 Fatigue is a very common complaint that ends up sending people to seek out the care of alternative medicine and one of the reasons for that is that if you do just a general blood panel and you've run all the typical checkups and your physician can't find anything wrong with you but you still feel exhausted, well what is there left to really treat? Now in Chinese medicine there are a couple different primary causes of fatigue that I see clinically. Now this video I want to share one of the most common reasons for fatigue and one of the possible ways that you can see if this applies to your own situation. Hey it's Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book Master the Day, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncturist. Now there are two very important links below this video. The first is a link for a free guide I've put together for daily rituals that can 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 or via telemedicine all that information is there below. So a common organ network in Chinese medicine related to fatigue that I see clinically is what's called a Taiyin organ network. So all this means is it's the paired organs of the spleen-pancreas as well as the lung. So we'll say it's the lung and the digestion to very very very generalize it. Now it's common clinically for people to present with both of those symptoms. I mean both the gut and the lungs and nasal passages these areas have these very delicate mucus membranes. So a lot of people for example with asthma also have allergies or people with gut problems also manifest with seasonal allergies for example. So some of these things are hard to parse out unless you look at them in a general system. For example the link between gut problems and people who have sinus issues. Very very common clinically it's one of the most common things I see on a day-to-day basis. Now another pattern here you might see is a person with digestive problems like acid reflux as well as cough. So it's the stomach but it's also the stomach slash lung if you want to argue it that way because the person's trying to cough up and expel this phlegm this regurgitation that's been coming up. This is just one of the patterns of fatigue that I see. There are many many different ones so this is trying to very very generalize one common pattern. So let's talk about some of the signs and symptoms of this tie-in pattern of generalized fatigue. Some of these symptoms are a person feeling prone to feeling cold hands and feet. They often are more on the low or no appetite side but sometimes they can swing wildly back and forth. They are prone to bloating, getting a food baby after eating or food allergies and food sensitivities in general. So these usually are not people who have a very robust digestive system and can eat anything they want and they don't feel it in their body. That's usually not this picture. In addition they often are prone to stomach gurgling or intestinal gurgling, loud digestive noises, often looser stools and when they get tired they really don't like speaking. So it's weird it's a very distinct thing you see here. When they're fatigued they just don't want to talk to anyone and in general more run down or sometimes in general they just usually are averse to large crowds. Like they have to be really well rested to go to a mall or an amusement park and even if they are they often don't want to do it for a long time. So let's talk about the clinical observation I've noticed that produces results. Now kind of the signature issue with these kind of tie-in pattern is what you could call constraint or congestion. Think of like bloating representing like one of the archetypal tie-in symptoms. This bloating is this kind of pressurization of all this gas production, this malabsorption causing this gas production. So this bloating, this gassiness, issues with stools, this kind of thing is a representative symptom. So managing that congestion is usually one of the most effective things to have more energy and one thing that I've seen work clinically is that for this kind of pattern having a lower starch diet, for example I often recommend the specific carbohydrate diet which basically is effectively removing all starches including potatoes, including rice, including all that kind of stuff. So there's no differentiation between whole grains or like white flour or white rice. All of them are not allowed on the specific carbohydrate diet and I find at an extreme level removing those reduces the amount of dampness as we call it in Chinese medicine or bloating for the person. So I recommend for example trying very very low carb diets just for a week and having sauteed vegetables and meat at each one of those meals. So for example if this is the bowl this much would be white or brown rice, sauteed vegetables and then the meat on top or like an egg or two for example. And for a lot of these tie-in cases they often will feel much much better on this. The lower the starch the lower the carb often the less of that bloating and distension that they're going to get. And after doing this for just a week including if you maintain your coffee, including if you maintain your red wine a lot of people in this pattern will feel much much better. That is obviously by itself not necessarily a fix but the formulas I use to treat it often work to regulate the exact same processes as well. So that is just one area of chronic fatigue is digestion in Chinese medicine and there are even many different spin-offs and variations of that pattern but that's the most common one I see clinically. This person tends to be on the moderate to thinner side prone to getting a lot of mucus saliva in their throat like kind of flemy. So that is one of my clinical observations for fatigue. If you notice that you've kind of let your diet go you could try this for a week and see how you feel and that's something that I find clinically works really really well. So again before you go two links before this video below this rather one is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or via telemedicine the link is below this video to my clinic and the second is the free guide for daily rituals that can add years to your life with Chinese medicine right? Both below this video otherwise I have two related videos for you here.