 One of the most frustrating experiences my patients have had is the experience of going to a specialist and getting all the conventional labs and all the conventional diagnostics and their physician says, everything looks good, you're fine, but they don't feel well and they don't feel fine. Well, sometimes within my field, Chinese medicine, this is due to other causes. And I thought in this video, we would talk about one specific cause. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Author of the health book, master the day. Now, before we jump in, there are two very important links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can check out those two links that are right below the video. The second is for a free download I've put together, which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. Inevitably when I speak with people who are going through, let's say, depression or chronic fatigue syndrome or Lyme disease, inevitably, you tend to see someone who has become a shell of themselves. They've become a different, almost incarnation, as in they don't feel like themselves and they haven't been like themselves in a while. The number of people I've spoken with that said, you know, I used to be this bubbly extrovert. I used to be so social. I used to be so interested in doing things and meeting people and living my life and my world was this big. And now my world has become this big. I don't feel social. I don't want to meet people. I don't want to try new things. I don't even want to leave my house. This is all I can handle right now. Now, I think when people say that, when I, the first few times I saw some of my patients describe this and their body language said it all, they would start like this. This is how I used to be extroverted, open, ready to meet new people and do new things. And now my world has become like this. They're describing almost an energetic or inner quality that they feel. A subjective quality that has changed as a course, really as part and parcel of their chronic illness. You know, at the beginning phases of illness, you may have energy and reserves and you're experiencing all these symptoms, but maybe you're not having extensive fatigue or you aren't having issues with insomnia. But as time goes on, what happens is the body becomes exhausted by this fight within Chinese medicine. We describe this as a state where your yang qi, your resources get depleted. And when your yang is depleted, that is the ultimately the battery in your body that allows healing and allows recovery. It is the only thing that allows you to permanently heal. And what happens is that as time goes on, if those resources are not replenished, then the person becomes engaged in this chronic fight where the first doctor, as one famous Chinese medicine doctor said, is no longer there. So when the battery is running low like that, people internally feel that sensation of needing to go into energy conservation mode, of needing to not be a social, not wanting to talk as much, not even like sound or flavors or eating a lot of food or general stimulation in the environment is too much. Now, of course, it can happen to someone who's just generally sensitive since birth. I mean, you even see this with some children who are autistic. They tend to have autistic, sometimes down syndrome, tend to have major issues with sensitivity and don't like noise. In the town I grew up in, there was a special needs child who loved walking through the neighborhood. And I thought it was interesting that he always wore headphones, even though he always looked like he was, you know, looking at trees and listening to the birds and walking through nature. And I asked his mother one day and she said that he's very sensitive to stimulation and sound. Now, a lot of us can develop that too in the course of chronic illness, but intuitively, as we're sick, the body evolutionarily feels that drive to conserve resources, shut the windows, shut the doors, turn off the lights, just bring that buzz of nervous system activity down, down, down, down, down to conserve resources. And we intuitively feel that if we listen to it, the problem is many people medicate that feeling away. And so it's not that they die, they just get pushed into a chronic phase where they're on antidepressants basically forever. And there is no permanent healing. So how does your body really respond to this damage to the young? The young chi, you know, when we think about young chi, young chi is vitality in the most raw sense. I don't think scientists will ever be able to quantify vitality as a scientific concept. But everyone recognizes vitality when we see it. You see the little child with the bright shining eyes running around all day, big smile. That's dramatic comparison to your boss at work, sitting there fat and overweight, low energy, empty-eyed or the person who's elderly and they're in poor health and there's a vacant look on their face and they can speak this slow. It's obvious we recognize it when we see it. So young first and foremost is vitality, it's resources. It's life force as a concept, not as a real thing. I don't know if that is a measurable thing. But certainly vitality would probably be the best synonym for young chi. And inevitably, this is what allows us to mount a fight. It is what allows us to heal. It is, you know, in our modern culture, we have these giant fruits and giant vegetables now that have a lot of yin, physical material, but the young chi, the my mentor called it like the bioelectricity and the nutrition, the real vitality, the nutrient density, the stuff that is life promoting is less than ever before. The fruit is this big, but it doesn't taste like anything. It's like cardboard or it's just a strawberry out of season that just tastes like water with a little bit of flavoring in it. So inevitably, this is when your resources are running low. If you are in touch with yourself, you will instinctively feel the desire to protect, to gather and to conserve, like someone going into hibernation. So if your body is in this state, recognize that it is an adaptive state. It is there for your healing. It is not maladaptive. It is not pathological by its own. It is solutogenic. It is something that is trying to guide you towards your healing. It's something that is the canary in the coal mine. It is saying, I feel this way, not because there's something wrong with me and I need to take an antidepressant for the next 10 years. There's something wrong with me as a signal. It's a signal, like a sensation that you're burning your fingertip on the stove. It's a signal that by itself is just giving you information that something is not right. And if you heed those little signals that, okay, I'm in a state where I'm feeling tired all the time. I'm feeling overstimulated. I don't want to be around people. My resources are low. My yang is getting weak at the moment. Recognize that that is a healing response and not that that is a pathological response and trust those canaries in the coal mine and they will lead you to greater healing over time. So if your body is going into this energy conservation mode, recognize that as a benefit. It is a sign, it's a symptom. It's there to guide you. It's a breadcrumb trying to show you what you need to do to heal yourself, and it's not something to be suppressed or pushed away or ignored if you want to heal. That's my two cents for today, you guys. If your body is in survival mode, what that means and why it is doing that again, some useful links right below this video and some other related videos for you right there and I'll see you guys soon.