Balancing Yin and Yang

Excess Yang comes suddenly, with acute pain and either a sense of excitement, heat or a fever. The patient is noisy and demanding, complains often, suffers from redness, inflammation and thirst; likes cool things to drink. He lies stretched out, not curled up. Skin feels hot. Urine is dark and may be reduced in volume. His stools are smelly and he may be a little constipated. Pulse is fast and floating.

In fact, you might have symptoms described as Wind-Heat.

When there is excess of Yang, there will be an apparent lack of Yin qualities, though in fact this is only because Yang reigns supreme for the time being.

Balancing Yin and Yang – How do you treat excess Yang?

When treating a condition of excess Yang, it is important to clear the excess. But you also have to preserve Yin too. As we said, the aim is balancing Yin and Yang.

In the situation described above, which came on rapidly and was probably caused by what is called an external pathogenic factor – a ‘bug’ to the rest of us! – we use treatments to clear heat and move the Qi, whilst supporting Yin if necessary.

Why the emphasis on supporting Yin?

Because when you produce all those Yang excess symptoms, (like heat), your body’s Yin energy is working hard at balancing Yin and Yang. In clearing the excess Yang, we don’t want to harm the essential Yin energy, which too strong a treatment might do.

Most of the acupuncture points used would be on Yang meridians, and dispersing actions would be used. These points are typically on the hands and arms, or upper back or back of the neck, all of which are very Yang areas.

Of course if the external pathogenic factor had penetrated to a Yin organ, such as the Lungs, then treatment on that would be given too. So the rule about treating excess Yang only on Yang meridians varies with circumstances. Chinese medicine is very flexible, but balancing Yin and Yang is always the aim.

Too much Yin

Bear in mind that Yin factors are Cold, Damp and Phlegm. If the body’s reaction to disease is with what are called Full-Cold symptoms, or Damp or Phlegm, then it will display signs of those qualities.

Click to read about Yin Excess signs and causes.

Here’s what someone with Yin excess might be like.

The patient looks pale, his pulse feels ‘full’ and a bit slow.

Usually Yin excess develops more slowly than Yang excess. Yin excess also tends to be more common in chronic conditions. (Often signs of Yin excess develop over a period of many months or even years.)

In Full-Cold (say from a bug, where the condition is known as Exterior Cold), treatment usually aims to facilitate sweating. This is because if the sweat occurs when the patient starts to feel warm (from treatment or because the body overcomes the cold invasion with Heat), then it shows that the body is dispersing the Cold outwards.

Such a ‘sweating’ treatment disperses Cold, without weakening Yang: indeed it helps Yang raise a fever and then naturally cools down with perspiration.

A peculiarity! Something hot that’s not!

By the way, in balancing Yin and Yang here, you might find something peculiar: that the patient feels cold but has a high fever.

In Western Medicine, your doctor would want to bring the fever down, and never mind that the patient was feeling cold.

But in Chinese Medicine, the feeling of coldness by the patient (assuming there were other signs of Full-Cold Yin excess) would suggest that cooling the patient might prolong the condition.

What to do?

Somehow, instead, the patient’s body has to produce the feeling of heat, enough to causing a sweat. Even sitting in a hot bath might do it, (but maybe not for too long). Various herbs and hot toddies can do this too.

(There are other situations of Yin excess where the body is already sweating but not improving – a condition called ‘attack by wind-cold‘ with deficiency – where treatment is slightly different.)

In long-term Yin-excess cold, obviously you still want to warm up the patient, but you don’t want to facilitate perspiration which might weaken and cool the patient. This is because the cold has penetrated inside. The treatment here supports Yang but the treatment, herbs and foods are strengthening, not dispersing.

Sometimes, the correct treatment here may produce a Full-Cold condition in which case you can then deal with it by causing heat and perspiration. This sort of change needs careful monitoring.