 It's fairly common for patients to come to me and say that they've tried everything in order to heal. And one of those resources that often comes up is Louise Hay's work, You Can Heal Your Life. The essence of this work, if you're not familiar, is that emotions or repressed emotions are one of the major causes of disease, especially chronic disease. Now I've heard this so many times from patients and I've also tried almost everything in my own healing journey. So in this video, I thought I would talk about this idea of do emotions cause disease? Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Heing, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and Licensed Acupuncturist. So before we jump into this video here, there are two links right below the video. The first link is for a free guide, which is for daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. And the second is information on if you'd like to become a patient of mine in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine. You can reach out to my private practice right below this video. Now in my healing journey of having lifelong gut problems, of course I tried everything possible. And one of those books that came across my desk when I was trying to get better and everyone was offering me their advice was Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Life. And I think because my main issue was really bowel movements and constipation and food sensitivities. In her book, basically if you look at digestion, food sensitivities, constipation, she'll basically say you're holding on to crap, right? You're holding on to stuff. And you can't let it go and that's why you're having constipation, for example. I was like, all right, whatever, all I care about is feeling better. So let me try to entertain this theory. So for whatever weeks, months, I did every journaling exercise to let go of crap. I did every mental and emotional exercise to let go of crap. I practiced being more patient, more calm, I went on more vacations to see if literally getting away from crap would help my crap in. And in general, I tried everything imaginable from the emotional healing perspective. Trauma release, therapy, every way of healing the emotions and healing the cognitive processes. Maybe making me hold on to crap, according to Louise Hay's theory. And nothing changed. And this experience for me was not really that surprising. For example, if someone has diabetes, would you tell them that there's something emotional going on with their diabetes or that they need to eat better and exercise better? Of course, you can make the argument that they are not doing those things or eating bad food because of emotions. But the idea that emotions directly cause disease, I'm very, very skeptical of. And for me, it didn't help. But there is an important lesson here that I think is worth talking about. Even going back to our most ancient medical texts, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, really talks about how emotions create disease. Now, when patients come in, I don't say you have acid reflux because you have some suppressed emotions. Not at all. What this ancient book tries to help us understand is just the role that they play. It's not saying emotions are the primary cause of disease. It just says they are one of the causes, potentially, of disease. And for each person, the role that emotions play is more or less. Maybe zero for this one person, maybe everything for this one person. This idea that, you know, for example, that just letting go of the crap in your life will help your constipation is obviously not true. That's very easily invalidated. But maybe for some people, that's what will happen. And maybe for some people, the constipation is being a tight ass, like we say in English, right? In this Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, what it talks about is the role that certain emotions play in disease, primarily in the way they affect the inner organs. So weather, externally, like in nature, was often compared to the inner weather of the human that's emotions, right? This is this inner weather. It causes turmoil. It causes up, it causes down, hot, cold, things like that. And so this was often compared juxtaposed, outer weather, the physical weather and the climate and the inner weather of our emotions. And for example, saying that anger affects the liver and also in the liver's disease, there may be anger or the spleen pancreas is associated with anxiety. And clinically, I do find that a massive amount of my patients with, for example, what we call spleen cheat deficiency, bloating, food sensitivities, gas, issues like that, very often have anxiety or people coming with anxiety, vice, it goes both ways, right? So chicken or egg, and just like you can get angry for one day and it's not going to do anything or angry for a minute, but if you're screaming all day and you're so bloody angry every minute of the day, yeah, that's going to have an effect on your blood pressure. I know people who have high risk cardiovascular disease, specifically, and amazingly, because of the amount of raw stress in their life, I'm talking guys who are screaming at their employees all day, who are beat red in the face, who are absolutely nutcases, and they are so high strung. But amazingly, the one I'm thinking of the most is completely ripped eats a healthy diet exercises every single day is very moderate in other parts of his life. You wouldn't think he has those risk factors, but the amount of pressure he is generating in his body from that anger and the frustration is absolutely correlated with his heart disease. So this idea of understanding how emotions play a role because they do affect physiology is a lot more important than saying that because you're constipated, you're holding on to crap. So are emotions the cause of illness? Are emotions a cause of illness? Yeah, of course, but for each person, it's going to be different. So in my opinion, and based on what I've seen with patients, this idea that emotions are the cause of illness is a little ridiculous, right, it's like saying diet is the cause of illness. Well, for a hell of a lot of Americans, that is true. But for a lot, it isn't true. For other people, it's loneliness or it's depression or anxiety due to their life circumstances, or it's something else going on. And so emotions just play a role. And I'm not a big believer in applying the spiritual implications of emotions and applying them to biological phenomena, like I don't think most constipated people are holding on to crap. I think every human is holding on to some crap. But the reason for constipation is probably dietary in the majority of cases, just going out on a limb there. But in general, understanding that emotions are one of the ways your body's physiology can be affected. One of the ways in Chinese medicine, the inner weather is affected. One of the ways that organ functions are disrupted, but it's not the only way. And so I think, yes, emotions are a cause of disease, but just putting them in their place as one piece for one person, they may be 5%, the other may be 95%. But thinking that this complex illness is some past life karma you have, or this fibromyalgia is something suppressed, some rage at your second grade teacher, or because you hate your dad because he walked out on you. Maybe it's a piece. But I don't think for most people these are the primary cause of their illness, different for each person. But I think maybe this will give you some relief that there isn't some deep, dark trauma causing this obscure illness. So just my two cents, based on my experience, everything here is to help you feel better and do better in life. And that's just been my experience. People put too much emphasis on this as if it is the cause of all the mysterious and difficult and chronic diseases. And I don't really see that to be true, but it is a piece. So before you go, make sure you check out these two related videos on emotional healing. They will also help you as well.