"If the mind thinks, the essence will be consumed. The mind has no place to return, the qi has no attachment, and all diseases are born." - Qin Bowei, a modern Chinese medicine expert, "The essence of the Famous Medical Cases of the Qing Dynasty · Ma Pei's Medical Cases"
Everyone knows that the kidney is very important in traditional Chinese medicine. The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon says, "The kidney is responsible for storing essence and regulating the mind. The kidney is the key to strengthening the body, and the skills are essential." Here, "essence" refers not only to a man's semen, but also to the material basis of the human body. People with abundant kidney essence have good physical strength, good mental ability, and sufficient vitality.
Yuanqi is derived from the essence of parents, and is formed by the combination of the essence of water and grain and natural clear qi. It refers to the basic substances and activity abilities of physiological functions of human tissues and organs, equivalent to what we often refer to as metabolism.
In daily life, there are many wrong ways to damage vitality. In response to the common problems among modern people, I have summarized three main ways that damage vitality the most:
The most direct way - indulgence.
This includes promiscuity, masturbation, prostitution, and so on. Indulgence can damage the kidneys, deplete true essence, leak true yang, and cause damage to both true yin and true yang, leading to various illnesses and a shortened lifespan. On the contrary, if the mind and spirit are stable and the essence of abstinence is precious, then the vitality is sufficient.
My doctoral supervisor, who is over fifty years old, is still full of energy. He handles heavy work during the day and often stays up all night writing articles, proposals, and revising papers for students. His career is very successful, and his family is also very happy. In school, his family can be considered a model family. According to ancient beliefs, he belonged to the type of person who possessed both wealth and honor.
In a chance encounter, the mentor accidentally said that he looked down upon the practice of promiscuous relationships between men and women. Although he had many opportunities to go abroad and travel, he would never watch adult channels, pornographic videos, or engage in prostitution every time he checked into a hotel or guesthouse. He himself has a pure heart and a clean mind!
Small things show big things, and we can imagine his character. Not indulging in debauchery has played a significant role in his physical health and vitality.
2. The quickest way: stay up late, stay up late (after 23:00), and secretly consume liver, kidney, yin, and essence.
The human body is an organic whole, and the environment inside the body is synchronized, coordinated, and balanced with the external environment. There are day and night in the sky, and people get up and down. The body temperature, pulse, and blood pressure of the human body all change with the rhythm of day and night. Continuously staying up late can disrupt the biological rhythm, not only causing insomnia, but also leading to a decrease in immune function and causing or aggravating various diseases.
Medical research has found that healthy lifestyle habits, especially regular sleep, can promote the normal secretion of hormones in the body and maintain relative balance, ensuring that organs work in a stable internal environment. If you often stay up late, the secretion pattern of hormones will also change, leading to varying degrees of damage to organs and viscera.
Someone conducted a comparative study between people who stay up late for a long time and those who adhere to regular sleep, and found that the secretion of various hormones in the body of people who frequently stay up late is on average 50% higher than that of people who sleep regularly, especially adrenaline and noradrenaline secretion, and blood vessel constriction is 50% higher than the latter.
Many people know that staying up late can damage the liver. When a person is lying down, the blood returns to the liver. At night, the blood needs to enter the liver to detoxify and be redistributed during the Yin period. The concept of staying up late and damaging the kidneys is not clear. We say that the human body, like nature, undergoes a transformation between yin and yang. At night, yang energy needs to descend into the kidney water to be collected and nurtured, which is called the combination of water and fire. Staying up late is equivalent to desperately lifting up the dormant yang energy to provide oneself with spiritual entertainment and work.
In this way, the yang energy cannot decrease or be collected, but instead rises against the trend. Some people may show symptoms of internal heat after staying up late, and they don't understand what's going on, so they go to take medicine to dispel heat. As a result, the Yang energy itself did not rest well and was already very weak. They went to kill it, causing the more the fire was dispelled, the more weak the Yang became, resulting in a vicious cycle.
In fact, clinical data also shows that kidney disease patients are becoming younger and younger. Previously, only those in their fifties or sixties were diagnosed with the disease, but now patients aged 20-35 account for nearly 40%. Obviously, the reasons why people in this group are troubled by kidney disease are closely related to unhealthy lifestyle habits.
The age range of 20 to 35 is the prime of life, with high levels of stress. Staying up late is almost a common occurrence, with students staying up late to surf the internet and office workers working overtime, which is most likely to harm their kidneys. Among patients with kidney disease, many are students, teachers, office workers, and those who have long-term exposure to computers. The prominent characteristics of these people are sitting still for a long time, excessive use of the brain, staying up late, and insomnia.
3. The most intense way - to get angry.
When a person gets angry, their whole body's qi and blood become unbalanced, and their body becomes unhealthy.
If all of the above mentioned factors are taken into account and frequently violated, one's vitality will significantly decrease, and various symptoms will appear to some extent. This is when the body is saying to you, "Brother, save some vitality, I can hardly hold on." If you don't take it seriously, your body will suddenly weaken and become plagued with various diseases. It will be too late to regret, don't blame your body for not reminding you.
Disclaimer: This article is a sharing of health knowledge. The drugs, prescriptions, acupuncture and moxibustion and other treatment and health preserving methods mentioned in this article should be applied under the guidance of professional doctors, and should not be applied by yourself. We are not responsible for any issues arising from improper use.