 One of the things that frustrates me the most about really conventional medicine, but also even many forms of alternative medicine is that there really is no model for health. In other words, if you go to your primary care physician and you say, hey doc, I want to be healthier. How do we assess my health? Maybe they say diet and exercise. Maybe they recommend medication. Maybe they don't. Maybe they say, rest more, take it easy, avoid stress. But there is no real model. There's no systematic way of assessing a person's health. Maybe besides blood work and even then a high percentage of my patients with normal labs don't feel well. So what gives? Now in this video, I thought I would share more about this idea of what is yang qi and why you should protect it. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hain, author of the health book, Master of the Day, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture. Now before we jump in here, I have two very important links right below the video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out and contact my private practice below. The second is for a free guide, which has four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So check those out right below this video. So let's talk about this idea of yang qi. Yang qi, in my opinion, is not a measurable thing in the body. It is not you use some Curley in photography and you can see yang qi. Yang qi is a concept. And I think yang qi is most clearly embodied in the idea of vitality. Something you can observe, but you can't quite quantify, right? If you've ever seen a really energetic child that is running around all day smiling, laughing, just crazy energy and you've compared that feeling and the sparkle in our eye to a 90 year old that is on their deathbed, you know what yang qi looks like and you know what the lack of yang qi looks like. So we could conceptualize this as vitality, as a concept. So vitality is not something you can put in a bottle. It's not something a medication will increase. Vitality is a general kind of concept. Ancient physicians in Chinese medicine tried to quantify this idea of yang qi because we have thousands of herbs that strengthen the yang qi of the body in various ways. Famous ones today are herbs like jinsing and astragalus huang qi. But really there are many herbs that strengthen the yang qi of the body and strengthen yang qi in different areas. So yang qi is vitality as in immune system strength, resistance to disease. It's physical warmth. So if you are someone who genetically constitutionally runs cold, you have a weak yang qi constitution. It's the ability to focus. It's willpower. It's strength. All of this is yang qi. These are kind of your reserves. So why is yang qi important and how do you build it? So yang qi is important because first and foremost, it's your immune strength, right? Weak yang is usually someone with weak immunity. This is a person who gets sick easily. When they do get sick, they're more likely to have chronic lingering symptoms for years and not to develop a strong, acute response that then gets resolved quickly. People with weak yang qi are really predisposed to more chronic symptoms in general and are people who tend to be chronically ill for a long time or have cyclical symptoms. They tend to have weak digestion. They tend to run cold. They tend to have issues with their menstrual cycle and these kind of patterns. But really, your yang qi is willpower, immunity and your resources. So why is yang qi important? That's what we just talked about, but how do you actually build it? Now, in my experience, you really have people that come into this world with genetic constitutions, meaning there's a genetic tendency towards certain strengths and weaknesses. These days they call it genetics and ancient times they called it constitution because it was obvious to ancient people that diseases run in families like GI issues or asthma or certain cancers or more tendency. So ancient people observed this. It was clear. But then we all have our own choices in life. Now our choices in life can be things like overwork or being careful about work, eating healthy or eating garbage. And there are things that we don't get to choose, like being exposed to trauma or war or having PTSD because of something that someone else did to us. All of these can damage the yang. They can damage the yang qi of the body to a point where a person is weaker or depleted. And this level of resource exhaustion is where the yang qi gets weakened and a person can be pre-exposed to illness. Now that illness could be as simple as a cold or severe depletion of yang qi being something like common, like cancer. But how do you build it? In my experience, you build the yang through moderate physical exercise, things like qigong, exercise, yoga, walking, breathing exercises, through good food and through rest. Because a person who doesn't sleep enough will also show signs of weak yang like getting sick easily. Those are the main factors I've noticed for building yang qi as opposed to medical interventions. Like in my practice, I primarily use Chinese formulas to build the yang qi of the patient. They don't have to do anything, they just ingest something. Now what I see is that in traditional and conventional medicine formulas, in terms of pharmaceuticals, don't ever build the yang qi of the patient. They don't ever increase the resources. They are primarily symptomatic management. So patients tend not to get healthier in the long run, which they do with Chinese herbs. So let's talk about three ways to assess the state of your yang qi. First is energy. No energy, good energy. The second is your body temperature. Do you run cold? Do you run warm? Do you run body warm but extremities cold? The third is the location. So I'll give you three common areas of yang qi weakness. Heart yang, digestive yang, and qidi yang. Heart yang, really when the heart yang is weak, you see symptoms like anxiety, racing heart, palpitations, insomnia, that kind of thing. Digestive yang is typically loose stools, bloating, food sensitivities. When the digestive yang is weak, kidney yang is more frequent urination, can be impotence, libido issues, more common at middle age. Those three areas of yang qi, upper, the heart, middle, digestion, lower the kidney, are three very common areas of yang qi deficiency. And those are honestly most easily treated with Chinese formulas, not necessarily with lifestyle on its own. But that is an overview of what yang qi is and why it's so important. There is no concept like this in traditional medicine, conventional medicine. Maybe immunity is the thing that overlaps, but it really has no tools for increasing immunity, besides maybe diet and exercise and rest. But in Chinese medicine, there are very specific practices and very specific ways to assess the strength of yang qi, like pulse diagnosis, abdominal diagnosis, and ways to actually booster it without the person doing anything, like Chinese formulas, that don't exist in conventional medicine. So this is a very important aspect of Chinese medicine, determines your resilience, your resistance to disease, the ability to prevent diseases happening in the future, as well as your overall vitality and strength. Build your yang qi no matter what you do. All right guys, all I have for today, check out those links below and watch these two related videos for you right there.