 For thousands of years, physicians, hermits, and emperors have been seeking out the keys to longevity. Now, within Chinese medicine, this goes by many different names, but today in this video, we are going to be talking about yang qi, what it is, how you can increase it, and why it is THE secret to longevity. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of the Healthbook Master of the Day, and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Now before we jump in, I've put together two very important links right below this video. The first is for a free guide, 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 in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice in clinic right below this video. When we talk about the concept of qi, you tend to have people who are in two different camps. Camp number one is that qi is some kind of mystical energy that I can shoot lasers out of my eyes, and I can affect objects, and I can do healings, and I can cast spells. Group number two is that qi is something functional. That qi is a complex interplay of the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system, the electrical system of the nervous system, etc. in the body. Now regardless of what is the objective end of the day truth, when we talk about an idea called yang qi, we are talking about something that everyone can recognize called vitality. Everyone knows someone who is full of energy. We've seen the small child with the bright shining eyes running around like a nut job and screaming all day. You know in Lao Zhe in the Dao De Jing, he says, why can a child scream all day and yet its voice never grows hoarse? That is yang qi. That is raw vitality, high energy, bright shining eyes, physically running around, and we all know the opposite. If you've ever seen someone on their death bed, if you've ever seen someone at the end of their life where they have the thousand yards there, the glassy eyes, there is no luster in their complexion or in their eyes, they speak slowly, they turn, react slowly, their body is physically weak, its dried out, their skin is dry. We know what vitality and we know what lack of vitality look like. And these are concepts that are not as easily measured as just with labs and imaging that your PCP may do. They are more complex than that. But my point is that people know what health looks like. When we meet someone with it, we can feel it. It's palpable. Now, hermits and emperors and conquistadors for thousands of years have been looking to the secret to longevity and all the way from people sending out troops to go to other continents and other islands and they never returned to emperors taking compounds filled with even heavy metals like lead and probably developing significant cognitive issues looking for this secret to longevity. But yangchi, in my opinion, is that secret. Yangchi is a combination of all of the practices that we do, not only that encompass preventative medicine, that encompass exercise, good diet, the way we live, even things like purpose and meaning. I mean, you look at the blue zones research, more than half of the factors that Dan Butener found in his blue zones research were not even physical. They had nothing to do with what you ate or how much exercise you did. It was about having close family and friend ties, social ties, having a meaning and a purpose for a living, having strong community, having ikigai, right, the Japanese term for I guess purpose and for meaning. More than half the factors were not even material that predicted longevity. So it's interesting when we talk about longevity, people so are so quick to focus on supplements and food items and medical procedures. But a lot of it is the psychological placebo effect in some ways and the real effect of what meaning and what purpose and what connection the effect those have on our physiology and on the spirit of the person. So yangchi is the combination of all of those things. So how can you assess your yangchi, the state of it, and how can you boost it, right? It's a million dollar question. Now, if we go far back to the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, the very first chapter of this book discusses why people used to live to 100 and still, you know, live out there a lot of lifespan and why people today barely live to 50. They're old and they're gray and they're worn out. It says right there, the very first chapter, the Bible of longevity. That book is almost probably around 2000 years old. You know, probably a couple hundred or maybe a couple thousand years for the original text to come together. And the very first chapter gets right to the point and says, this is why people now are worn out, old and gray, at half the age that we're supposed to be able to live to. And it goes into a series of things ranging from, you know, people are not balanced in terms of yin and yang. We overwork and we underrest. We don't adjust and harmonize ourselves with the four seasons. We drink alcohol like we drink water, all these other factors. But what I think is so interesting is that we can categorize it into a few main buckets. So the first fundamental bucket is yin and yang, right? Work and rest, doing and not doing, being active at work and being inactive, resting and taking time off. And the way I think about this first concept is about tension. How much tension you have in this system. So for so many of us, you know, in America, people are working 40, 50, 60 hour weeks and getting 12 days of vacation off per year. Compare that into Europe, where people will get four weeks of paid vacation per year as a standard. 12 days versus 30 days, right? That's almost three times the amount of vacation that Europeans can get off and it's paid many times. So for many of us, the first way you boost your resources for modern people is that we're overworked and underrested. And most people, if you give them a prolonged vacation, they will begin to experience signs and symptoms of increased vitality. More, they'll feel more rested, they'll feel a better mood, they'll be more smiley and friendly, they'll be less stressed, they'll feel less tense. Symptoms they have that may be stress related or are exacerbated by stress, whether it's upper GI symptoms like indigestion, insomnia, anxiety, those will begin to decrease. So first, you improve your vitality by increasing your rest, which is so often the kink for many of us here today. The second one is really, I would say yin and yang in terms of our diet and the way that we live. Day to day, many people experience an increase in energy if they just eat a better diet or if they eat less food. That's of course a million dollar difficult problem to solve or billion dollar problem, right? I mean, Americans are getting fatter than ever before and a lot of that is due to our life. So reflecting on the balance, the scales, where those are in your life, right? Maybe you are someone who is a super driven, overworked person and you know, if you had a four weeks sabbatical, you would feel like a million bucks again. Maybe that's not you. Maybe you're someone who actually has a lot of free time and you know, your sin, if you wanna call it that, is that you're very inactive and you eat a lot. So you know, maybe activity, physical activity, getting outside, sports, workouts and eating better food is going to be the thing increasing your yang, your output is going to be the thing that changes your life. And for other people, it may be that you know what? It's the effect on the spirit and the nervous system working a soul crushing job, where those other factors in your life are fine. But you go to this nine to seven job, you don't like it. So in the afternoon, you have to have a big cup of coffee and a donut because it gets you through the day and it makes you happy and your work doesn't. Then you come home and you get some takeout Chinese food and a beer or two and you know, you do that for five years and you've gained 25 pounds. So reflecting, where is the balance out of balance for me? Is it too much doing? Is it not enough doing? Is it overstressed? Is it not using the system enough? Reflecting on that. And of course, for me personally in a medical context when I treat patients, the number one way I increase their yangchi is through compounded herbal formulas. So this is where these legendary herbs like ginseng have come into human history as being very, very famous. So ginseng does have documented hundreds of effects in terms of the biochemistry and many, many ways that it operates including on the HPA axis. So for people that are extremely burnt out or people that have chronic anxiety, chronic depression, ginseng is one of those herbs in a compound that we often will use. Throughout time, obviously it's way sexier and way easier to consume a medicinal compound than it is to change your life, right? I mean, as evidenced by the hundreds of millions of Americans taking pharmaceuticals every day versus changing life, it is way easier for me to take a little pill than it is to uproot my whole life, eat different, begin to exercise, work less hours. So with my own patients, we are using custom compounded herbal formulas from traditional Chinese medicine as the single most effective way to improve someone's resources and yangchi, even if they do nothing else in their personal life. So preserving your yangchi, the most important for longevity and good health. All right guys, that's all I have today. Check out those links below the video and I'll see you soon.