Blood in the urine (if it is not caused by a UTI) is a sign of an unhealthy small intestine. One of the causes can be mental restlessness. In TCM your organs are you; the psychology of who you are is made up of the specific attributes of each…

Epigastric pain can be sudden and with an obvious cause such as overeating (think xmas lunch) which causes liver chi stagnation, or it can be chronic. In the latter, epigastric pain is usually affiliated with a yin deficiency which is a condition that builds slowly over time as a…

Many different factors impair the functioning of your large intestine and contribute to the development of haemorrhoids, and the majority of these are lifestyle. Irregular meal times and foods that cause constipation are obvious ones, but your emotional life has a huge impact on large intestine health. This is…

From the lifestyle medicine angle, some kind of resistance to the flow of life, which can translate as muscle spasms in the diaphragm, underlies ongoing hiccups. Your diaphragm is the physical location of your liver, and the hub of chi-flow. Hiccups might appear to be a small thing and…

I suffered from insomnia for years and it nearly drove me crazy. I tried all sorts of things from sleeping potions, to various forms of therapy, to desperate bottles of wine and nothing worked. This is because insomnia is lifestyle induced so the only cure is lifestyle changes. In…

Nosebleeds are not generally considered to be serious from the perspective of Western medicine, but in lifestyle medicine I think of the little symptoms as warning lights on the dash, and frequent nosebleeds are an indicator that your lifestyle is impacting on your blood and/or your liver chi. You…

In TCM your eyes, and eye health, are connected to your liver. If your organ chi declines, vision becomes blurry and floaters form. But, as chi levels increase, your vision and floaters clear. So eye floaters can be viewed as a sign of a deficiency pattern. It’s like a…

A healthy mind is the outcome of a healthy heart in TCM, and a healthy heart is the outcome of healthy kidneys, and this is down to lifestyle. A weakening of heart and / or kidneys will weaken the mind and manifest as dementia symptoms. Dementia is on the rise…

In the old days of TCM, stool analysis was a major diagnostic tool. The emperor’s stool physician would examine the stool and then give recommendations to the herbalist and the cook. We don’t examine stool any more but we still always ask clients about their stool because shape, consistency…

Blood in stool can be an indicator of something serious or something more simple such as poor diet. Either way the symptom always begins with ‘dampness’ and this is a condition created by behaviours and lifestyle. Lifestyle changes that can help include changing your diet to include more healthy…