 One of the aspects of medicine that is most important to know and often most forgotten is this idea of constitution. Everyone comes into this world with born strengths and weaknesses not only in terms of their physical health and the tendencies that they are prone to but also in terms of other traits that they have in their life. And we call this constitution. And realistically, it's probably the single most important factor in long-term healing. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Haing, doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Now in this video today I thought we would talk about this idea of body types or somatotypes. Now within Chinese medicine, constitution that is you come into this world with a certain body type, right? When we're kids, we always observe that you have two kids that come from the same family. One kid eats this food, the other kid eats the same food, one kid is always complaining about their stomach and the other one isn't. Now what is that? Very often that is constitution and you tend to see that that runs in families, right? Like on my maternal side, asthma, allergies, eczema and gut problems run in the family. So I have asthma just like my great grandma had asthma and my sister and my brother have asthma but oddly enough my mom and dad don't have asthma. So you tend to see in the context of medicine and illness, you tend to see that there are certain susceptibilities or weaknesses that each constitution has. So when I'm working with patients one of the main questions they have is how do I determine my constitution? Now I thought in this video it'd be helpful to have Julie here so we can point out what her constitution is based on my assessment of what I'm seeing here. So when we talk about constitution the first thing we think about is not her eye color or her hair or her nose but the first thing is you just look at the person and one of the first things that you spot is the facial color, right? So for example look at the complexion that she has and even compare our complexion just on the camera here. Her complexion we both tend to have a more pale complexion. So everything within Chinese medicine is based on this binary, the spectrum of yin or yang. Let's say in terms of facial color, more heat or warmth usually shows more redness or ruddiness and what Chinese medicine calls more cold or deficiency is typically more pale complexion. So both of our complexion you can see on the camera, I mean you can even see, I can see looking in here the color on her face, the paler is different from the color on my face but we both have an overall pale complexion. So the first thing we look at is the face. Now when we talk about the complexion even you know if you just look that way Julie you know you can even see just not only the complexion on the cheeks, on the face, around the eyes, the neck. And one of the reasons that's important is obviously you have women wear makeup so that will alter what you think is their complexion right, blush is often used. But in general, what the facial complexion indicates first and foremost is where they are on a yang or yin spectrum in Chinese medicine. So fundamentally you have the two farthest parts of the spectrum is what we call a cold deficient constitution and a warm constitution. Generally people with more heat in their body are what we call yang constitutions. They generally have better digestion, better tolerance towards caffeine, tend to sleep heavier and generally tend to carry more body weight whether they're men or women. That's what I tend to see clinically. And people with a cold deficient constitution tend to not only be thin, tend to be prone to digestive problems, tend to be anxiety prone and tend to be more prone to feeling cold especially not just their extremities but also their whole body tends to be colder and they tend to be more cold-blooded as people say in the warmer constitution. First thing is one of them is honestly the status of the circulation right. Obviously if the person feels cold there's poor circulation and if the person feels warm there's generally a lot of body warmth and a lot of good circulation. So the facial complexion is the first thing that we notice. Now I don't really do extensive eye diagnosis of any kind but we're not going to really zoom in and focus on that but besides the facial complexion you can look at just the actual her body type right. And we have the same body types you can actually see side by side. We are both a generally thin body type right. I mean look at our let's compare wrists here. So we basically have wrists that are the same you know they're generally smaller, thinner looking wrists as opposed to someone who tends to have a very stout or heavy constitution. You can often tell from people's wrists whether they're more in the stronger or weaker or let's just say the warmer or the cooler constitutional type and also just the overall body morphology. So we say that people who tend to have the deficient cold constitution tend to be prone to digestive problems. It's just a weak digestive constitution and very often one of the ways that manifests is the person just doesn't carry a lot of body weight and they often can't gain weight. So even both Julie and I's our body types are pretty similar. We tend to be thin. We tend to be lean. People with this kind of constitution also generally not only obviously struggle with digestion but struggle with putting on weight and that's because as one of the things we like to say is that the digestion is one of the areas that you generate your body resources from. So if digestion is poor, generally the person can't generate a lot of resources. So the actual body type right we talked about the color morphology right. So she's thin right and obviously if someone's a child you can't really tell yet necessarily despite or maybe depends on what they complain about as a kid. Is it respiratory? Is it digestive? Is it more anxious? You can tell these constitutions early on but facial color, body type and then obviously body temperature. So we're going to jump in and do a little bit more on hands or hands on diagnostics here. But even if I ask her, do you run hot or do you run cold? I run cold. So that's our confirmation that she probably is the colder constitutional type. Now a lot of the time I won't even ask patients this. Just the palpatory exam will show that the especially the feet tend to be freezing cold and the hands can be cold as well. Often this colder version we call weak young. It's a symptom that the person needs warming, stimulating herbs that very often improve metabolism in the sense that they increase circulation. So facial color, body type, the complexion, the patient's history right. What they tend to be prone to. Do they have sensitivities with food? Do they not like AC blowing on them or drafts? And that gives us an overall view of the person's constitution. Now other aspects like the pulse diagnosis that we've talked about also indicate constitution because there are general pulse patterns that certain constitutions will manifest. Just like there are certain disease patterns like people who say, you know, when I get a cold it's always this way. When I get a cold it's never that way, right? Some people are prone to headaches, some are prone to GI problems, some are prone to getting the flu every year or bronchitis while other people catch the same virus and it doesn't progress to that. So constitution is essential because the constitution not only shows where the person is genetically weak and what they're prone to so that we can customize really a tailored medical approach towards their healing. That is sort of just constitutional diagnosis one-on-one. You can see just based on Julie facial color, body type, some questions like does she feel cold? Give us some clues about what she might have going on without her ever telling me a single symptom that she has. You can very often predict as a general pattern what might be going on inside their body. Again, if you guys want, you wanna learn more about my practice there's a link right below the video on how to learn more about my practice as well as telemedicine visits here in Los Angeles. 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