Blood level – Collapse of Yang

At the Blood level, with Collapse of Yang the disease process has penetrated past the Wei, Qi and Ying levels (the initial immune and secondary and third response levels) into what is called the Blood level, the body’s deepest level of support for life.

Disease at this Blood level is potentially terminal, probably most of all with this syndrome, Collapse of Yang. That means that death is likely if no help is available.

Main symptoms of Blood level Collapse of Yang

• Feels cold
• Cold arms and legs
• Complexion is bright-white
• Sweating is profuse, mainly on the forehead
• Listless
• Tongue: swollen and pale, short
• Pulse: slow, scattered, hidden

What this means – its pathology

Lack of or here, collapse of yang leads to coldness, slowness and whiteness because there is no energy to lead the Blood to the face and tongue.

Yang manifests more on the outside of the body, the skin and the upper part of the body, and its deficiency shows there as perspiration eg on the forehead: inability to ‘contain’.

Similarly, there is no yang energy to move fluids, hence the swollen tongue.

The adjective ‘listless’ barely covers the mental state, which lacks force, direction and spirit, which is reflected in the slow, hidden, scattered pulse. ‘Scattered’ denotes a pulse that lacks form and regularity and which on pressure easily becomes impossible to feel. It is yet another way the body displays severe exhaustion and deficiency of its central energies at the deepest level. Technically these are those of yuan qi, the so-called pre-natal qi that a child is born with.

Aims of treatment for Blood level Collapse of Yang

• Rescue Yang
• Restore consciousness

Acupuncture would almost certainly use Moxibustion on needles that stimulate the digestion to work better and on other needles to strengthen its deep yin energies, because moxa here also stimulates yang. Frequent, short treatments would be necessary.

Crucial in collapse of yang, also, would be nutrition that besides being easy to assimilate, is warming: so no cold food or liquid.

Choose, from our list of ‘hot foods’, the vegetables that are least warming, then cook them and offer them warm to the patient, in small amounts, frequently.

They may be easier to eat if mushed up into a kind of soup but even so, get the patient to chew, which mixes saliva into the food, so starting the digestion.

Check our vegetable recipes.

Chicken soup would be good, being gently warming.

Patient care should concentrate on warming the patient’s body.

When (if) your patient responds to treatment, he needs a warm environment and positive, cheerful company. Raising his spirit is fundamental to helping his yang energy.

What happens if you suppress symptoms of this level?

Suppression here hardly makes sense, since there’s not much to suppress! However, you can make it worse by allowing the patient to get cold or to eat cold foods or liquids.

Western medicine might suggest that this warming or ‘tonifying’ of the patient could reignite the pathogen. Probably Chinese medicine would say that in Blood level – Collapse of Yang – the pathogen had died and the patient was about to, because there were no symptoms of fever.

And even if treatment for this collapse of yang does succeed, should the pathogen then reappear, the warming, tonifying treatment was correct because the patient lived!

In any case, should treatment restore the pathogen, the patient would automatically ‘improve’ to one of the other Blood level or perhaps Ying level pictures, to be dealt with in turn.

Other responses at the Blood level

• Heat Victorious agitates Blood
• Heat Victorious stirring Wind
• Empty Wind agitating in the Interior
• Collapse of Yin
• Collapse of Yang ( – this page)

Also Read:

Read also our page on the Six Stages of Disease caused by Invasion of Cold