Liver Blood Deficiency: vision, personality, stability

Treatment for Liver Blood deficiency

What your acupuncturist will do is Tonify Liver and Nourish Blood.

Acupuncture is often an excellent way of treating this. But you’ll almost certainly need more than one treatment, and your acupuncturist may suggest some foods or supplements to help.

Chinese herbal experience over 2500 years points to various herbal formulae that can help. Caution! Not all are sold on taste!

Of course, you should reduce actions that cause it or make it worse!

But you can help yourself!
Some Liver Blood deficiency advice!

What can you do to help yourself?
Liver Blood is classified as a yin substance, so when you have a Liver Blood deficiency, you need to increase Yin and decrease Yang.

To increase Yin, the two easiest ways are better nutrition, and more sleep. You can also do exercises for your eyes. Read more about ways to increase Yin at Yin Deficiency.

1/ Better Nutrition: Liver Blood Deficiency Diet

For your Liver Blood deficiency diet you need to consider several matters.

Better nutrition means not just more foods containing what’s good for you and less foods containing what’s bad, but

• time to choose the food,
• cook it,
• eat it properly (no rush, chew well, don’t get stressed when eating,) and
• take time afterwards to digest it before returning to work – perhaps a short walk in the open air?

I guess your eye didn’t read that paragraph very carefully because it was so *BORING!*

Doh! $^&*

Please, go back and read it. All the excellent Liver Blood deficiency food advice that follows won’t work unless you eat food properly, giving yourself time to enjoy and digest it!

ALSO – Important! If your body is sick, avoid raw, iced or cold foods or drinks. That’s also really important! If you eat othing but raw and chilled foods, you may get a syndrome called Stomach Cold and Deficient. Then, whatever you eat, even if it’s the best possible Liver Blood deficiency diet, simply won’t end up in you! You’ll just shoot it on through you and out.

A Waste of money and time!

What you should do instead is to eat food that is warm to the touch – and don’t worry about whether cooking it has destroyed all the vitamins. (In the long run vitamins are important, of course, but not in the short run unless you clearly have a major deficiency in one or more of them.)

Food for Liver Blood deficiency:

• Cold foods – foods that tend to cool or chill you. You should avoid most of these. Click on Cold Foods for a list.
• Hot foods – foods that tend to warm you. For preference, eat more of these warming foods. Click on Hot Foods for a list.
• Blood building foods. Very important to help your Liver Blood and for stability in your personality.
• Protein for healthy Blood. Vegeterians and vegans won’t like this, but meat is a good source of protein. 
• And read our page on Nutrition.

2/ Better Sleep

Deep restful sleep renews your mind and body and is the next best thing for Liver Blood deficiency. Click for the Chinese way of thinking about sleep and insomnia and the reasons for insomnia.

Meantime, consider the following ways to help yourself:

• Your bedroom should quiet, cool and completely dark
• A bed that is comfortable, with a clean mattress and enough linen: neither so much you overheat, nor so little that you wake shivering
• Unless you live where insect attack is a problem, or the air is too hot or cold, or outside is too noisy, ensure a supply of fresh air. Try opening the window!
• Don’t eat or drink too much before retiring to bed, though for some a warm drink works wonders
• Avoid alcohol in the evening for a proper recuperative sleep
• The hours before midnight often give better sleep than those after. If you feel sleepy at 9.30pm, why not go to bed? And then, if after enough sleep you wake early feeling wonderful, well, there’s no crime in rising early!
• Pillows or blankets placed strategically between or under your limbs or body can make sleeping more comfortable
• Avoid reading exciting literature before putting the light out
• Don’t watch TV or work at a computer for several hours before going to bed. (The colours can upset the way your brain works when it’s trying to go to sleep.)

Eye Exercises for Liver Blood Deficiency

There are eyesight exercises you can learn which help your eyes refresh themselves. Even closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths can make a difference.

Many years ago, my father gave me a book to read when he realized that my sight was beginning to weaken. (He was right!)

I wish I’d read it properly back then! But you can be sure that I use its suggestions now. The link above gives you access to it for free.

Reduce Yang

To reduce Yang, consider the following:

• Avoid stimulating drugs, such as caffeine (eg coffee), especially in the evening before bed.
• Stop over-stimulating your body with vigorous exercise just before bedtime. However, a 10-minute, gentle walk works very well for many people.
• Avoid getting too hot or too cold before bedtime.
• No large meals just before bedtime. Leave at least three hours between finishing your meal and retiring to bed.
• Try to clear your mind of problems before going to sleep. If you can’t easily do this, try writing down in a notebook beside your bed the problems you want your mind to produce solutions for by the morning. Put them in order, then hand them over to your subconscious!

A Warm Bath before Bed may help Liver Blood!

• For some, a warm bath before bed works well, the intention being that when you get into bed you are gradually losing heat – losing yang – which leads to easier dropping off. As yang reduces you automatically increase the proportion of yin. (Here’s an analogy, though not a perfect one: just as, in a vote with 10 voters all voting, if you start with 5 voting for something and 5 against it, they’re equal at 50% each. But if 2 people from the against camp change sites to the for camp, the proportion of ‘for’ voters increases to 70%.)

• However, make sure it’s a warm bath and not a boiling bath. If the water is too hot it might shock you and upset the normalising processes in your body.
• Equally, if the water is too cold, it will either chill you, leading to an invasion of Cold – read more about Cold Invasion by clicking here, or stimulate yang too much, as described in my page on How to Take a Cold Shower for health! That extra yang might keep you awake!
• SLOW DOWN!