Stomach Functions in Chinese Medicine

Jonathan Clogstoun-Willmott

February 14, 2021

Key Learning Points about Stomach Qi (Stomach Chi)

Good Stomach Qi is your prime requirement for Health
How to assess it
Not just swallowing and digestion, but nourishing all your vital organs
The Mental Angle

From the start, Chinese medicine recognised the unique importance of the Stomach energy organ. Although it is a ”fu organ” and Yang in nature, it actually has many Yin qualities:

This page is at times a bit technical! The first part has to do with yin and yang, which are really important concepts in Chinese medicine.

You could say that all therapy in Chinese medicine, whether it’s Herbs, Acupuncture, Tai Chi, Guasha, Cupping or Moxibustion etc has at heart the aim of balancing Yin and Yang in you.

Most energy organs and channels are fairly definitely one or the other.

Not so the Stomach.

So is the Stomach Yin or Yang?

Modern life being what it is, a frequent problem for people is Stomach Yin deficiency, meaning a deficiency of the Yin energy of the Stomach fu. The Stomach fu has a partner in what it does – the Spleen zang or energy organ, which is Yin in nature. The strange thing is that the the Spleen energy organ, one of the six Yin organs in your body, tends to suffer more often from Yang deficiency.
Next, whereas the Spleen’s job is to transform, transport and exchange food and Blood, all of which are Yang types of action, the Stomach’s job, see below, is to receive, rotten and ripen. These actions are more Yin in nature, requiring time and space to work.
As the origin in the body of fluids, one might think your Spleen energy would be Yin. On the other hand, to work at its best, the Spleen prefers dryness – Yang!
Then there’s the direction that the organs make energy flow. Stomach Qi, if working correctly, descends, helping you to swallow food, keep it down and allow its nutrients down into the body: Yin-type activities. Spleen Qi, on the other hand is responsible for sending and keeping things up or in place: Yang-type!

You can see that they each have both Yin and Yang qualities, needed to nourish and maintain your body and health.

They are so closely connected that they can almost be considered as one organ energy, looked at from two points of view.

Stomach Channel Pathway

On another page you’ll find more about this, but to continue the question about how Yin or Yang the Stomach is, there’s another anomaly. The front of the body is considered to be Yin, the back Yang.

Why? I hear you ask! Why is the front Yin and the Back Yang?

Yang provides movement, speed, fast change, and defence. If someone attacks you, would you open your arms and let them punch you in the stomach? Probably not, if you have any sense.

I would expect you either to protect your abdomen by covering it with your arms (arms being very movable, so more Yang than your abdomen), to turn your back or to curl up into a ball. At least, that’s what I’d do.

Better still, you might try to run away, which is another way of turning your back on your assailant.

So the soft abdomen with all its vital life processes is considered comparatively Yin, whereas your back and sides – and arms, which are harder and more easily movable, are Yang.

The Stomach’s primary channel pathway runs up the front of the body, its Yin aspect.

Stomach Channel Abdomen — Copyright Acupuncture Points

All the other Yang channels (for example the Gall-bladder and Bladder channels) run up the side of the body or its back.

The Stomach channel runs parallel and lateral to the Kidney channel on the front, parallel to the mid-line: yin.

On your back, the Bladder channel has two lines which run parallel with the Spine: yang.

Balancing yin and yang, front and back …

In some ways the Kidney and Stomach channels on the front are there to balance them. If they don’t balance, as between front and back, you’ll tend either to

hunch or curl forwards if the channels on the front are weak or deficient or alternatively the ones on your back are too strong
stretch out or back if the ones on the front have too much Qi as compared with those on your back.

Example? When you’ve eaten a huge meal of highly spiced food you’ll probably stretch out or backwards because your front is too full. (And once you’ve vomited it all out, because the front will now be empty, you’ll tend to curl up to protect it!)

Another example: if someone lacks confidence, it may be because he is Blood deficient or Stomach Qi deficient, or because he is Yang deficient. It could easily be both, of course.

If the first, Blood deficiency or Stomach Qi deficient ie Yin deficient, he’ll tend to cross his arms or hug his belly. Holding, pressing or hugging an area show it’s deficient.

If Yang deficient he will tend not to stand up straight or look you in the eye.

Standing Straight?

Of course, in some cultures people are taught not to look you in the eye when talking to you. That’s different.

Nowadays you can also buy shoulder straps and back braces to help you stand straight, but wouldn’t it be better to have strong yang energy of your own so you stand straight naturally? Chinese medicine and acupuncture can help you!

How? To strengthen yin, you need to strengthen yang, and vice versa.

So to help someone stand straight naturally ie without back braces, yang treatment would be given to strengthen Stomach function.

With better choices of food and a better digestion (yin matters), the individual would automatically stand better, though he might also need advice (advice and ideas are comparatively yang) and to do some exercises (exercising is more yang as compared with sitting).

So, feed properly and you get the energy to stand straight.

brown trees under white sky during daytime — Standing Straight

Alternatively, with the right advice you may be inspired to eat properly and then exercise to help yourself.

The idea of Stomach Chi (Stomach Qi)

Although obvious in retrospect, it has taken us a while to realise the unique importance of the Stomach in creating and maintaining health.

As mentioned elsewhere on this page, your Stomach and Spleen energies work so closely together that you can often think of them as a single ‘organ’. From the moment you’re born, after that initial breath that shows you’re flying solo, you need food = nourishment. Without it you’ll soon be gone.

How do you get nourishment? By eating and drinking. Where does food go first on its way in? Mouth and Stomach, both of which ‘come under’ the Stomach.

If your Stomach and Spleen turn it into healthy, usable Qi, prognosis is good. This healthy, usable Qi is is called Stomach Qi, or Stomach Chi, for short.

If your Stomach Qi is good, then almost always, you have a good chance of recovering from any illness. If not, well … not.

That’s because your Yin organs, (technically these – your Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs and Kidneys – are your zang organs) depend on Stomach Qi.

Theoretically you can do without your Yang organs (these – your Gallbladder, Small and Large Intestines, Stomach and Bladder – are your fu organs), any one of which can be surgically removed and you’ll live if your surgeon knows what he’s doing.

But you can’t do without your zang organs (although even here, modern medicine has shown that you can just about live without your spleen organ and dialysis shows you can function at a lesser level without effective kidneys.)

Without good Stomach Qi, your life will be less healthy: you’ll be more prone to tiredness and depression, you’ll take longer to recover from illness and you’ll be more susceptible to illness.

How does one judge the health of your Stomach Qi?

There are various ways to judge your Stomach Qi.

Tongue diagnosis. If your Stomach is healthy and able to ‘rotten and ripen’ the food you swallow, then a good sign is a thin, white ‘moss’ on your tongue. It needs to be ‘rooted’, meaning it’s not easy to scrape off. It needs to be white, showing there’s no excess Heat. But even if thick and yellow, at least it shows you have Stomach Qi, albeit functioning under a load of Heat and possibly Damp. It’s fairly easy to treat Heat and Damp. But if there’s no coating, or even worse, there’s a red, glazed surface on your tongue, lookiong like raw meat, it shows Stomach Qi is deficient – and in fact that ‘raw meat’ surface shows you are very short on Stomach Yin too. Stomach yin is, roughly, the acids and acid-buffer fluids on the walls of your stomach that enable it to digest food: without those fluids your Stomach doesn’t work, so you’ll lack Stomach Chi.

Pulse-taking to diagnose syndrome prior to giving acupuncture pain relief — Taking the pulse

Pulse diagnosis. Your acupuncturist feels your Stomach pulse on your right wrist, over the radial bone. For health it should have definition, a soft ‘bounce’ and regularity. In a more general sense, those qualities felt on any of your pulses, suggest healthy Stomach Qi. If you go for acupuncture when you are fasting, or in the morning before eating, then you probably won’t respond so well to acupuncture because the energy that acupuncture uses comes from the food you eat.

Other ways to assess your Stomach Chi

Having a band round your stomach, or having your stomach organ or parts of your intestines removed, means your Stomach Qi will be hampered.
Swallowing something that damages your oesophagus, stomach or intestines will diminish Stomach Chi.
A poor diet over a long period, or bad eating habits, also impairs Stomach Qi.
Drinking large amounts of water whenever eating solid food dilutes your Stomach yang, undermining Stomach Qi.
If you often burp or retch food it shows that your Stomach Qi isn’t functioning properly, for instance to ‘descend’ food.
Another way to diagnose the likelihood of diminished Stomach Chi is if you always eat late at night, just before going to bed.
For more on this, click on Stomach Qi Deficiency.

Mental aspects of Stomach

When your Stomach functions well, other things being equal you will obtain enough good food and you will eat it sensibly, so you’ll have plenty of energy, you’ll sleep well and be equable in temperament.

You’ll also have good powers of concentration, and a reliable memory.

Some of these attributes come about from having enough good-quality Blood, manufactured by the Stomach and Spleen.

If your Stomach doesn’t perform adequately then you get various problems:

Stomach Qi deficiency means your powers of digestion are reduced. This results not just in lower energy levels but lowered spirits. When Qi is reduced you may also get (because of a link with the Lungs) weepiness or a tendency to cry or produce tears even when you aren’t unhappy.
Also, when Stomach Qi is deficient, you’ll have reduced powers of concentration and thought. You won’t be able to ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ information.
Stomach Fire: this produces burning pains in your stomach and, in a way, your Spirit burns too: mentally you become restless. If this Fire produces Phlegm (as it were by drying out body liquids) and you get Phlegm Fire then potentially you could get mental derangement and mania.

Nutrition

Read about the Stomach from the orthodox perspective here.

From the Chinese perspective, providing your body with good Nutrition is also a major function of your Stomach energy.

Vegetables — For strong Stomach Function you need good food sources

You could say that the whole business of

getting hungry,
planning what to eat,
obtaining it,
preparing it,
cooking it and
making it look appetising,
as well as eating and digesting it properly,
falls to the Stomach.

The Stomach doesn’t like to be rushed! Chew food well, and eat it leisurely. Think, if you like, of a large and placid cow in your stomach, munching slowly through what you give it.

Potentially your Stomach Qi is a HUGE resource for you

It’s a huge powerful beast and if you feed it the way it wants, it will give you all the power and energy you need!

Powerful representative of health Stomach function — Highland Cow

Technically, it ‘receives, rottens and ripens’ what you eat, then transports the essence of what you’ve eaten on to the next stage, the Spleen function.

This process of rottening and ripening takes time. That means :

eat slowly
enjoy and savour food
choose foods that your Stomach is used to – modern manufactured, de-natured, refined and fast foods are not what your genes have spent the last few million years evolving to be able to eat!
chew well and don’t gulp
don’t eat on the job, or when driving, or if very anxious
if tired, don’t eat, or don’t eat much!
don’t eat a huge meal immediately before going to bed. (Why? Because a huge meal then, when you are already tired, is taxing your Stomach too much, and also strains its ability to hold the food down)
if unavoidably rushed, eat small meals,and chew them well
if you are ill or tired, eat food that is well-cooked and warm to the touch, and not too much of it at a time
try to eat meals at regular times or intervals w

Benefits of Company when Eating

Good company nearly always enhances digestion.

(Technical note: there is a reason for this in the Five Element theory part of Chinese medicine. Good company enhances the action of your Fire element, which is the Mother element to Earth, the Stomach’s element.)

Eating in relaxed Company usually relaxes us and lengthens the time we take to eat. That suits the big cow down inside!

People eating and having fun — Eating in relaxed company aids digestion and Stomach functions.

Cautions

We live in an acquisitive age. We are urged to own more possessions, to try new holidays, to taste new foods, to enjoy more adventures, to boast more ‘friends’.

In many ways these ‘exercise’ our Stomach function. When you have had too much of something, you either get overwhelmed or you get sick of it.

If you have too many possessions or money, you may not know what to do with them, or it. You will lose interest in ordinary life, and you’ll demand ever more exotic tastes to satisfy you.

This is not healthy! The cow down inside you gets fat and flabby, constipated, fussy and burpy. Ever more demanding, she becomes increasingly unhappy. You begin to get both physical and mental symptoms of food retention.

Despite no lack of resources, some people just can’t stop acquiring things, whether by purchase, gift, loan or theft. Here they have what amounts to Stomach Fire, always needing something to burn through. This can lead to hyper states, including mania.

Mania can then burn you up, leading to hypo-states and depression.

Exercise control over what you eat, and stop before you’re full! It’s old, good, advice.

In charge of Descending Energy (Qi)

This is more important than you may think. Obviously if Stomach Qi lets things rise, you become nauseous and burp: eructations.

This descending function turns up in lots of ways.

Nerves and nervousness are often eased by eating or drinking. Sometimes constant anxiety provokes constant eating, which leads to obesity
Smokers trying to give up smoking often find they start eating more because, in the absence of a cigarette, food calms them
Babies, whose Stomach function is not mature, frequently bring food and milk up, when they have had enough or, if fed too frequently, may get food retention, like greedy adults.
People are judged by whether they can ‘stomach’ something
Fright, shock and disgust can disturb the Stomach’s natural processing of food, making us feel sick or even vomit
Chewing fingers, finger-nails or lips is another way of exercising the chewing muscles. It suggests your Stomach and Spleen functions are not in harmony.
Chewing gum is calming and assuages hunger, for a while.

Origin of Fluids in the body

Moist food benefits Stomach Function — Food Should Not be Too Dry – Green soup

All fluids in the body come from what we eat or drink. Food should not be too dry. If there are not enough fluids in the food you eat, (as opposed to fluids drunk with what you eat, see below) your Stomach and Spleen may not be able to moisturise your tissues, causing a dry mouth, thirstiness, and a dry or even cracked tongue. Your Stomach likes warm, damp foods, such as stews, soups and Clogstoun Congee.

Nowadays we eat lots of dry foods, such as toasted slices of bread, pizza, biscuits and cakes: adding tomato paste to the surface of a pizza does not make it into what your Stomach likes! To digest these ‘dry’ foods your Stomach must supply the fluids, which tends to make many of us slightly Stomach Yin deficient. Read that linked page for more, but often this means we get a dull epigastric pain, lose our appetite and tend towards constipation.

On the other hand, it is not a good idea to drink huge quantities when eating. Too much fluid, especially chilled or iced fluids, in effect douses your Stomach’s Yang energy, needed to digest food.

“Why does my Stomach hurt?” Click here to find out!

Some more reasons for Stomach Yin deficiency: