Simply put, yin refers to the substance of the human body, that is, body fluids, including blood, body fluids, tears, nasal discharge, endocrine fluid, and even male semen. As for Yang, it refers to the immaterial entity of the human body, that is, the function and harmony of the body.
Harmony of yin and yang, good health; If yin and yang are out of balance, there will be many diseases.
As Neijing Correspondence of Yin and Yang said: The law of Yin and Yang is a universal law that runs through nature. It is the root of all sports changes, the cause of growth and decline, and the fundamental method and criterion for people to understand and grasp everything. Therefore, we must grasp this root in treating diseases.
According to the law of contradiction between Yin and Yang, Neijing combined the highest achievements of astronomy, calendar, meteorology, geography, physics, chemistry and biology in China at that time. Many problems in the medical field have been fully discussed, such as:
From the anatomical point of view, men are considered as yang and women as yin; The back is yang and the abdomen is yin; External yang, internal yin; Fu organs are yang, dirty organs are yin and so on.
Physiologically, qi is yang and blood is yin; It's Yang. Static is cloudy and so on.
Pathologically, once yin and yang are out of balance, diseases will occur. No matter how complicated the disease is, it can also be attributed to two tendencies, that is, yin wins yang, yang wins yin, yang wins heat, and yin wins cold. Moreover, when this decline develops to a certain extent, there will be abnormal phenomena of cold pole generating heat and hot pole generating cold. In a word, the balance of yin and yang is a necessary condition for human health. Therefore, Neijing Nutong Tianli says: Yin and Pingyang are dense, essence is governance, yin and yang are separated, and essence is absolute.
In the diagnosis, the fundamental principle is put forward, that is, "check the color and pulse, not distinguish yin and yang first." It means that we must fully understand all aspects of the human body, and then grasp the outline of Yin and Yang to analyze, so as to judge whether the disease is exterior syndrome, heat syndrome, excess syndrome (Yang syndrome), or interior syndrome, cold syndrome and deficiency syndrome (Yin syndrome).
In the treatment, the basic principles of treating yang disease and yin disease are also put forward. Carefully check the yin and yang of the disease, and then treat it to make the human body reach the balance of yin and yang.
In a word, the theory of Yin and Yang is not about specific knowledge of physiology and pathology, but a way of thinking to guide people to learn physiology and pathology.
The theory of five elements, like the theory of Yin and Yang, is China's simple materialistic philosophy in ancient times. The ancient theory of five elements is mainly used to explain the interrelationships and laws of movement and change of various things in the universe. The reasonable factors inherited from this theory in medicine are mainly used to explain the relationship between human physiological and pathological phenomena and various factors in the external environment, as well as the relationship between human internal organs.
To understand the five elements, we must first understand the classification of the five elements. The so-called "five elements" originally refers to five common substances in daily life: water, wood, gold, fire and earth. Because these five substances have different properties, people later grouped all things with the same properties. For example, the characteristics of wood are hair growth and softness. In spring, plants sprout, showing a sunny weather. So spring belongs to the wooden line in the five elements. Similarly, because the liver is happy and comfortable, which symbolizes the characteristics of spring and wood, the liver also belongs to the spring scenery of Muhu in the five elements. Because Chinese medicine believes that liver and gallbladder are exterior-interior relations. Moreover, the liver began to understand the eyes, so gallbladder and eyes also belong to the wooden line of the five elements. So all the characteristics related to wood, such as spring, liver, gallbladder, eyes and so on. , belonging to this bank. In this way, everything can be divided into five categories according to the five elements. This is only a small part of the classification of the five elements, and more can be quoted when promoting. The classification of the five elements shows that there are complex internal relations between various parts of the human body and between the human body and nature.
Secondly, we should understand the relationship between the five elements and grams. "Life" means to nurture and encourage, while "gram" means to restrict and restrain. Taking the five internal organs as an example, according to the five elements, the liver belongs to wood, the heart belongs to fire, the spleen belongs to earth, the lung belongs to gold and the kidney belongs to water. Interrelation: fire is mother earth, soil is mother gold, gold is jellyfish, water is mother wood, and wood is mother fire. Relations between the two countries: Jin Kemu, Muktu, Tuke water, water and fire, fire and gold. Under normal circumstances, there are mutual constraints in mutual life, and there are also mutual constraints in mutual constraints. Therefore, the interaction and coordination between life and gram ensure the relative balance of the movement of human internal organs. Once this normal relationship between life and gram is destroyed, if one organ is sick, it will implicate other organs.
It should be pointed out that the theory of five elements in traditional Chinese medicine is an overall understanding of the relationship between human body, natural environment and human internal organs by ancient doctors under the condition of very backward technology. This transformation theory of five zang-organs diseases put forward under the guidance of the five elements thought greatly promoted the development of traditional Chinese medicine later. According to this idea, Zhang Zhongjing put forward the important viewpoint of "preventing diseases by working" (meaning doctor Gao Ming). He said: "If the liver is diseased, we should think that liver disease can affect the spleen, and we should treat the spleen first." On the basis of Zhang Zhongjing, many doctors in later generations made full use of the principle of five elements to generate grams and created many therapeutic experiences. For example, we often hear therapeutic principles such as "nourishing kidney water contains liver wood", "strengthening kidney water to control sunlight" and "supporting soil and restraining wood". These experiences have helped us solve many intractable diseases. In this sense, the application of the Five Elements Theory is an important achievement in the medical history of China.
The main content of the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements in TCM is to inspire people to grasp the movement law of the whole nature as a whole, and to understand the movement law of human life and its specific connection with the movement law of nature from this height, which is the essence of the whole TCM theory. The correctness and rationality of the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements in TCM (this is the main aspect) is not only proved by the development of TCM for thousands of years, but also becomes more and more profound and rich with the development of modern science and technology and modern thinking science.