 Throughout Chinese medical history, every famous physician has mentioned some of the key problems and illnesses of their generation and of their time. Now, because I primarily focus on herbal formulas because it's what I seem to be the most clinically effective for internal medicine problems, it's very interesting looking back through these ancient physicians' approaches to treating illness, because their own unique formulas reflect not only the treatment approaches, but also the illnesses of the times. Now, I thought in this video I would share a little bit about one of the big problems that I see clinically, as well as a few little examples, based on three of the great doctors that I studied with and learned from. Hey, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book Master of the Day on Amazon, a Chinese medicine doctor and licensed acupuncturist. Now, I've included two important links right below this video. The first link is if you'd like to get a free download for a guide, which is four daily rituals that can add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. The second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine and learn more about my clinic locally or learn more about telemedicine consults. So throughout Chinese medical history, there are always these generational changes in their approaches to how these doctors treated certain illnesses. Now, I've heard many other practitioners say that these were potentially just marketing angles, right? Because if everyone is in the same town and everyone has the exact same approach to treating diseases, then how can you possibly be busier than Sally or Mark over there? So it's possible that some of these were really just marketing angles, you know, people trying to find different niches to fill to get their own patients. And some of these formulas became famous from that doctor, some became famous from that doctor. And the most famous useful formulas have been transmitted now over thousands of years. But there is one particular problem that you tend to see more common than others these days. And it's something that a few of my mentors really, really harped on as being very, very important to treat. And that is this general concept of what we call damage to the young. So weak young as a concept generally manifests in a few key ways. Usually can manifest at a low level as fatigue, as problem sleeping, anxiety, insomnia, depression. If there's digestive problems that can be damaged to the young, whether it's loading, can be dysmanorrhea, can be loose stools from just a few to 10 or 20 a day. It can be hot flashes. It can be just general restless sleep or sleeping too short and not waking rested. But in general, this weak young phenomenon is the main thing that I'm treating in the majority of my patients. It's not that they are suffering from, you know, hemorrhagic fevers. They're not suffering from malnutrition. When the young gets weak, it predisposes a person to a host of illnesses. I would say the probably the foremost common I see are anxiety, insomnia, depression, digestive problems, and maybe issues with a woman's menses or cycle as some of the biggest ones that I see. But I'm going to give you three scenarios for how this actually happens, which is more important. Scenario number one, let's just call this taxation related damage. Right. This kind of picture is the 36 year old lawyer. She lives in New York City. She's been working 70 or 80 hours a week at her desk and she moved to New York because she wanted to be ambitious, focused on her career, wanted to build her empire and she's working long hours. She's not moving. She's stressed out because of the deadlines her boss is placing on her. She has tough cases. Her life moves fast. She gets home. She usually works while she eats in front of her computer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So taxation related damage to the young then often results in now she's 35 and she has Hashimoto's. She has hypothyroid symptoms. She's gained 25 pounds. She can't lose her digestion is a mess. She can't eat anything without reflux and bloating. She has anxiety. She used to be a great sleeper. Now she's hit or miss. You know, it's light sleep. It's bad sleep. It's can't fall asleep or it wakes up too early. Never feels rested. This is taxation damage to the young. Example case study number two, antibiotic and medication related damage to young. One of the most common categories of illness that I treat in the last three months. I've probably treated 12 patients that for whatever reason had long term exposure or long term antibiotic usage from their physician or the hospital that they were seeing. Sometimes it's due to infection they required. Sometimes it's due to suspected Lyme. Sometimes it's due to general standard of care for, for example, recurring ear rakes or recurring sinus infections. This kind of pattern is very, very common in modern medicine at this time in history. The patients that I've seen that have been exposed like that. I'm sure there's a certain percentage that are fine that have no residual symptoms. And yet the ones that come to me almost always utter a line that is verbatim. Ever since then, I've had these symptoms. I've seen many, many, many, many patients with that exact one liner. Ever since then, my GI has never been the same. I've had insomnia. I've had anxiety depression. I've had these symptoms. I mean, it's, it's scary actually how often it's showing up. So a lot of medications and specifically antibiotics are extraordinarily damaging to the young. If you want to call it the vital forces of the body, it's a very kind of new age you way to think of it. But it really depletes vitality, especially taking long term repeatedly. I once had a patient with Lyme disease. She was given something like over 30 rounds of antibiotics in half a year. So this poor girl was having 10 watery diarrhea stools per day because her digestion had been so destroyed by microbiome from these antibiotics. And the 10 loose stools a day was the least of her worries that had now been showing up. So young damage related to medication specifically. I'm just using antibiotics that are used over the long run. Third case report case study. Let's just call it nervous system damage to the young. A general category of illness that I see these days that's a problem is excessive computer use where there's no physical movement. So the nervous system is on all the time and is not being discharged through physical activity. That's a lot more likely. For example, if I have two people, a construction worker working 12 hours a day. He's digging ditches, hammering things, moving equipment versus the computer programmer. He's working 12 hours a day. Which of those people's more prone anxiety and insomnia? Every single time it's the person on the computer. From a Chinese medicine perspective, physical activity is one of the best ways to calm and soothe and kind of discharge some of that nervous system tension that builds up with excessive, usually intellectual work with no physical movement. So I've seen people that, for example, are working long hours on their computer. By the end of the day, they're so wired that they can't fall asleep. And even though their general life otherwise is good, by the time they try to come off, you know, maybe they work till 11 o'clock at night. They're not actually working super hard. At least their physical body is not. But let's just call it the nervous system is working hard. And so they have this kind of restlessness almost like a static charge that builds up and they can't fall asleep. Now that happens over three to six months. Now they begin experiencing other symptoms because young has gotten so weak. Now they have a susceptibility. There's a chink in their armor. So damage to young is the big 21st century problem because we are in a culture that anything that draws our attention, requires attention, basically keeps activating your nervous system. And look at what we're doing all day long with a phone with whatever the amount of stimulation we are exposing ourselves to is not allowing the nervous system to calm down. And it's using our young. So I thought I would share this because it is the problem of our era and I'm certain will only increase. But it's something that's worth paying attention to. And in more videos, we're going to talk about what to do, how to mitigate that, why this is important and where to go from here. But it's just something to pay attention to because it is often misdiagnosed. And then people run around for years really sick before finding someone like me or another practitioner that looks at the whole picture, looks at the timeline. Okay, damage to the young sounds new agey. It is extraordinarily important to understand or just observe the time component of why since then the person was never the same since. All right, you guys. Now, again, if you would like to learn more about coming to see me in my private practice or my clinic is a link below this video. And in addition, there are two other related videos that can help you right over here.