Kidney Yin Deficiency

Kidney Yin deficiency is one form of a more general Yin deficiency with which it shares many symptoms.

In fact, what you get is really Yin deficiency combined with Kidney syndromes and deficiency of Jing-Essence.

If, by mistake, you’ve just arrived here expecting a discussion of the kidneys’ functions from the Western medical viewpoint, click here.

Otherwise, keep reading, because what Chinese medicine has to say about the Kidneys when they malfunction is equally relevant. To most of the Chinese medical terms there are links.

So, what is Kidney yin deficiency? It’s a syndrome in Chinese medicine, in other words a pattern of ill-health which is understood and treatable.

Causes of Kidney Yin deficiency

1/ Loss of fluids

Fluid loss from such as:

• perspiration, for example during a fever, or
• diarrhoea during the course of a disease, or
• loss of Blood.

Blood loss can occur

• during an operation (and there is some doubt whether transfused blood immediately makes up for loss of your own) or
• from injury or  
• from heavy menstrual bleeding, especially if it occurs over many months. The latter, menorrhagia, at first exhausts Liver Blood, but then passes on to consume Kidney Yin too. (Why? Because Liver functions depend on Kidney functions and if you exhaust the child – Liver, you move on to exhaust the mother – Kidney. Read more under 5 Elements Acupuncture.)

2/ Protracted, chronic disease

Chronic disease affects the deep energies or zang-fu energy organs of the body, being the Liver, Spleen, Heart and Lung … and Kidney. All of these depend on the Kidney function so if one of them gets exhausted, it ends up eventually with the Kidney.

3/ Over-stimulation

If you boost Yang too much, you may exhaust Yin’s ability to keep up with it.

• Coffee and caffeine are well-known stimulants that eventually drain Kidney Yin if you take too much.
• Herbs and drugs to boost Yang (often to boost sexual energy) can do the same thing.
• Some medications have the same effect
• Many social drugs – street drugs – make you feel fantastic for a while. But by over-stimulating yang, they deplete your yin. (How do you recognise they’ve done this to you? Because you feel exhausted for the next few days!)

4/ Overwork

What this means is extremely heavy work without respite over many months, even years. Of course, young people can probably work for longer than their elders, but their elders may have more discipline and be less easily led astray. In general, however, older people have used up more of their Jing-essence so overwork will exhaust them more quickly.

By heavy work, is meant mental work or worry, including studying. It doesn’t exclude excess physical work or exertion though this more usually leads to deficiency of Kidney Yang.

5/ Sex

Sorry. Too much of this is regarded as bad for you, but actually we’re talking more about Men than about Women. Ejaculation dissipates Jing-essence and too much ejaculation uses up this vital resource and reserve.

For women, having too many babies close together, or not recovering between them might amount to the same thing. Menorrhagia over many months can also exhaust, as already mentioned.

Of course, if a women achieves orgasm so often and intensively that she completely exhausts herself, that might amount to overwork, see above. For men, their teens are regarded as being the time when such loss is potentially most damaging in the long-run for their Kidney Yin.

In any case, men,  do not indulge in ejaculatory sex when ill! It uses up too many of your body’s resources, needed to get you well.

Symptoms of Kidney Yin deficiency

Main symptoms:

• Low backache. This is not the acute kind, but the chronic kind, usually present after standing still or walking slowly for a while, often better when sitting or lying down. Much worse if you carry something heavy, say a child on your shoulders.
• Sweating during sleep at night. This is not the sweating that comes from a fever or from eating food that is too heating (eg curry and alcohol, but see our page on Hot Foods), but sweating that you cannot account for, when the ambient temperature is not hot. It can be drenching and embarrassing. It is not considered to be a good sign in Chinese medicine as it shows that your body is leaking vital Yang fluids. You notice the day after this kind of sweat that you have less vitality and may be more prone to upset or even infection. Women during their menopause often sweat this way and one of the first improvements they notice during good treatment is that these sweats abate.
• Mouth and throat get dry at night, when not necessarily so during the daytime.
• Urine is darker than is usual, and there is less of it.
• Prolonged exhaustion, tiredness and other symptoms in this list, after ejaculation. (Q: How long is ‘prolonged’? A: The next day or later, for instance.)

Then there are symptoms which often take longer to appear, or with age

• Ear noises, known as tinnitus. This comes on very gradually, say over a period of years. In the first few months you may notice it just when tired or in the evenings, but gradually you notice it all the time. It doesn’t always interfere with hearing, though sometimes your hearing deteriorates at the same time.
• Tiredness and lassitude, even depression. Lack of bounce. Can lead to chronic fatigue.
• Dizziness, either on standing up or after standing for long, but eventually even when sitting.
• Weak memory: a sign of ageing. You find you can remember things from long ago but not where you just put your glasses! Concentration deteriorates.
• Hearing loss, progressive.

• Not just night sweats but nocturnal emissions.
• Increasing insomnia.
• Dry stools and constipation.
• Lack of fertility in women who have not reached the menopause.
• Tongue: usually normal colour but with no coating.
• Pulse: floats, empty.