 Healing can be messy. Now, one thing I've seen clinically quite a lot, as well as in my own health journey, is this idea that, theoretically, the body is always trying to heal itself. But when you look at some people who are really sick for a long period of time, it looks like that isn't actually happening. And why that's not happening is often more important than how the person got sick in the first place. So in this video, I thought I would share a little bit about this hinge theory of healing that I've been meditating on quite a lot. Hey, guys, Dr. Alex Hein, doctor of Chinese medicine, author of the health book, Master of the Day. Now, before we jump into today's video, I have two very important links right below this video. The first is for a free download, which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine, the way to contact my clinic is right below this video. I saw a very interesting patient when I was in school, and he came in and when he walked into the clinic, he had this notebook of hundreds of exams, hundreds of medical procedures, and hundreds of supplements he was taking, excel sheets, the date, the time, the number of times he'd taken the supplement, the dosage, the doctor that I was with briefly said, you know, what brings you in today? I see based on your chart, this is what you've been treated for. And the guy went into this long story about how he used to be 210 pounds, and ever since this illness, he's just been losing more and more weight. He has all these other weird unusual symptoms, and he can't really figure out what's been going on with his body. And since then, things have just gotten far worse. I mean, he went from 210 pounds to 150 pounds. The guy in front of me was quite thin and small looking, which is interesting because he said he was quite a large muscular guy six or seven years ago. So not only was he losing lost 60 pounds, but he had these crazy complaints that kind of were a red flag, right? They were just hypersensitivities to everything seemed like he couldn't digest food or herbs or any real substance. After seeing him, it really made me think that this guy was really doing a lot to help himself. He was doing everything imaginable. He couldn't work. He spent hours a day, 10 hours per day researching everything related to his condition and what could possibly be affecting it. And yet, despite all of that work he was doing for some reason, he wasn't getting better. And it made me reflect quite a lot on why people get sick in the first place. That's one problem. But why don't people heal when they're doing a lot? They really are doing the best they can to give themselves every chance of healing. Why does that not happen? So there's this clinical observation I've made now many times with many patients where they've done all the changes they possibly can, but their body still isn't healing. They're still locked in this world between life or death where they don't feel well enough to really live, but they're not sick enough that their body will actually die. And I just call it the hinge theory of healing where the door hinge of the person's vitality, vital resources, the resources, we call it yangqi usually has gotten stuck. Like the door hinge has gotten stuck where the door needs to be fully open for you to heal and feel well and be a functioning human. Fully closed is to die from illness, but for some reason it's stuck a And there's not enough yangqi from our perspective to actually push it all the way open. Sometimes even the dance is back and forth when the person's rested and doing well, their symptoms will get better. And as soon as they get depleted, those symptoms will come back again. This is very, very important because it's very diagnostic from our perspective. Now we've talked about the idea of yangqi in Chinese medicine, which is extremely important. Because that you could call it the vitality, you could call the person's resources, you could call it the strength of their immune system, you could call it how rested they are. But in general, it's not an easy concept to define as one specific thing, because there is no material yangqi in the body. It's a concept described physiology and pathology. So in the hinge analogy, the person's hinge has been the door has been stuck a jar. And sometimes I find in these cases, it requires a forceful pushing to actually make some progress. So it's in these cases, you have to introduce a big dramatic change to see clinical results. Now for me, most of the time with my patients, Chinese formulas are that impulse that is strong enough. But a smaller percentage of people require much, much more. And one person that comes to mind is there was another woman I saw when I was in school and she was having severe insomnia. Same thing, same story, long list of things, hundreds of things she's tried, unplugged the Wi-Fi at night, became sensitive to EMFs she believed, sensitive to everything. When someone says that, or kind of a red flag goes up in my mind that really rather than necessarily EMFs being the thing affecting them, maybe their vital resources from our perspective have gotten so low that a lot of things in their external environment affect them legitimately. I don't know if EMFs are one of those things, but they are so hypersensitized. Their nervous system is so hyper vigilant that they cannot rest. After going back and forth with this woman for a few visits when I was her intern, you know, I talked to my professor, the doctor was running the shift, and we were saying, maybe she just needs a vacation, man, to get away from all the conditioning of, you know, she sees her bed at night and the subconscious knows she's not going to sleep well again. So this Pavlovian classical conditioning of knowing that she's not going to sleep well, even if it's not conscious at this point or knowing that if she eats that food, it's going to cause this discomfort. Long story short, she goes on a 10 day vacation with her husband to Thailand. She comes back with this miraculous report. I wasn't getting food sensitivities. I slept seven hours for the first time in several years. She was glowing and it made me think about, she was one of those rusted door hinge cases for years. She was not seeing these tectonic shifts. And then with this vacation, she broke all the conditioning patterns that were making her stay ill. So sitting home alone for most people when seriously ill, whether it's physical pain or fibromyalgia or insomnia or depression or other illnesses, sometimes, you know, the person feels like they want to do that because they're so ill. But from the outside, a person sitting home alone is not healing to the nervous system or to the spirit or physiology of a human being. That is not what a human being is designed to do. We're designed to be engaged in life to have a purpose to have a role to have work to do as a provider or a supporter or something in between. And yet so often chronic illness pushes people into a more isolated, more alone, more kind of state where they are impotent. They're, they just can't do anything. And that further rust that hinge sitting alone home depressed because I can't work because I can't eat that rust that hinge further to where it becomes very, very difficult. The point of sharing this lesson is that if you are someone in that state or know someone, you have to provoke a big change. And one doctor, a Chinese medicine doctor calls it provoking a fight. You have to provoke the fight, whether it's with Chinese formulas, giving a strong impulse to the physiology or the nervous system where it's been stuck. And now you're saying time to move. That can be the fight. The fight can be something that just totally upends your life. A two week camping trip, even though you're a terrible sleeper under the stars, no electronics or something else altogether. Some of these are what's required in the face of really serious illness that doesn't seem to be going in either direction. And you feel too alive to die, but too dead to really live a functional, real human life. So this has been a very important clinical concept for me that has helped me and my patients quite a lot. And I hope it helps you as well. Now before you guys go, don't forget right below this video is a link if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine. You can contact my clinic and private practice before you go. There's two other related videos that can help you heal right there.