestion is also comfortable digestion.

Eating should leave you feeling comfortably nourished, not weighed down, bloated, lethargic, or in pain.

After you eat, healthy digestion allows you to feel: minimal to no bloating, very little gas, no nausea, no excessive fullness, and no urgency.

The intake and use of food becomes rhythmic, thoughtful but not obsessive, and comfy.

It is not normal to constantly bloat after meals or to regularly feel dissatisfied by foods (continually hungry after meals). If you are experiencing those signs or symptoms, it is time to do a bit of investigation into what kinds of imbalances are at play.

Strong digestion gives you steady, reliable energy.

Big energy swings tell us something disharmonious is going on in the body.

Regular energy crashes between 2pm and 5pm are not normal, even if they are common.

You should be able to eat a meal and feel good and ready to take on the next part of your day. Meals should not be leading to a sluggish lethargy.

Think of it this way: When your digestion is working efficiently, it’s zipping right along, doing what it needs to do without much attention from you. Meals become a source of energy for you rather than a drain on you.

Regular bowel movements follow good digestive function.

Bowel habits are one of the most valuable clinical clues.

We can tell a lot from the quality, frequency, and ease/difficulty of your bowel movemments.

When digestion is going well on a regular basis, bowel movements are generally pretty simple. They are daily, well-formed, easy to pass, and they have a feeling of completeness afterward.

Chronic constipation is something I see so often in my clinical practice, but this is not a normal, healthy pattern. If you regularly experience slow, stuck, dry, or incomplete bowel movements, there are many simple strategies you can incorporate to make this part of your life much more easygoing! No need to live with constipation forever.

If you are struggling with digestion, you might enjoy this previous newsletter on dietary choices and digestion capacity or this one that breaks down the relationship between worry and digestion from a Chinese medicine point of view.

In Friday’s paid newsletter, I’ll go over some dietary strategies you can start using right away to resolve chronic digestive distress. I’ll also talk about some simple herbal remedies to keep on hand to help with digestion as well. Subscribe to read!

Subscribe now

Talk with you then,
Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

A few days ago, I sent my usual Wednesday newsletter with a little insight into some of the ideas I bring to every new client in session.

How is your digestion?

How are you sleeping?

How is your energy?

I do not cling to those questions as a direct route to the entire answer. Instead, I leverage those ideas as tools to reveal patterns.

Pieces start to come together in my conversation with the individual (like the person's symptoms, history, tongue, pulse, and lifestyle), and eventually, a more vibrant, detailed picture begins to show itself. This picture allows me to understand how multiple variables are working together to create the set of circumstances necessary for the symptoms to emerge.

Let’s look together at a few sample cases and go over what kind of big-picture disharmonies are at play. Then I’ll go over what kinds of strategies I would recommend for the person.

Read more

When I meet with new clients, people sometimes expect that the majority of our conversation will revolve around their description and experience of their main symptom, like sleep loss, constipation, or headaches.

Yes, we do talk about the symptoms.

But we spend more time talking about the constellation of observations that surround the symptoms.

This is key to the way Chinese medicine guides us back to harmony.

Before I think about herbs and dietary recommendations for the individual, I need to understand how the body is functioning as a whole.

Chinese medicine considers the whole body and the parts of the body while maintaining a throughline that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

No matter what the primary symptom is—pain, emotional trouble, sleep challenges, fertility or menstrual cycle irregularities—I always gather information about three foundational aspects of the individual’s health: digestion, sleep patterns, and energy levels.

You might wonder, “What does my digestive process have to do with my lower back pain?”

You may be surprised.

Chinese medicine shepherds us through what might seem like a complicated system of connections.

"How is your digestion?"

If you’ve been reading along for a while, you know that digestive health is central to Chinese medicine. Every useful strategy considers digestive capacity.

Many symptoms resolve when digestion is functioning well and robustly.

The body’s resources, energy levels, blood, emotional moods, immune response, reproductive capacity, and vitality can all be traced back to and influenced by digestion.

In Chinese medicine terms, we understand that digestion is where nourishment is transformed into qi and blood.

In session, we talk in fairly granular detail about:

• your appetite

• whether or not (and how often) you experience bloating

• the frequency and quality of your bowel movements

• whether or not (and how often) you experience nausea

• your energy level after meals

• any food aversions, intolerances, or allergies

Yes, we have this conversation even if you come to session with a primary complaint of insomnia. ☁️☁️

"How are you sleeping most nights?"

We all know that sleep is important.

You know how you feel when you run on a sleep deficit for more than two or three days.

Sleep tells us about the body's ability to restore itself.

It also offers us clues about blood, yin resources, and the shen (mind/emotions).

In session, we’ll review:

• how easy/difficult it is for you to fall asleep

• what your regular experience of staying asleep is like

• whether or not you regularly wake rested

• if you have dreams (not for Jungian analysis, but instead, to understand the restfulness of sleep)

• if you experience night waking and at what time

Even if you are sleeping a solid seven or eight hours each night, I still want to know if you are waking up and at what time, if you feel well-rested upon waking, and what hours you are normally asleep (10pm-6am is a different sleep than what you get from 12am-8am).

"Tell me about your energy levels."

Chinese medicine offers us a very nuanced perspective on energy levels.

We don’t stop at tired vs energetic.

If you’re tired, I want to know if you feel sluggish, depressed, uninspired, motivated with low energy, drowsy, and so on.

There is a difference between feeling energetic from good rest and feeling energetic from a cup of coffee.

In a session, I’m not simply going to ask, “So, are you tired?”

Instead, there are many sub-questions we’ll survey together:

• When are you tired? Morning or afternoon?

• Do you feel better after eating?

• Do you feel worse after exertion?

• Do you have a sense of feeling heavy or mostly just depleted?

• Are you wired but exhausted?

• Are you tired during the day, but amped up at night?

Our work together builds over time.

As you can imagine, this clinical exploration takes a while. For this reason, a typical intake session in my practice is ninety minutes long, with forty-five-minute follow-up sessions.

This work is not possible in a quick, fifteen-minute check-up.

None of these questions exists in isolation, so over the course of the session, I will be internally drawing connections, which I will share with you and weave into your bespoke protocol.

People often ask me whether they should take magnesium, ashwagandha, or another supplement. My answer is usually another question.

You can do some of this too, on your own, outside of sessions.

You don't need to become an expert in Chinese medicine to begin paying attention to your body. Simply becoming more curious about your digestion, your sleep, and your energy can reveal patterns that are easy to overlook in the rush of daily life.

It is likely that you do not need to buy anything additional right away to improve your health. There is a lot that can be done with tweaks in food choice and adjustments to sleep.

Warmly,
Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

In my clinical practice, when I hear “I’m not sure what’s going on, I’m just tired all the time” from a client, my mind does not immediately start scanning through my internal index of herbs to figure out what they should start taking.

I don’t want to simply stimulate them.

And Chinese medicine teaches us that we do not tonify if there is something that needs to be cleared first.

So instead, I start to ask questions that help me understand why the person I am working with is tired.

I become a pattern detective of sorts.

I basically never rely on a single symptom to solve the case. Tiredness does not stand on its own.

I consider all kinds of variables about the individual — physiological, emotional, mental, and life-related that allow me to perceive the person as a complex system. Some of these variables include:

Read more

Chronic tiredness is one of the most common complaints I hear when I meet with people in my clinical practice.

Chinese medicine does not view fatigue as a single diagnosis or disharmony on its own.

Instead, we’re always trying to understand: Why is this person tired?

What’s going on at the root level that is leading to this branch symptom?

Four common reasons for chronic fatigue and ongoing tiredness

Unless you are going through a stressful or trying time — like a move, a job change, a birth, or a great loss — it is not normal to feel worn out all of the time.

This set of descriptions is not exhaustive, but it is helpful to understand some of the most frequently occurring disharmonies that lead to the experience of tiredness day after day.

Qi Deficiency

In simple terms, you can think of qi deficiency as not having enough fuel.

Qi can be thought of as energy, and a presentation of qi deficiency means you are lacking in energy.

What it feels like:

Qi deficiency makes you feel like you have low energy and stamina almost constantly. You’re easily fatigued, and it gets worse after exertion (physical or cognitive). You will probably experience shortness of breath, and you may have a tendency to nap (or feel that you really need a nap).

You basically feel like you are running on E all the time, sometimes even in the morning when you just woke up. 🥱

Major contributors:

It might seem obvious to you, but one of the most common contributors to qi deficiency is overwork. I state this explicitly because, sometimes, overwork sneaks in through channels we don’t expect.

Obvious forms of overwork include consistently long hours at work and too much physical exertion (e.g., HIIT workouts every day).

Sneakier forms of overwork can include an overwhelmingly intense mental load, consistently saying “yes” to too many social plans each week, and the ongoing pursuit of a to-do list that is not sustainable.

Chronic stress, poor digestion, and insufficient recovery times are also major contributors to qi deficiency.

These contributors often hang together. It is pretty common to encounter someone who is struggling with overworking and who also feels chronically stressed, doesn’t rest enough, and has digestive challenges.

Blood Deficiency

If qi deficiency means not enough energy, you can think of blood deficiency as not enough nourishment.

In Chinese medicine, the blood is understood as a multidimensional substance that fulfills physical and emotional functions. Yes, the blood cells carry oxygen. They also carry nourishment and store emotions.

What it feels like:

Blood deficiency usually presents with some combination of the following: fatigue, dizziness, poor concentration, dry skin or hair, light or absent periods, insomnia, anxiety, and/or constipation.

Blood deficiency often feels less like a lack of fuel and more like a lack of nourishment. You feel underfed across a variety of dimensions.

The body may have enough energy to keep going (if you’re not qi deficient), but not enough resources to fully support itself.

You can bring to mind the image of a person who keeps functioning but feels increasingly dry, depleted, scattered, and undernourished.

Major contributors:

Inadequate food intake and restrictive dieting are some of the most common contributors. In other words, undereating.

Consuming red meat is one of the most effective and accessible ways to build blood, so a diet that lacks red meat is more likely to lead to blood deficiency. You can find more information about a blood-building way of eating here.

Chronic sleep deprivation, chronic self-defeating thoughts, chronic stress, long-term illness, heavy menstrual bleeding, and pregnancy and postpartum recovery also contribute to blood deficiency.

Dampness

Dampness shows up when the body is not transforming and moving fluids efficiently. Usually, this occurs with or downstream from spleen qi deficiency.

What it feels like:

Dampness makes us feel heavy and foggy.

When dampness has accumulated, you will probably experience brain fog, heaviness, sluggishness, bloating, cravings for sweets, difficulty waking up, and perhaps thirst paired with little or no desire to drink.

Dampness does not always make us feel depleted. It often makes us feel stuck.

People with dampness often describe feeling as though they are moving through mud.

You may feel foggy, bloated, sluggish, and heavy even though you’re getting enough calories (energy) from food.

Major contributors:

Dampness tends to accumulate primarily by way of a less-than-supportive diet paired with digestive weakness.

Weak digestion, overeating, constant snacking, excess sugar, excess alcohol, highly processed foods, and large amounts of cold/raw foods in susceptible individuals lead to dampness.

So does a sedentary lifestyle.

Chronic stress affects digestion as well, which can make dampness more intense and difficult to clear.

Yin Deficiency

Yin becomes deficient when the body’s restorative reserves have been gradually consumed. Think of a car that runs out of oil — dry, hot, and sputtering out.

What it feels like:

When we are yin deficienct, we usually feel distinctly “tired but wired”.

There is a restlessness that ensues. It’s hard to relax and calm down, even when what we want most is to sink down into a restful state.

It’s common to experience poor sleep, night sweats, a dry mouth, a feeling of nervous agitation, and thirst. Many yin-deficient people feel worse in the evening.

Major contributors:

Yin deficiency tends to arise when a person lives a prolonged lifestyle that is too taxing and draining. Resources get spent without sufficient rest or recovery time.

Chronic stress exacerbates this depletion.

Concretely, these contributors can include years of overwork, long-term sleep deprivation, frequent night waking, excessive stimulation (think work, screens, productivity, people), chronic illness, overtraining, and prolonged caregiving or emotional strain.

Menopause and aging are also contributors to yin deficiency (menopause tends to be worse if you were chronically yin-deficient in your younger years).

A nuanced approach to harmony

While these patterns can overlap, each disharmony points to a different underlying issue.

• Qi deficiency reflects a lack of energy.

• Blood deficiency reflects a lack of nourishment.

• Dampness reflects impaired transformation and movement.

• Yin deficiency reflects a depletion of the body's restorative reserves.

It is important for us to understand which kinds of patterns are present so that we can grasp why different people experience fatigue in different ways.

These distinctions allow the Chinese medicine practitioner (like me!) to see why the same solution is not going to work for everyone.

We can instead offer nuanced, personalized recommendations to overcome long-term fatigue.

(And no, increased consumption of coffee, energy drinks, and sugar will not be recommended. 😅)

On Friday, I’ll share some more information about how I differentiate chronic tiredness clinically with these common patterns of disharmony in mind. I’ll also offer some practical next steps if you suspect you may be struggling with these imbalances. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!

Subscribe now

Very best,
Arta

P. S. If you'd like to have your tongue assessed using Chinese medicine principles to determine what kinds of imbalances are at play in your body, explore the online option below. ⬇️

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

This is often described by way of roots and branches.

Root causes lead to symptoms, which can be imagined as branches.

Though the branch symptoms may need to be tended to initially, especially if they are acute, the root cause is always addressed.

If we only look at the branches, but the causal chain starts at the root, those branches will continue to grow eventually.

I point this out today because digestive weaknesses and disharmonies are at the root of a great many complaints I hear from clients in my practice.

The importance of digestive health cannot be overstated.

So what does this mean for you, practically?

Read more

Nearly all of the people I see in my clinical practice are earnest in their pursuit of better health.

They want to know what they can do for more energy, better digestion, clearer skin, improved fertility, or more stable moods.

Often, people request a set of rules to follow that will lead to the desired outcome.

But somewhere along the way, eating can become a project.

A tiring, stress-inducing, anxiety-provoking project.

A cyclical pattern of thinking can arise as individuals cling to food rules, search for elimination diets, and slip into a pattern of constantly researching nutrition.

What is even more common is the guilt people can feel when they eat “off-plan” meals or eat food they may have categorized as “bad”.

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In Chinese medicine, appetite reveals important clues about the state of our digestion and overall vitality.

For example, a lack of appetite in the morning is a common symptom among people I work with. Even though this is common, Chinese medicine helps us understand why having little to no appetite in the early hours of the day is a sign of imbalance.

So what does a healthy appetite look like?

Some clear indications of a healthy appetite, which also correspond with good digestion, include:

• hunger that arrives at predictable times

• enjoying eating, with foods in mind that sound appealing

• a feeling of satisfaction after meals

• readiness to eat again several hours later

Appetite is not supposed to be totally absent, overwhelming, or super erratic.

Pay attention when you frequently experience low appetite.

A regularly weak appetite tends to reflect a digestive system that lacks the energy and capacity to fully receive and process nourishment.

In my practice, someone might not outright say that their appetite feels super low, but some common reflections I hear in session tend to include:

“No foods sound appetizing to me.”

“I keep forgetting to eat.”

“I get full so quickly, so I don’t want to eat.”

Chinese medicine gives us tools to identify whether the spleen qi is weak, if the energy of the liver is tight, or if the stomach qi is not properly descending.

We can also decipher whether a longstanding illness, chronic stress, or a significant level of depletion is at play.

Check in when your appetite feels excessive.

If you feel constantly hungry and never quite satisfied, or you have strong cravings that don’t subside, we want to investigate what kinds of underlying factors are driving this excessiveness.

From a Chinese medicine point of view, a voracious appetite can commonly be a sign of stomach heat. It can also point to a blood sugar instability.

We also want to check in to make sure you are maintaining eating patterns that truly nourish you throughout the day. If excessive appetite arises from a lack of nutritional density, it is important to make dietary changes before other imbalances develop.

Start to notice the relationship between stress and appetite.

Many people experience a loss of appetite during stressful seasons in life, yet lots of other people find they engage in stress eating when life feels tough.

Either way, it’s not uncommon for digestive symptoms to appear during times of emotional strain.

We can understand this through the lens of Chinese medicine because this medicinal system teaches us that digestion is influenced not only by what we eat, but also by our emotional state.

The energy of the liver is responsible for the smooth flow of qi throughout the body, and the energy of the spleen is responsible for transforming food into energy and nourishment.

When stress, frustration, or emotional tension accumulate internally, the liver can disrupt the spleen's digestive capacity, and symptoms like bloating, absent or intense appetite, nausea after meals, and bowel movement abnormalities can start to appear.

So do I think you should freak out if your appetite seems off? No.

But I do hope you’ll start to notice your appetite (if you’re not already) and check in with a practitioner if symptoms arise and don’t resolve.

You’re always welcome to write to me or leave a comment below, if you’re looking for more resources.

Leave a comment

Warmly,
Arta

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

New Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

I see this as a normal human leaning, but a longing or expectation for a quick fix is not a helpful relationship to have with plants.

Herbs are time-tested, as old as human culture.

Every cultural tradition has a history that includes the use of plants for medicine.

If you’d like to take this as your evidence that herbs “work”, you may, but you can also look to more empirical studies from modern labs (mostly based in Asia and somewhat in Europe, as the US does not offer much funding or enthusiasm for this research).

Across millennia, people have reached for herbs when facing infections, fertility challenges, digestive pain, childhood ailments, and injuries.

What I’m getting at is that herbalism is nothing new.

What is new is the prevalence of many of the chronic health challenges we now face.

Think about it.

Metabolic disease.

Cardiovascular disease.

Opioid addiction.

Fertility struggles.

IBS.

Autoimmune disorders.

The list goes on.

Everyone knows somebody struggling with one or more of these health challenges.

Even in just the last century, what has changed most is not necessarily human biology itself.

Instead, we’ve radically changed how we live. En masse.

The dominant disease burden has shifted from infectious disease and acute injury toward chronic inflammatory, metabolic, psychiatric, and degenerative disease.

I think there is danger in perceiving herbalism as a vehicle of “magic potions”, especially when most people need health support with a collection of symptoms that have grown out of the strain of modern life, paired with the struggle and strife of difficult emotional experiences.

It simply isn’t helpful for us to categorize herbs as overnight fixes.

Here’s what I think you should consider and do instead:

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He was in good spirits, but extremely fatigued. I kept my eye on him and saw that this wasn’t just normal, post-travel tiredness. He also had chills and body aches. By evening, he was slightly feverish, and I had the sense that “something was settling in”.

Whenever an illness first begins to emerge, I start paying attention to patterns rather than just naming something as a cold, flu, or other illness.

In Chinese medicine, there are hot-colds and cold-colds. They require different herbal approaches. I could tell, in my husband’s case, that this was a cold-cold, so I went to my herbal cabinet and took out all of the ingredients for a classical Chinese herbal formula called Gui Zhi Tang, or Cinnamon Twig Decoction.

These herbs can be combined in water and simmered for about 30-minutes to make a potent formula, which sometimes harmonizes the body and resolves symptoms with only one or two doses.

Even further, this formula traces back to the Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), so we have thousands of years of case study and clinical use to stand on when it comes to this herbal combination.

Gui Zhi Tang is not simply a “cold formula.”

We don’t say, “Oh, you have a cold? Here, take this. “

Instead, it is a formula designed for a very particular physiological state.

When a pathogen is on the outermost layer of the body — before it has penetrated more deeply — we refer to this as being on the exterior.

Some common signs of a cold-cold on the exterior of the body include:

• chills, a feeling of wanting to bundle up

• sweating or a tendency to sweat

• deep fatigue

• body aches and unsoothable body pain

• aversions to wind and cold

• mild fever

In this kind of presentation, symptoms are beginning but are not deeply internal yet.

You can imagine that the pathogen is trying to come in (or “invade”) more robustly, and strategically, we want to push it off.

Chinese medicine calls this releasing the exterior.

There are herbal combinations that are great for exactly this purpose.

We do not need to wait until you are sicker to act. Herbs can be incorporated right away.

Let’s look at each herb in the formula and talk about where to get these herbs:

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It’s not infrequent that someone schedules an appointment with me and, in the beginning, attempts to describe what is at the crux of their longstanding health frustration, but struggles to tell me what is truly going on.

Their language weaves in and out of vague symptoms. They do not feel sharply ill, but you also don’t feel clear, energized, or fully well.

They can’t point to recurring headaches, nausea, or diarrhea, but they are clear that something is “off”.

They feel:

• heavy

• foggy

• sluggish

• swollen

It may be hard to wake up in the mornings.

In these kinds of instances, we often talk about what Chinese medicine calls dampness and explore the possibility of damp accumulation.

Dampness can be thought of as a state of imbalance in the body where fluids and digestion are not moving or transforming efficiently.

When we talk about dampness, we are not only talking about water retention, although that can be a symptom.

We’re also not talking about a toxin.

Dampness is less about excess fluid itself and more about impaired transformation.

In your mind, hold the ideas of accumulation, stagnation, and metabolic sluggishness.

Dampness often feels like the body is struggling to clear itself.

Common reflections people share when they are indeed experiencing dampness usually include a combo of:

Physical experiences like:

• bloating after meals

• heaviness in the limbs

• sluggish mornings

• brain fog

• fatigue that feels dull rather than super depleted

• puffiness or swelling

• sticky stools or mucus tendencies

And emotional experiences like:

• mentally “muddy”

• low motivation or low inspiration

• mildly depressed

  

Let’s take a peek at why dampness develops and why your “healthy habits” sometimes make it worse.

Our modern lifestyles tend to generate dampness quite easily.

Think about it.

Some of the simplest reasons for dampness include weak digestion, chronic stress, irregular eating, an excess of cold and raw foods, overeating, and a sedentary lifestyle.

Raise your hands if none of those sound like you. 😅

On top of that, people tend to think that trendy so-called “health foods” will resolve their symptoms, for some of these foods that appear healthy nutritionally are not always easy for the body to transform physiologically.

Some of the big culprits are smoothies, raw salads, iced drinks, and constant grazing.

Artemisia Obi, MA

Chinese Medicine Practitioner | Clinical Herbalist

artaobiherbs.com

@artaobiherbs

Schedule an online Chinese medicine consultation

New Offerings & Upcoming Events

Introductory Offering:

Online Tongue Analysis & Mini-Assessment

Have you been thinking about Chinese medicine and feeling curious to learn more, but still unsure about actually investing in 1:1 work? Online tongue analysis sessions allow you to try out working with me. These short sessions are 20 minutes ($30) and provide you with a better understanding of some of the imbalances at play in your body. You’ll also learn about some herbs and foods to start working with right away.

Learn more and schedule

And maybe you want to have better digestion.

You’re trying to resolve your lingering symptoms, but you’re still not getting better.

What’s up?

Digestion is the cornerstone of health.

Every aspect of our health is downstream from digestion.

From a Chinese medicine blood quality, qi production (energy), fluids, emotional stability, and even the clarity of our minds are dependent on how well the spleen and stomach can transform food and fluids.

This spleen-stomach functionality is not only a matter of food choice.

If you’re eating a broad diet with plenty of vegetables and proteins, and your diet consists of a majority of cooked and warm foods (rather than raw), your food choices are probably pretty good.

In Chinese medicine, the question is not solely whether your food is healthy. The more nuanced question is whether it matches your current digestive capacity.

The same diet can be supportive in one person and taxing in another.

There is no one-size-fits-all perfect match for everyone, certainly not in this medicinal system.

Instead, we need to look at the specific imbalances that are present within the individual and go forward from there.

Let’s look at some common imbalances and talk through what they might mean in terms of persistent digestive issues.

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