Seven emotions refer to seven kinds of emotional activities: joy, anger, worry, thinking, sadness, fear and surprise. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that they are the physiological response of the human body to the external environment, and they will not cause diseases directly under normal circumstances. However, if the emotional activity is intense and excessive, beyond the limits that the human body can bear, and it can't be calm for a long time, it will inevitably affect the function of viscera and qi and blood, leading to the disorder of qi and blood in the whole body. For example, Su Wen's Shi Tong said: "Anger leads to qi stagnation, joy leads to qi stagnation, sadness leads to qi stagnation, fear leads to qi depression, shock leads to qi disorder, and thinking leads to qi stagnation". Another example is "Anger hurts the liver, happiness hurts, thinking hurts the spleen, sadness hurts the lungs, and fear hurts the kidney", all of which show that the excessive extremes of the seven emotions have certain damage to the qi, blood and viscera of the human body.
The "happiness" in the seven emotions is a manifestation of a happy mood. As the saying goes, "people are refreshed when they are happy", and happy things can make people refreshed. However, excessive happiness will hurt the "heart". Traditional Chinese medicine believes that "the heart governs the gods" and the heart is the center of emotional thinking activities. Abnormal "happiness" can lead to anxiety, even incoherent and abnormal behavior. For example, the story of "Jin Fan won the bid" in "The Scholars" tells that he was frustrated for decades and won the bid once. He was so happy that he pretended to be crazy, crazy and couldn't understand people. This is the so-called "infinite joy hurts the soul, the soul hurts madness, and madness does not exist". In addition, excessive joy can lead to rapid heartbeat and dizziness, and some patients with coronary heart disease can also induce angina pectoris or myocardial infarction due to excessive excitement. So the joy should be moderate. Happiness is pleasant, pleasant, and the camp is comfortable, but excessive will lead to the opposite.
"Anger" refers to the phenomenon that people will get angry once they encounter unreasonable things or can't do them. Chinese medicine believes that liver qi should be relaxed, liver should be soft, blood should be harmonious and liver should be depressed. When people are angry, they destroy the normal and comfortable psychological environment, and when the liver is out of reach, the liver qi will be rebellious. Therefore, when people are angry, they often feel hypochondriac pain or chest discomfort; Or don't want to eat, abdominal pain; There are even critical diseases such as vomiting blood. In Chinese medicine, it is called "excess of liver-qi can attack spleen and soil". Modern medicine also believes that people who are extremely nervous will cause gastrointestinal dysfunction or form peptic ulcer; There is also a sudden death caused by coronary heart disease caused by elevated blood pressure. During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhou Yu was so angry that he vomited blood and died. Such an example occasionally happens in daily life. Therefore, from the health point of view, the best way is to give up gas as much as possible, because it is good for both people and themselves.
"Worry" refers to sadness and depression. It is manifested as worrying, frowning, sighing and depressed all day. "Soul fulcrum. This God says: "Those who are worried can't do it because of qi resistance." If you worry too much, it will not only damage your lungs, but also affect your temper and appetite. The proverb says, "If you worry, you will get old." . Legend has it that when Wu Zixu visited Wen Zhaoguan, his hair and beard all fell out overnight, which was caused by something in his heart and excessive sadness.
"Thinking" means focusing on the problem. Thinking is completely dominated by people's subjective will. If you think too much, your spirit will be affected and your thinking will be more disordered. Insomnia, dreaminess, neurasthenia and other diseases are mostly related to overthinking. Chinese medicine believes that thinking too much will hurt the spleen, which will lead to poor eating and sleep. After a long time, all diseases will follow. Therefore, if you can't understand something in society or life, you'd better not "understand" it, because the more you "understand" it, the worse it will be, and the dissatisfaction in your heart may lead to "gas knot".
"Sadness" is a modality caused by sadness and pain. It is characterized by pale face, lack of air and occasional touch, that is, tears or sadness. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that worry is the further development of worry, and both of them damage the lung (referring to lung qi), so there is a saying that "excessive worry hurts the lung, and lung injury relieves anger". This shows that too much sadness will hurt the internal organs. Therefore, once something unfortunate happens at home, you must feel sorry for your loss and take care of yourself.
"Fear" refers to the fear and timidity caused by extreme mental stress. "Surprise" is a sudden encounter with something extraordinary, which leads to sudden mental tension. Such as sudden danger, sudden danger, witnessing foreign objects, hearing loud noises, etc. , can cause fright. Surprise is different from fear. The surprise is that you don't know, and you are scared. I'm scared. I know and I'm scared. People who are afraid for no reason are mostly deficient in kidney qi and qi and blood; People who are stunned and at a loss by sudden fright are mostly helpless and unable to return to God because of inner disorder and the damage of painstaking efforts. Therefore, it is necessary to tonify the kidney to treat fear and soothe the nerves to treat shock.
In short, if people want to keep their emotional activities relatively calm, they should pay attention to ideological cultivation and psychological adjustment at ordinary times, look at the changes of things around them objectively, and keep their mental outlook in an optimistic, happy, quiet and peaceful state, which is conducive to health preservation.
Pathogenesis caused by seven emotions
L) direct damage to internal organs
Excessive emotion for too long will directly damage the internal organs. Emotional injury to zang-fu organs can be manifested as resistance to injury to five zang-fu organs and six zang-fu organs, which is manifested in the pathological law of corresponding disorder of zang-fu organs and qi-flowing; You can also be unpredictable and get angry at the touch.
① Prevention of injury to the five zang-organs: Emotional activities must be based on the essence of the five zang-organs, and external stimuli can act on the corresponding five zang-organs, showing specific emotional changes, so seven emotions belong to the five zang-organs. Its basic laws are: anger is the ambition of the liver, joy is the ambition of the heart, sadness (worry) is the ambition of the lung, thinking is the ambition of the spleen, and fear (shock) is the ambition of the kidney. Excessive emotions, too long will damage the corresponding internal organs. The basic rules of its injury to the five internal organs are: anger hurts the liver, happiness hurts the spleen, sadness hurts the lungs and fear hurts the kidney. This law of injury is also called "self-injury".
② The disease can be divided into two parts: when touched, the disease can be caused by emotion, that is, it can not be caused by the above seven emotions, which will lead to the disorder of viscera and qi. Can be divided into impermanent points, explosive. First, an emotion can hurt a lot of dirty things: for example, anger can hurt the liver, or it can be disobedient, and it can attack the stomach while taking advantage of the spleen, resulting in abdominal distension, diarrhea, hiccups, vomiting and other symptoms; Thinking too much will not only damage the spleen and stomach, but also consume sad blood and lose nutrients, causing palpitations, insomnia and dreaminess. Excessive fear will hurt the kidney, the essence can't be taken, the fire and water can't help, and there may be symptoms such as boredom, inability to lie down, or anxiety, guilty conscience and timidity. Second, a variety of emotions can hurt the same viscera: seven emotions can hurt the five zang-organs separately for too long, but they are particularly closely related to the heart. Because the heart is the master of the five zang-organs and dominates spiritual and emotional activities, the seven emotions will hurt the viscera first, and the damage to the mind will inevitably involve various pathological changes of other zang-organs. In addition, because the purgation function of the liver can regulate emotions, it is related to the operation of qi in the whole body. Therefore, the pathogenesis of seven emotions leads to the imbalance of viscera and qi, which will inevitably affect the catharsis function of the liver too much or too little, so the loss of the catharsis function of the liver is also the key to the emotional pathogenesis. Because the spleen and stomach are the hinge of the ascending and descending of human viscera and qi, and the source of qi and blood biochemistry, all kinds of emotions can often damage the spleen and stomach, leading to abnormal ascending and descending of the spleen and stomach. Therefore, emotional injury is mostly caused by dysfunction of heart, liver, spleen (stomach) and qi and blood.
(2) Affect the viscera and qi.
The seven emotions cause diseases and injuries to the five zang-fu organs, which mainly affect the qi movement of the five zang-fu organs, causing the qi movement of the five zang-fu organs to rise and fall abnormally and the qi and blood movement to be disordered. Different modal stimuli have different effects on Qi-moving machine. Seven emotions affect the pathological changes of viscera and qi movement. Su Wen concluded that "anger leads to qi rising, joy leads to qi falling, sadness leads to qi disappearing, and fear leads to qi falling." ... shock leads to qi disorder ... thinking leads to qi stagnation. \
Anger leads to qi, which means that excessive anger can make liver qi rush up and blood rush up with qi. Clinically, you can see qi-resistance, red face and red eyes, or hematemesis, or even fainting and falling to the ground.
Happiness leads to slow breathing, including relieving tension and distraction. Under normal circumstances, happiness can relieve tension, benefit the camp and health and feel comfortable. "Su Wen" said: "Happiness leads to ambition, while camp leads to profit, so the spirit slows down. However, excessive euphoria can also lead to distraction, inattention and even insanity.
Sadness leads to qi elimination, which means that excessive sadness will lead to lung qi depression, depression and lung qi failure.
Fear leads to lower qi, which means excessive fear can make kidney qi unstable, and qi will be vented to lower qi, which can lead to incontinence in clinic; Or if you don't understand fear, you will have nocturnal emission, bone soreness, paralysis and nocturnal emission.
When you are shocked, you will be angry. It means that you are suddenly frightened, so that your heart has nothing to rely on, your mind has nothing to turn to, you are uneasy and panicked.
Thinking leads to qi stagnation, which means that excessive thinking and exertion damage the spirit and spleen, which can lead to qi stagnation. The ancients believed that thinking originated from the spleen and became the heart, so thinking too much not only consumed the sad spirit, but also affected the temper. Thinking too much will piss off the spleen and consume yin and blood. If you lose your mind, you will have palpitations, forgetfulness, insomnia, dreaminess and other symptoms. When qi stagnation is blocked, spleen transport is weak, and stomach rot is dereliction of duty, anorexia, abdominal distension, loose stool and other symptoms will appear.
(3) Abnormal mood swings can aggravate or rapidly worsen the disease.
According to clinical observation, in the course of many diseases, if patients have serious mood swings, they will often aggravate their illness or deteriorate sharply. Patients with a history of hypertension will feel dizzy, even faint suddenly, or the servant will be incoherent, and his mouth and eyes will be askew. Heart disease patients often get worse or worse quickly because of mood swings.
seven emotional factors
Both ancient and modern health care physicians and physicians attach great importance to regulating the seven emotions of joy, anger, worry, thinking, sadness, fear and shock as a means to strengthen the body, prolong life or treat diseases and promote drug efficacy.
Huangdi Neijing summarizes the method of "calmness and nothingness", and points out that if people can keep a cheerful and quiet mental outlook and correctly handle accidents, they can rest their true qi and prolong their life.
Ancient health care experts regarded emotional regulation as a good medicine to treat diseases. Doctors pay more attention to emotional regulation. Wang Qishi, a medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, believed that the combination of seven emotions and drug treatment was the basis for preventing and treating deficiency syndrome. Cheng, a medical scientist in Qing Dynasty, pointed out: "When the seven emotions arise, they should still be used to overcome and adjust. If you don't understand them, you will gain weight if you rely on drugs. " Traditional Chinese medicine and psychotherapy have various forms, which can be summarized as follows:
Reasoning-inspired psychotherapy: this psychotherapy originated from Huangdi Neijing and mainly includes four aspects. The first is to "tell failure", that is, to point out the disease and its harm and arouse patients' attention to the disease. The second is "words are good", which means that as long as we cooperate with medical staff, treat them in time and take proper measures, we can restore health and enhance patients' confidence in overcoming diseases. The third is "guiding according to its convenience", that is, telling patients how to recuperate and pointing out specific measures for treatment. Fourth, "open to its pain" means understanding the patient's negative psychological state.
Emotional psychotherapy: This method originated from Huangdi Neijing, saying "Anger hurts the liver, sadness is better than anger", "Happiness hurts, fear is better than happiness", "Thinking hurts the spleen, anger is better than thinking", "Sorrow hurts the lungs, joy is better than worry" and "Fear hurts the kidney, thinking is better than fear". Practice has proved that it is effective to treat diseases caused by emotions according to this psychotherapy.
Shock psychotherapy: this is a method of using mental stimulation to treat human physiological dysfunction. "Lingshu" contains "Bang, it's shocking."
For example, the doctor said to the anxious patient under hypnosis: "After this treatment, your mood will soon become calm, and there will be no more anxiety and anxiety. Your headache will soon be relieved or disappeared, your sleep will improve day by day, and you will sleep soundly and deeply. "