Organs and Elements

Why Even Healthy Foods Aren’t Healthy for Everyone

By Robert Keller | August 25, 2022
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Every culture has a concept of foods that are healthy and foods that are unhealthy. From early childhood, we are told that some things are good for us and some things are bad for us. And that it’s ok to eat the bad foods, just not too much and not until after we eat the […]

Pungent Flavor and the Lungs in Chinese Medicine

By Robert Keller | August 9, 2022
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The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, written approximately 2,000 years ago, describes a series of systematic correspondences that group material phenomena according to five-phases. In this correspondence the metal phase has resonance with and is connected to the Lungs and Large Intestine, the season of fall, the color of white, the flavor of pungent […]

About Earth

By Robert Keller | October 15, 2017
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It is unclear historically when the Five Element theory arose, but it does appear in the literature by about 500 BC. Initially, the Five Element theory (the term Five Agent theory is technically more correct, but Five Element has become more popular and familiar and so I use it here) was simply a grouping. Phenomena […]

Nothing to Study – The Concept of an Organ in Chinese Medicine

By Robert Keller | October 15, 2017
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The concept of organs in Chinese medicine can sometimes be a confusing topic for patients. In a Western culture, it can be very difficult to understand that Liver depression (this is the technical term for Liver Qi stagnation) is not going to show up on a blood test. This brings up the very important topic […]

The Kidneys Store the Jing

By Robert Keller | October 15, 2017
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“The Kidneys store the Jing” is one of the stated functions of the Kidneys in Chinese medicine. The term Jing is one which has no English language equivalent. It refers to a substance which is endowed to each person, through their parents, at the moment of conception. It has both a qualitative and a quantitative […]

Honesty – The Virtue of the Spleen

By Robert Keller | October 15, 2017
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The Spleen is the organ whose Chinese function is most difficult to understand from a Western biomedical perspective. Unlike all of the other organs, the Chinese concept of the Spleen has very little to do with the anatomical spleen (see also Nothing to Study – The Concept of an Organ in Chinese Medicine).  Some of […]