Articles — Depression
Depression is a Western medicine term to describe a number of contributing symptoms. ACM believes there are multiple reasons for depression, and multiple methods to adjust it.
ACM says the major contributing factors to depression are:
- Low Qi (energy) into the internal organs. If one or a number of internal organs has low Qi, it can lead to depression. ACM looks to balance the organ's Qi to bring the organ back to normal function. When your organ's Qi is low for a while, your mental state will follow to also feel low, including low self-esteem, low motivation, and feeling low ability. You may feel like you don't want to do things and don't want to see anybody.
- Poor mental state. If you have experienced a severe tragedy, or some extreme emotional events, especially losing people close to you, people deny and criticise you, and you can't get out of that environment. If you can't get rid of these thoughts, it leads to a lower mental state.
- Not being able to find the right sort of healing.
Later, you will become even more withdrawn, which will lead to a poorer mental state. This combination of an inward cause (organ Qi low) and an outward cause (poor mental state) leads you slowly into a corner, with the Western medicine definition being called Depression.
Everyone has a different starting point for his or her depression:
- The physical body being weaker, leading to a lower mental state; or
- Mental state poor, leading to being physically weaker; or
- Combination of both physical and mental weaknesses.
Western medicine usually uses counsellors to help the mental state, and drugs to control the symptoms of depression. Drugs just control the symptoms, but do not address the root cause of the problem. Counselling helps with the mental state, but does not go into the physical organs to promote the Qi and blood like the food-herb formulas do.
If the starting point of the depression is low Qi in the organ (most common cause), then counselling will have minimal effect. If the starting point is the mental state leading to the organ's low Qi, then you need counselling and the physical herb-food formula together and others.
Past experience tells us that when your Qi is strengthened, then your mental state will improve.
Recently, in Beijing, Professor Liu dealt with a 23-year-old man who was suffering with depression. A few years earlier, he had missed out by just a few marks on getting entry into university. In China, this is a major disappointment, as the whole family's hope is for the education of their children and the prospect of better lives in the future. From that time, he had feelings of guilt, feeling very low, hopeless, not wanting to see anybody, and not leaving the house. He was put in a Beijing mental hospital for 6 months with no result.
Through friends, his family heard of Professor Liu and his food-herb formulas. Professor Liu diagnosed the man as lacking spleen and heart Qi. After one month of taking the formulas, his depression had gone. He now has a job and is in a good state of mind.
There are many similar examples. We had a client who was depressed and was on medication for 2 years. After taking the food-herb formulas for 2 weeks, she did not feel depressed any more and has stopped taking the drugs.
ACM looks to balance the Qi into the 5 major internal organs.
The 5 organs relate to the five emotions:
- Heart governs overjoyed
- Lung governs sadness
- Spleen governs worry
- Liver governs anger
- Kidney governs fear.
If Qi is lacking in the Heart:
Symptoms include:
Face looks white and pale, nervous, doesn't want to talk, voice very low, feelings
of fear, difficult to deal with life, worst case having suicide feelings.
If Qi is lacking in the Lung:
Symptoms include:
Sensitive to the situation, sadness, easy to cry, tired, easy to be puffed going
up stairs, doesn't want to talk, keeping things inside.
If Qi is lacking in the Spleen:
Symptoms include:
Overweight, not wanting to move or do activities, imagining things, suspicious,
over-worry, over-thinking.
If Qi is lacking in the Liver:
Symptoms include:
Low self-esteem, scared of dark, tired eyes, lower backache, knee ache, overweight,
feeling suppressed.
If Qi is lacking in the Kidney:
Symptoms include:
Easy to get frightened, easy to jump with unexpected noise, fear of heights,
overweight, not liking to meet new people or do new things, worst case will suspect
people want to hurt them.
Healing Methods
- Counselling
- Food-Herb formulas
- Qigong exercises and meditation
- Qigong Acupressure.