Practically Fertile
If you wanted to get pregnant yesterday, but you're confused and overwhelmed by all the noise on the internet, then this is the right podcast for you. Hosted by Dr. Adrienne Wei, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine (ABORM), functional medicine practitioner, and functional nutritionist. Here, you'll find zero fluffy, useless information or rah-rah motivation. You'll only find practical strategies and "how-tos" for identifying the root cause and amplifying your fertility by using a proven method of combining science with tradition.
Practically Fertile
Episode 8 - What is Qi? Is It Real? How Does it Affect Fertility?
Qi, or chee, is one of the most complex concepts in Chinese medicine. Yet, it is crucial that you have a basic understanding of it. While you don't need to be a Chinese medicine doctor, knowing how Qi affects the body will help you identify possible imbalances that are preventing you from getting pregnant.
In this episode, we will explore what Qi is and the possible imbalances that can cause fertility challenges.
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Welcome to the Practically Fertile Podcast. I'm Adrienne Wee, doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, functional Medicine Practitioner and Functional Nutritionist. I specialize in using an evidence-based method, blending principles of East Asian medicine and modern functional medicine to help women optimize fertility and get pregnant. I believe in a world where every woman who wants to be a mother becomes one. If you're tired of being told that you're infertile and you want to take the right steps to get pregnant naturally and quickly, this podcast is for you. Hey, fertile friend, in the last episode I gave you a crash course on TCM or traditional Chinese medicine, and I originally had planned to talk about the concept of qi, but it was way too much to cram into one episode. So today, this episode is all about qi. You might have never heard of qi and if you have, maybe you struggle to understand it. Maybe you're questioning whether it's real. I will tell you that it's very real. Qi, spelled Q-I or pronounced Qi C-H-E-E, is important in Chinese medicine because it supplies the vital energy for the body. The disruption of this energy causes many imbalances, from back pain to PMS to constipation, and this vital energy is like the electricity that's running through your house. You can't see it, but you know that it's there because the lights turn on and the appliances work. This vital energy in the body travels along meridians that are like highway systems to deliver this energy to where it needs to go. It's very hard to measure qi because, unlike electricity, you can measure that in watts. You can't do that with qi. However, researchers have been able to prove that it exists by mapping brain activity using functional MRI while an acupuncture point is being stimulated. For example, a functional MRI study on an acupuncture point called liver 3, or it's Taichung in Chinese. It's basically the third point on the liver meridian or the liver channel. The third point on the liver meridian or the liver channel. If you want to compare this to a highway system, this is the exit number three. The fMRI showed that liver three activated the visual cortex in the brain. How cool is that? According to Chinese medicine, eye problems are often caused by an imbalance of the energy in the liver organ system. The functional MRI also showed that liver 3 activated the medial frontal gyrus, which controls memory and attention. Also the superior parietal lobe, which is responsible for hand-eye coordination and balance. The thalamus and limbic system, which controls the emotional response. What do you know? Liver is also an organ system that controls emotions in Chinese medicine. Again, I just love how the Chinese people already knew about all this thousands of years ago, without these fancy equipment and without a modern understanding of the human body fancy equipment and without a modern understanding of the human body.
Speaker 1:Here's another interesting finding from the same study. The researchers tested another acupuncture point that's right next to Lyrithrae and it's on the stomach meridian, called stomach 44. So exit 44 on the stomach meridian or stomach channel. Yes, stomach is super long, it's a really long meridian that runs from your head to your toes. Anyway, you would think that if it's all random, you would get the same response by stimulating stomach 44, since it's so close to liver 3. It's literally right next to each other. But that's not what the MRI showed. The MRI showed some overlap between the two points, but stomach 44 also showed activation in the superior frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, which is the area that relates to pain, which is the area that relates to pain, visceral pain to be exact and also activation in the secondary somatosensory area of the brain that's responsible for pain perception. Here is the interesting correlation. Stomach 44 is often used to treat pain such as toothache, headaches, sore throat and ulcers. The functional MRI proved that it can do that. There are many, many other fMRI studies out there on acupuncture points like this one. I don't specialize in neuroscience so I think some of these are hard to read through, but I love how they were able to define something that's not exactly tangible. How they were able to define something that's not exactly tangible.
Speaker 1:If you remember from episode two, qi is one of the four substances that power the body. If it's off balance, there will be many health problems. So let's talk about how does qi specifically affect fertility. There are two ways that it can cause imbalances and affect fertility. We call it stagnation or deficiency. So the flow of this energy can become stuck or the amount can be deficient. Even though qi flows through every single organ system in the body and affects every single cell, there are two organs that control whether it flows smoothly or whether your body can make enough of it. These two organs are liver and spleen. Three other organs we'll discuss that's crucial for fertility later on will be heart, kidneys and lung. But this episode we're going to focus on the two organs that control the vital energy flow in your body.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the liver first, the liver organ in Chinese medicine directs the flow of qi and keeps it flowing smoothly. You'll often hear liver qi stagnation as one of the patterns of imbalance. That means if there are factors that are affecting the liver, chi stagnation will often be the result. So when this flow of energy gets stuck somewhere, you can have issues like pain anywhere in the body in the joints, in the head, in the back. An acupuncture can resolve pain very quickly because the needles can easily move the blockage and get the qi flowing again. Another way to look at this is the needles help blood flow that carry oxygen to get to the tissues so that it can heal. Cupping is a procedure that accomplishes exactly this without using needles. It creates space between the fascia and the muscle and it helps to get oxygen to where it needs to go to the tissues to heal.
Speaker 1:And qi stagnation or blockage either way you look at it can have a tremendous impact on fertility. Because of your energy flow it's stuck, then the nourishment to the important reproductive organs will also decrease. The nutrients aren't getting to where they need to go. You'll get less blood flow to the ovaries and uterus, causing late ovulation. Pms cysts can form on the ovaries. You'll get less blood flow to the head, affecting your mental health, causing depression. Qi stagnation can also cause constipation, cold hands and feet.
Speaker 1:Because poor circulation, the energy flow isn't there. If the energy flow isn't there, the blood flow to the extremities won't be there. What are some of the things that affect the liver won't be there. What are some of the things that affect the liver, you might wonder, and you might automatically think medicine or alcohol, but actually, according to TCM, these do not affect the liver as much as stress, especially emotional stress. Medicine, diet, alcohol use will all contribute to the stagnation, but emotions have the most impact on the liver. Ever experienced road rage? That affects the liver. How about realizing that you missed a deadline at work and your job depends on it Affects the liver. Getting a big fat negative at the end of the month Affects the liver. Every type of emotional stress, big or small, will affect the liver and for some people they'll shake it off and get over it, but for others they will have a hard time, especially if they are the wood fertility archetype, which corresponds to the liver. The wood archetypes most likely will have cheese stagnation.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about the spleen? Isn't that an organ that you don't need? Spleen is absolutely important for TCM because it is the digestive system. Even in cases if your spleen has been removed, we still consider the fact that you have a spleen. It's just not physically present in your body. In both Western and Chinese medicine, the stomach helps to mash up the food and make them into a slush. However, in Chinese medicine, it's the spleen that provides the energy to extract what is useful from the food and then distributes it to the rest of the body yes, with help from the liver. So think of spleen like a factory.
Speaker 1:If it's not functioning properly, the production of useful energy and food for the body will also slow down, and this is how you end up with qi deficiency. When the production of qi slows down, it's easy to see how your organs will become malnourished. There just simply isn't enough food. When this happens, you could always be tired like dragging your feet kind of tired. You could have slow metabolism. You could have trouble losing weight. You could have many digestive problems like bloating, chronic loose stools.
Speaker 1:Mid-cycle spotting is a symptom of Qi deficiency. It's one of the 10 parameters of a fertile cycle. During phase 3 of the menstrual cycle we rely on a strong spleen Qi or energy to provide nourishment to the lining. If that's deficient, you can have mid-cycle spotting. Qi deficiency can also cause cysts to form on the ovaries and sometimes in the uterus, as fibroids or polyps. Remember how I said cysts can form if you have qi stagnation? Well, this is an example of how TCM would treat everyone very differently, depending on the patterns of imbalance, because two people can both have cysts on the ovaries, but in one person it could be caused by Qi stagnation and in another person it could be caused by Qi deficiency.
Speaker 1:And, as you guessed it, the treatments will be very different. As you guessed it, the treatments will be very different. And just to be clear, just because you have spleen qi deficiency, that does not mean you will always have all of these symptoms. And just because you have qi stagnation, it doesn't mean you will always have PMS or you will always have constipation. These patterns of disharmony still affects everybody very differently.
Speaker 1:Now, what is the spleen most affected by? It's most affected by diet and anything cold and raw. Okay, does that make more sense now why we don't want to eat raw foods and drink cold water? You might be able to recover from it once in a while, but over time the spleen organ will become more and more sluggish and the energy production will slow down. Especially if you're an earth fertility archetype, you'll be most affected by this and you might have a harder time recovering from the impact of the cold and raw drinks and food. So these two patterns of imbalance doesn't just identify one symptom. Instead, it describes a group of symptoms. That's another major difference between TCM and modern biomedicine. Once you start treatment with TCM, the entire group of symptoms will improve, along with others that are impacted by this group of root issues. It would never be one treatment for one symptom, like one type of medication to resolve one particular symptom and then another medication to resolve another.
Speaker 1:Now you might be thinking what if I have symptoms of both qi stagnation and qi deficiency? That's actually very normal. When the qi flow is stuck, it could be caused by qi deficiency, because if you don't have enough energy to begin with, you won't have a lot available to flow. If the river is dry, you're not won't have a lot available to flow. If the river is dry, you're not going to have a lot of water flow. On the other hand, qi deficiency could be caused by qi stagnation. There might be enough energy, but it can't get to where it needs to go because something is blocking it. So, yes, you can have both stagnation and deficiency, but you will most likely have one predominant pattern. If you're working with a TCM practitioner, you'll be prescribed a treatment plan aimed at resolving this predominant pattern.
Speaker 1:All right, fertile friend, we're wrapping up here. I really hope today's episode was helpful in explaining what qi is and how it impacts our body, especially fertility, I think. Even if you don't fully understand the concept, just remember this one of my favorite TCM proverbs where there is free flow, there's no pain or disease. Where there's obstruction, there is pain and disease. All right, friend, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. You know where to find me. Until next time, take care of yourself and your amazing body. You are one fertile cycle away from getting pregnant. Thank you.