Video: Traditional Chinese Medicine: Stools & Bowel Movements

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Sometimes a traditional Chinese medicine doctor may ask questions about your stool and bowel movements for diagnosing purposes. Learn more about tcm and bowel movement diagnostics from an acupuncturist in this free alternative medicine video.

Video Transcript

One of the more interesting techniques for diagnostics in traditional Chinese medicine is the kinds of questions a practitioner may ask about your stools and your urine. So sometimes an uncomfortable subject for talking with a total stranger, your practitioner, but its extremely important. In Chinese medicine, we're not able to often times do the blood work or x-rays or MRIs, so our questioning and the types of answers that a patient will give us really gives us tremendous insight. So those things, like our stool or our urine can give us a great deal of information about what's going on. So your practitioner may ask if you tend towards constipation or if you tend towards loose stools. If there is loose stools and undigested food in the stool, we're going to say your spleen energy is very weak and we need to notify. If there's a lot of mucus in it, we talk about dampness and phlegm. If you're tending towards constipation, we often times see things like heat, yin deficiency or blood deficiency. And there is a more interesting one, we talk about rabbit pellets. For lack of a better way to describe them, small pellet-like stools often times tell us that there's liver chi stagnation going on. That's usually referred to as either a menstrual difficulties or often times we'll see its just related to the stress. So don't be ashamed to tell your practitioner the gory details of your stools and your urine and you'll be able to get a much more exact and successful treatment from your practitioner.

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Traditional Chinese Medicine: Stools & Bowel Movements

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