 So if you've wondered what in the hell is traditional Chinese medicine, you might have also wondered, well, how does a TCM doctor diagnose and treat your disease or your illness? Now when I posed this question to some of you on Instagram, I got some pretty funny responses. One of them said, by analyzing Yin and Yang in your body, eh, you know, not bad. Another said, based on which of the five elements you are, also decent. And then the third said, observing your aura to diagnose your past life illness. I think that person took a few too many magic mushrooms. But in all seriousness, diagnosing an illness and treating it in traditional Chinese medicine is very systematic and very clinical. And it's not as mystical as people think. So in this video, I want to introduce you to the four diagnostic methods that have been used for thousands of years. Hey, it's Alexine, author of the health book, Master of the Day. What I've included the first link down there below is for this little PDF I put together called Li Qingyun's Four Keys to How to Live to Over a Hundred. So it's based on a historical figure, this Taoist hermit, I guess you could say, and the four habits he did daily to live to be over a hundred. You can check it out. It's the first link in the description there below the video. Now in traditional Chinese medicine throughout history, there have been four primary diagnostic methods that are very concrete and very clinical. So they're called the szezhen. And what they basically are are the first, which is wang, is inspection or observation. The second called wun is listening or smelling. The third is called wun, which is questioning. And the fourth is called qie, which is palpation. So let's talk about these in detail a little bit more. So the first one, inspection or observation is really about a few concrete things. The big picture, like the most common things we look at or observe are the tongue, as well as the person's facial color, the way they carry their body weight, and the way they actually carry themselves in general. So their actual body gate, the way they walk in the room can indicate a lot about the person, where the illness is, and how severe it is. So what does this actually tell us? This first one, it tells us is a person deficient and run down or in an excessive pattern, like they have an actual acute fever, or maybe they're like the typical textbook American guy, businessman, who's eating in and out burgers twice a day, drinks tons of alcohol, and he's beat red and has the drinkers nose. Someone that comes in like that is very different and has a clear diagnostic pattern versus someone that comes in that's thin and pale. So this can show us where our patient is uncomfortable. It can show us where the body's uncomfortable and give us clues to lead us into our diagnosis and treatment. Now the second thing, listening and smelling really comes down to two core things in my practice. It really comes down to, number one, you're listening to the patient's voice, or even their dominant emotions, and number two, you're actually smelling their body smells. So when you're listening to the patient's voice, fundamentally there's a big difference in diagnosis. If the person's like, hey, what's up, nice to meet you, like, how you doing, buddy? You know, great day out there, right? You know, like when the person's almost seizing or they're almost shouting at you when they're talking versus someone that comes in and they're kind of their body's postures collapse and like, hey, you know, how's it doing, like, yeah, life's, you know, life's okay. They just disappear from the frame of life in reality. There's a big difference. And in Chinese medicine, those are considered diagnostic, not a build off of that, even dominant emotions that a person experiences are linked to organ systems and organs that are out of balance. So if you know the dominant emotion a person expresses, it can be like a chicken or egg scenario. Did that organ imbalance cause the angry person, or were they experiencing a lot of this one negative emotion that then affected that organ specifically? Now, the third questioning is really traditionally what you think of when you go to your physician, right? He or she might ask, so if you're going in for digestive problems, you say, you know, what are bowel movements like, do you have any abdominal pain, do you get cramping? What do you eat? What do your stools look like? All of those diagnostic questions with energy, your mood, emotions, your past medical history, family history, those are involved in the questioning portion. And what this tells us is essentially it can tell us your medical history, which is important, your familial history, as well as the 10 questions in Chinese medicine we typically use are used to decipher really big clinical patterns related to what specific organs or what specific formula or acupuncture treatment we could tailor for you today. Now, those questions are also really important because they help us determine a person's constitutional pattern. So if lifelong you're showing this constitutional pattern of, you know, having loose stools or diarrhea, and you're having no appetite, and you've always been very thin, that's very, very useful clinically for us to know. Now the last chia is palpation. The most famous throughout history has been abdominal palpation and palpation of the radial artery, which is the pulse. These two methods of diagnosis, they're very, very useful, but specifically the pulse, it takes a lot more clinical skill and experience to know what the pulse is really saying. And clinically, when you use it for what formula or what acupuncture approach, and frankly, when it's not that useful, the abdomen and the pulse are very, very, very important methods as well as just general palpation of the channels. So really the two biggest throughout history were palpating the abdomen, as well as palpating some of the distal pulses in the foot, as well as the radial pulse and the wrist, and other areas like, for example, in your neck. And all of these were used as other diagnostic tools in addition to the other three. So what is the pulse or the abdomen specifically tell us? It tells us, number one, about the base state of the patient's health, tells us about the state of circulation, the state of the nervous system, and honestly, whether or not this condition they're presenting with is due to them being exhausted or due to them eating one too many in and out burgers every single day for 10 years. So I hope that helps kind of give an overview of just how really clinical and systematic and concrete diagnosis is in traditional Chinese medicine. Now even though the person you may see may use one method more or one method less, these are the most common commonly used by almost all practitioners. I think it's important to know that because if you're seeing someone, you know what to expect, but also it's not as mystical as people think. And I think it's a lot easier to understand it and respect the field when you understand it's just as clinical as conventional medicine when you go see your physician or even you're going to see your surgeon. There are very clear diagnostic criteria used to diagnose and treat illness and also assess your progression or, you know, the fact that you're getting worse. These objective and subjective measures are necessary to know if you're getting better or not. And it's no different in Chinese medicine. So I hope it helps give you a little overview there of what to expect. Now don't forget I've included the free PDF down there below on Li Qingyun's Four Daily Rituals to help you live past 100 and again I've got more recent videos on this exact topic right over here.