Spleen deficiency is a common pattern in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It refers to a weakened ability of the spleen and stomach to transport and transform food, leading to problems with digestion and absorption. Typical symptoms include loss of appetite, abdominal distension, loose stools, physical fatigue, a sallow complexion, and general weakness.
Note: The “spleen” in TCM does not refer solely to the anatomical spleen organ, but rather to a multifunctional concept involving digestion, absorption, and nutrition.
The Story of the Cat and the Mice
I got my first cat when I was in third grade.
That year, the weather was favorable, and the rice harvest was bountiful. The grain harvested in the fall was packed into burlap sacks and stacked in the living room. Our house back home was built against a mountain, and there were many mice in the mountains. Every night, we could hear the mice squeaking as they sneaked in to eat the grain. When I woke up in the morning, the burlap sacks holding the grain always had several holes chewed in them, and the grain was scattered all over the floor.
To prevent the mice from stealing the grain, my father bought a few mousetraps and baited them with grain to catch the mice. On the first night, the mousetrap successfully killed a mouse, but in the days that followed, the mice had clearly learned the danger of the traps and began to avoid them. For several nights in a row, not a single mouse was caught.
The grain sacks were still being chewed through…
“These mice are way too bold. Why don’t we just buy a few packets of rat poison and kill them all?” I said.
My great-grandfather disagreed. He said, “The house is close to the mountain, and there are plenty of mice up there. You can’t catch them all, and you can’t poison them all either. The only solution is to keep a cat at home. With a cat around, the mice won’t dare come inside.”
I was a bit skeptical of Grandpa’s advice. Could one cat really be enough?
A few days later, my father brought home a kitten—a very small one, probably weaned only recently, less than two months old. Its meows were soft and high-pitched, and it wasn’t even as big as the mouse we’d killed with a mousetrap last time.
Could such a tiny thing really keep those crazy mice in check? I was very doubtful!
After we went to bed that night, my father placed the kitten next to the grain pile to guard the food. In my sleep, I could hear the kitten’s soft, babyish meows from time to time.
The next morning, the first thing I did after waking up was check to see if the kitten was still alive—if it had been bitten to death by the mice.
As Great-Grandfather had predicted, the mice hadn’t made a move all night; not a single grain of rice was missing. The kitten had truly kept the big mice at bay.
My great-grandfather told me this is called “mutual restraint”! It’s like using brine to curdle soy milk—one thing subdues another.
Everything in the world is in a state of mutual generation and restraint; no matter how powerful something is, there’s always something else that can subdue it.
In clinical practice, we often encounter patients who, every time they visit the doctor, are told they have “excessive internal heat,” “excessive internal dampness,” or “excessive internal cold.”
Heat! Dampness! Cold! Why do these pathogenic factors persist in the body for so long? Why do patients take medication for so long yet never achieve a complete cure?
When a pathogenic factor lingers in the body for an extended period, we should ask ourselves: Why is this happening?
It’s because the body’s regulatory mechanism has gone awry!
It’s just like the mouse in the story: without anything to keep it in check, it runs rampant; but when the cat—its natural predator—appears, all it takes is a few meows for the mouse to retreat obediently.
The human body works the same way!
I. When Dampness Is Severe in the Body, the Spleen Must Be Tonified First
Clinically, many patients suffer from severe dampness in their bodies. Even after taking numerous medications to eliminate dampness, the dampness persists, and every summer, they tend to develop blisters on their skin. While eliminating dampness is certainly one approach, it is not the optimal solution. The best approach is to identify the natural enemy of dampness within the body—that is, which organ can suppress dampness!
Which organ is the nemesis of dampness?
The spleen!
The spleen governs dampness; it thrives on dryness and abhors dampness. The spleen is responsible for transforming and transporting dampness within the body, promoting the metabolism of body fluids. If the spleen’s function is impaired, dampness will run rampant throughout the body. While medications that target dampness alone may provide some relief, they rarely lead to a complete cure.
I once treated a 35-year-old male patient who had been suffering from loose stools for over three years.
For more than three years, he had 3–4 bowel movements daily. The stools were small in volume, watery, sticky, and unpleasant, accompanied by aching and weakness in his limbs. He self-medicated with antibiotics, but the results were mediocre. After taking Chinese herbal medicine to promote urination, his stools became formed and his condition improved, but before long, his symptoms returned. Later, when he sought treatment at a hospital, the doctor recommended Smecta. After taking it, his bowel movements improved, but the symptoms of soreness and weakness in his limbs did not subside.
When he came to see me, I carefully examined his tongue and found that it was swollen and large, with a classic “tooth-marked tongue.” His pulse was stagnant and slow at the right Guan and Chi positions. I explained to the patient, “Your spleen is weak, causing abnormalities in your body’s fluid metabolism and an excess of dampness in the intestines—that is why you are experiencing these symptoms.”
The patient asked me in confusion, “I’ve heard from others that I have excessive dampness, but I eat winter melon every day and have taken many dampness-draining medications. Why can’t I seem to get better?”
I explained, “Excessive dampness is merely a symptom; the root cause of your illness is spleen deficiency. As long as you take some spleen-tonifying herbs to restore the spleen’s ability to transform dampness, your condition will naturally improve.” I recommended a dietary therapy approach, which proved effective very quickly.
II. Dietary Therapy Methods to Strengthen the Spleen
In fact, the dietary therapy is quite simple: eat a bowl of coix seed porridge every day, accompanied by tea infused with Atractylodes lancea.
The coix seed porridge is prepared as follows: Grind the coix seeds into a coarse powder, mix them with an equal amount of japonica rice, and boil with water until it becomes a thin porridge.
This porridge recipe originates from the *Compendium of Materia Medica*. Coix seed, also known as coix kernel, has a sweet and bland taste and a slightly cold nature. It is effective in strengthening the spleen, promoting diuresis, dispelling dampness and alleviating arthralgia, clearing heat, expelling pus, and clearing damp-heat; when cooked into porridge with japonica rice, it is most effective at tonifying the spleen and eliminating dampness.
Atractylodes is bitter and warm in nature; it strengthens the spleen and dries dampness, proving highly effective for cases with a predominance of intestinal dampness.
Moreover, I have treated many patients with diarrhea using Atractylodes as a single herb.
In the summer heat, when people feel restless and irritable, they tend to seek out cool things—eating lots of popsicles and drinking plenty of cold beverages. This very easily leads to cold and dampness trapping the spleen, causing weakness in the limbs, drowsiness, loss of appetite, loose stools, and sometimes even a dull ache in the abdomen. Conventional wisdom tells us that this is the body being harmed by dampness and cold!
But in such hot weather, it’s impossible to resist seeking relief from the heat or using air conditioning. So how can we ensure our health while enjoying the coolness of summer?
One summer, due to the intense heat, I also overindulged in cooling measures and ended up with scant urination, abdominal pain, and the miserable experience of having diarrhea more than ten times a day—all accompanied by weakness in my limbs and a loss of appetite. At the time, I took Lizhong Pills, but the results were not significant. The next day, I steeped 10 grams of raw Atractylodes in water and drank it. Immediately after swallowing it, I felt my stomach and intestines relax, my urine flow became unobstructed, the diarrhea was cured that very day, and my physical strength was restored. A simple decoction of Atractylodes—its therapeutic effect was truly miraculous.
Since that personal experience, whenever I encounter patients with spleen deficiency and excessive dampness, accompanied by weakness in the limbs, I often recommend that they steep raw Atractylodes in water and drink it as tea, and this has consistently yielded excellent results.
Whenever a pathogenic factor invades the body, it is because the corresponding vital energy is deficient. Traditional Chinese Medicine states: “When vital energy resides within, pathogenic factors cannot invade; where pathogenic factors gather, vital energy must be deficient.” According to the theory of mutual control, illness occurs when the force that suppresses pathogenic factors is weakened.
The spleen prefers dryness and abhors dampness; this is its nature and a fundamental physiological characteristic. When damp pathogenic factors predominate in the body, the spleen becomes trapped by them, preventing it from functioning normally. The metabolism of dampness is also impaired, which in turn further exacerbates the dampness within the body, creating a vicious cycle.
To treat diseases caused by dampness, one must strengthen the spleen and drain dampness to break the vicious cycle and transform it into a virtuous cycle; only then will the body become increasingly healthy.
To deepen our understanding of spleen deficiency with excessive dampness—and of the principle that “Earth overcomes Water”—let’s consider another story: “Insights from Sweeping the Floor.”
