Hunger is reserved for the lean
"Hunger is Your Patients' Best Friend"
by Dr. E Douglas Kihn, for Acupuncture Today
There is no concept more confused and maligned in popular modern culture than the idea of physical hunger. And yet, understanding the role of hunger in the health of our patients is a critical skill for the superior physician.
- The hunger feeling is a survival message from a strong, dry spleen that prepares and motivates healthy humans and animals to go to work to obtain food—and avoid starvation.
- Hunger is an empty, hollow pang, not a pain, that is felt in the stomach area. It is a physical sensation, not a thought.
- Hunger is spleen qi concentrating in the middle jiao, ready to process food, or in its absence, to fly out to the arms, legs, and brain for the purpose of foraging and hunting.
- The hunger feeling only occurs in animals and humans who are healthy enough and lean enough, i.e. low on reserve calories/guqi, to perform hard physical and mental labor. Hunger is weak or absent in animals and humans who are fat, injured, or sick.
- The damper the spleen, the weaker the hunger, until, at a certain point, the hunger feeling disappears completely—a message from the body advising to not eat anything. In the dead of winter, the hunger feeling would be detrimental to the survival of fat, sleepy forager/hunters.
- Strong hunger coincides with sharp vision and hearing, clear thinking, vivid emotions, and high energy, all necessary for teamwork and summer survival in the wilderness.
- Strong hunger reflects strong spleen qi that can digest almost any food fit for human consumption—and with gusto, because of enhanced taste and smell.
- In pre-industrial cultures and in all times past, such as in traditional China, the concepts of “appetite” and “hunger” were considered one and the same. This is no longer the case in our modern world. “Appetite” is the mental desire for food. Anyone can have an appetite. In fact, everyone who eats has an appetite. Modern culture typically assigns the word “hunger” to a multiplicity of uncomfortable emotions, physical symptoms, and intellectual justifications. Hunger is routinely confused in the mass media with the serious conditions of starvation and malnutrition. But the fact is that no one ever died or got sick from hunger or any other feelings, since feelings are nothing but information from the body. (Continued below.)
Typical nutritional propaganda
How to Determine the Existence of Hunger
While certain medical conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and multiple food allergies/intolerances are obvious indications for us of a damp spleen and zero hunger, it’s still valuable for a patient to discover this for him/herself, since this will finally lead to the logical conclusion that there is no such thing as “healthy food” for him/her. Generally, care must be exercised when determining whether someone really feels hunger.
Question #1
Do you get hungry? If the answer is “yes” or “always,” do not assume that the patient feels hunger. In fact, “always” usually means “never.” A nervous stomach, a burning stomach, nausea, or pain will often masquerade as hunger as well. Continue with the next question.
Question #2
Where do you feel this sensation? If the answer is “in the upper abdomen” or “the stomach area,” proceed with the final question. But any other answer indicates the absence of actual hunger.
Question #3
What does your hunger feel like? If the answer is an empty or hollow feeling, we can feel reasonably confident that this person feels hunger. If the answer is anything else, the person probably does not feel hunger. Growling in the abdomen is not hunger. In fact, it might just be the intestines processing food/chyme. Burning, tightness, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, or any other physical symptoms that would interfere with the successful foraging and hunting for food are best treated with physical medicine, not food.