Liver Blood Deficiency: vision, personality, stability

Liver Blood Deficiency is a ‘syndrome‘ in Chinese medicine. Once it arises it tends to be chronic. In other words, it is hard to get rid of without treatment.

However, many people experience mild symptoms of it as they grow older or when they are tired.

You’ll make more sense of this page if you first read our page on Liver Blood.

The following symptoms may occur to some extent in people with this form of Blood deficiency. (Blood is a really important concept in Chinese medicine and it forms the basis for who you are, so you might also wish to read that page – Blood.)

Going back to Liver Blood deficiency symptoms, you might notice just one or two of them if you have the condition mildly: more as it progresses.

By the way! If, having read this, you think you have symptoms of this syndrome and would like to share them with us, or you would like to contribute to this page, please see the box at the very foot of this page.

The following are common signs of this kind of deficiency but I wouldn’t expect you to have all of them! In fact you might have only a few of them, with more developing as your deficiency deteriorates.

Head Symptoms in Liver Blood deficiency

• Dizziness, faintness: – for example on or after exertion, or from standing up too fast from a seated or lying position
• Vision is poor or blurred, especially later in the day or after too long at your computer, or after reading for too long or watching films or TV. Eyes may ache from tiredness. (Poor vision can mean difficulty focusing far and near, or greater sensitivity to the sun, or to bright light, or to glare.)
• Dry Eyes (actually this is really a Liver Yin deficiency symptom but it often occurs with Liver Blood deficiency), often with floaters. Floaters are little black specs that you can see against light surfaces.
• Ringing in the ears (occurs if Liver Yang excess symptoms occur with Liver Yin deficiency): known as tinnitus.
• Headache at the vertex – the topmost point of your head. (However, a deficiency of Liver Blood can lead to an excess of  Liver Yang, which produces other kinds of headache including migraines, for instance.)

Movement and Spasms

• Spasms and cramps of tendons or muscles: lack of flexibility. These cramps often occur when you start moving, and can waken you from sleep. (There are various causes of this unpleasant condition, and not least are medicines you may be taking for something else.)
• Sometimes your hands may have a tremor
• Numbness of limbs (arms fall asleep if you keep them still for too long, or during sleep)
• Muscle weakness, twitching or trembling
• Intercostal pain – ie pain between your ribs. Can cramp.
• Movements: tremor, weak

Female

• In women, menses are scanty and light-coloured, with a long cycle: or you may have no periods at all – amenorrhoea.
• Women with Liver Blood deficiency can get cold feet, with tingling and numbness.

Moods and Sleep

• Your moods: anxiety, lack of confidence, poor short-term memory. Can occur with a lack of assertiveness, then a tendency to sudden outbursts that you can’t maintain. This symptom of Liver Blood deficiency can lead on to Qi stagnation and the stress and depression that go with it.
• Insomnia or poor sleep, or dreaming that prevents good sleep

Appearance

• Complexion: pallor and pale lips
• Your body: tends to be underweight. Nails are pale.
• Nails are pale, brittle and withered: they split easily or grow malformed. (Theoretically this occurs on your big toenail first.)

• Skin may be dry and crack or itch. For a general discussion of Dryness, click here.
• Tongue: pale or pink, especially at the sides. Dry. Tongue coat may be thin or normal.
• Pulse: ‘thready’ and ‘forceless’ (technical terms for your acupuncturist).

How do you get Liver Blood Deficiency – what’s the Aetiology?

1/ Food, Food habits, Digestion and Background issues

Liver Blood is a sub-category of Blood, formed by Stomach, Spleen, Lungs, Ming Men and Heart.

If any of these is deficient, so eventually will be your Liver Blood. When food you eat is deficient in nutritive quality, this will affect your Liver Blood. Click to read more on Nutrition.

The sort of food eaten matters too, even if otherwise nutritious: food lacking protein leads to Liver Blood deficiency and this is noticeable in

• teenage girls – and others – who go on diets and in
• people who don’t eat enough for their needs.

Poor nutrition, poor digestion and poor eating habits are a major cause of Liver Blood deficiency.

2/ Serious Loss of Blood

Serious blood loss from haemorrhage. Because there is less Blood to store, the Liver cannot nourish the tendons and the eyes and cannot spare it to produce healthy periods.

3/ Kidney ‘Energy’ weakness

Kidney Qi deficiency can lead to deficient Liver Blood. There are many ways this can happen: too many to list here, but click on the link for an explanation. If you want a summary (which leaves out several important aspects) it means ‘over-strain’. You’ve overdone it: pushed yourself beyond your ability to recover.

4/ Female issues

In women, Liver Blood deficiency usually co-exists with Liver Qi Stagnation. Trapped Qi easily transforms to Heat, especially before the monthly period, giving signs of Liver Fire or Liver Yang Rising. When Liver Qi stagnation interferes with the Spleen energy, the process of transforming food into proper nutrition for your body, and then transporting that nutrition to where it’s needed, is weakened, leading to even more Liver Blood deficiency.

5/ Occurring with another Liver syndrome

This syndrome can combine with Liver Yin deficiency to create conditions for internal Wind to occur: trembling becomes extreme, embarrassing and very hard to control. (Some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, like the tremor, are often classified in Chinese medicine as being due to Liver Blood and Liver Yin deficiency, though the dementia that accompanies it, and other symptoms, are more due to Kidney deficiency.)

6/ Effects of Chemotherapy

I’ve noticed symptoms of Liver Blood deficiency in people who have had chemotherapy. It can be very disconcerting and Western medicine usually reassures you that it may take time to go. From what I’ve seen, it may take a long time to go; if ever.

Chinese medicine has had some success, using moxa on a range of specific acupuncture points, and I’ve seen an electric pulse treatment for the soles of the feet that provides a form of stimulation that helps some people: but you probably need to do this regularly to get benefits. (Why do moxa and electric pulses make a difference? Because they are both comparatively YANG so stimulate Qi to flow: that Qi ‘leads’ the Blood, so bringing Liver Blood back to the extremities, providing nutrition and sensation.)

7/ Eye overuse

Over-use of your eyes, for example from staring at computer screens, or mobile phones, or TV or … uses up Liver Blood. Probably because people who stare at screens (for work or play) also don’t exercise enough, and maybe eat poorly, they make themselves more susceptible to Liver Blood deficiency. Sitting still for long periods easily leads to Blood stasis which means not enough Blood flows round to refresh our tissues, including our eyes. Hence you get Liver Blood deficiency in your eyes, and elsewhere.

Screen time isn’t usually a main cause of this syndrome, but I think it’s becoming more of a problem as people work from home on their computers then spend the evening staring at television or their mobile phone screens. It’s not just that doing this means we are staring fixed focus, but that our eyes lack the variety of colour, shapes and movement that challenge our eyes in normal ‘outdoor’ life.

Another cause is almost exactly the opposite! Driving vehicles for long periods without rest also depletes our Liver Blood. This occurs, I think, because although we are normally looking ahead, then in our mirrors, then at the instrument panel and then ahead again, we are focussed on the road and other drivers so aren’t looking much at the scenery. More important however, is the long-term tension involved, which leads to a form of Liver Qi stagnation. This in turn stops moving Blood properly so you get a mild form of Blood stasis, which sitting in one position for too long can also produce.

As already mentioned, that Blood stasis can lead on to Liver Blood deficiency – this page.