 So I had an experience on a recent trip to China that really made me think. As I was walking up into the sacred mountains above Chengdu, where a famous temple was, I began thinking about how this ancient civilization for thousands of years has been concerned with longevity and harmony with nature and oneself, and really how different it feels from a conventional medical doctor point of view who's typically more focused on medical treatments than health or longevity. So I was curious, what did the ancient Chinese know that modern science doesn't? Now today's video will jump in a little more on how the ancient traditional Chinese medicine practices, viewed health and longevity. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hain, board licensed acupuncturist and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day. So let's jump in. So why do people die today, mostly in the developed world? Because I don't live in the Philippines, I don't live in a rural part of Southeast Asia where I could get cholera or typhoid. But in the modern world, people still do die just of different things that are typically more chronic in nature. And when I was in China, I was speaking to this one monk one day and I just asked sort of a pointed question, you know, not about philosophy, but really about what are the essential practices to do on a daily basis to help you live a long life and really more important, how do you live a great quality of life? How do you stay healthy the years of your life? Because as someone who'd been chronically ill, do not want to live a long life if it's a sick one. I don't want to live a long life if I'm on 10 medications. So what do we actually need to do? And he said to me, Chinese medicine is about yin and yang. And when it comes to modern people, you need to have yang movement in your body, but yin stillness in the mind and in the spirit. When you look at people today, they sit at their desk all day long. And when you look at the problems that we have, there's in the physical body too much yin, too much fat, too much inactivity, we're consuming lots of high calorie foods that are low in nutrition. The yang qi is like the vital force. You could think of nutrition as the vital force of a plant or an apple. The apples these days are this big, but sometimes just tastes like water. And the broccoli looks dark green, but when you put it in your fridge for one day, it's like rubber. So our culture, our civilization is a lot of yin. It looks big. It looks real. It looks like a real nice juicy apple. But the yang qi, the vitality, the nutrition, the essence that is the healing value that people consume in food, the real nutrition and nourishment is probably less than ever before. But our physical bodies are prone to too much yin accumulation, fat. We're not moving at all, but we're more stressed than ever because of the pace of life and the way that we live. When you look at the news tabloids and you Google the top causes of death in America today, inevitably what you see no matter what newspaper you're going to is that cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke, and secondary complications that are also related to cardiovascular issues like diabetes, like kidney issues, and like other related issues from blood pressure that is uncontrolled. These are some of the leading causes of death today. And all of these things involve just one thing primarily, which is circulation. Now ancient doctors in traditional Chinese medicine really focused a lot on vitality and longevity, meaning that there are cultural terms in the field of traditional Chinese medicine that deal with how do you assess vitality and health and how do you treat vitality and health. And they came up with terms like Zheng Qi, the upright Qi, or Yuan Qi, the primal Qi, or Yang Qi, the Yang Qi. All of these are cultural concepts used to understand where does the patient lie in between life and in between death. And it helps us to understand also things from a pre-scientific point of view where someone gets hit with a viral infection or flu, what determines whether someone gets sick and dies, or someone gets a little minor flu, or someone gets a flu, and then they get chronic symptoms for months or years, like long COVID. The primary determining factor is the vitality, right? The Zheng Qi, or Yuan Qi, or Yang Qi, whatever term you want to use, but it is the battery charge. And traditional Chinese medicine, to my knowledge, is the only form of medicine that has ever been able to document the process of that, assess it, and learn how to build it through medicinal formulas and the way that we live. Ancient doctors knew that, number one, if you have enough of a battery charge, even if you get sick, it won't be that prolonged. And if you catch a viral infection, you won't get deathly ill. And on top of that, you'll have more energy, your GI will function well, etc. And that one of the primary ways that a person lives a long life is that they have to have good circulation of what ancient doctors call Qi and blood. And that, basically, where there are blockages in Qi and blood, we could view this through a purely mechanistic lens when there's dysfunction in the GI, dysfunction in the menstrual cycle, dysfunction in your heart and cardiovascular system. That stagnation can ultimately produce disease or in its worst case scenario, it can produce death. Like a damned up river that initially was flowing. And now there's logs and there's garbage and now it's festering with moss and algae and mold. And now there's real toxic products in there. You wouldn't want to drink that water, right? Or else you could get sick from bacterial infections. But the same thing happens when the cardiovascular system is clogged up and a person has a stroke or a heart attack. They can never be themselves again or they can die. So from a traditional training's medicine point of view and really even a modern scientific point of view, you could argue that the key to longevity is about flow and circulation. For example, flow in the body. The most obvious one is diet and exercise, right? A poor diet will produce cardiovascular issues, which is a decrease in the flow due to plaque buildup, for example, or the hardening of the arteries. But the flow in the physical body goes the other way as well, right? A person who regularly exercises has lower blood pressure, better blood sugar regulation. They can eat a wider variety of foods and less likely to develop diabetes. But that physical movement of the body is just one form of flow, right? A lot of what we see today is stagnation. Physical stagnation, sitting on the couch, sitting at a desk. It's digestive stagnation. People who are overeating or eating too many calorie-rich foods or a lot of indigestion and acid reflux and small intestine bacterial overgrowth. These diseases of excess, which are paradoxical benefits of living in such a rich culture and civilization today, but also flow in the mind and flow in the body and in the spirit. You know, I had a man in his early 40s come into my practice and he said, I feel like I'm having a midlife crisis and I'm not sure if I should get divorced and if I should go move to Nepal and do all these things that I've really been wanting to do for a while. And this guy was walking the razor's edge, just a tinge from giving up on his life, leaving a marriage, leaving where he lived, leaving his job, starting over. And when I asked him what's causing all this upheaval out of the blue, and he said, these were the things that I always wished I was going to do or I always thought I was going to do. And now in my early 40s, I realized I didn't really do any of the things that I actually wanted to do in my life. So for a lot of people, flow in the spirit looks like exploring a lot of those paths that you've always wanted to explore. That kind of personal energy you feel from excitement and passion and novelty and variety, but really chasing your passions is a profoundly healing force. Flow in the body can be as material as diet and exercise, but flow in the spirit is pursuing that life that really excites you and makes you feel alive. That by itself sends a powerful cascade that is a healing force on its own. And the opposite, sitting in a nine to five job where you feel like you're dying releases stress hormones all day long. And we know the feeling, but there's real scientific evidence behind it as well. So longevity is about flow, the physical flow from exercise to the good diet, the psychospiritual flow from following a path with heart, following your dharma, doing the work you feel you're born to do is all key for inner wellbeing as well. Now I've also put together a series of four of the rituals you guys can do that will help you live long. And there's a free guide. It's the first link below this video called 40 of the rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. Check it out. It's a free guide. I also have info below if you'd like to become a patient on my locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine. I accept a limited number of new patients every month. There's a link below to contact my private practice and my clinic. And one more thing, I've just put together a brand new online program called introduction to healing with traditional Chinese medicine. It's a new online program I've made because I know most of you all over the world will never be able to come see me. So this program is one way you can learn daily practices that can help you heal. And it is something right below this video. You should see a link there to learn more about the healing library of all my online programs. And that's something that will help keep this channel as sponsor and ad free as possible. I have a great other related video on the key to longevity from traditional Chinese medicine point of view right here.