The Spleen in Chinese Medicine
Our relationship to nourishment, separating useful from not useful
TCM Deep Dives is a series of ongoing explorations of Traditional Chinese Medicine—bridging physiology, emotion, and spirit. We’re currently moving through the zang organs. Start with the introduction here. Today, we turn towards the Spleen.
In my twenties, my body ran on sugar, willpower, and worry. I was a runner, a straight-A graduate student, vegetarian, disciplined. On paper, I was thriving. In reality, I was exhausted, anxious, and waging a war on my body.
I thought I was disciplined. In truth, I was depleted.
Breakfast was a heaping bowl of Frosted Flakes topped with microwaved marshmallows, chocolate chip cookies on the side, and a 16-ounce Diet Coke. Lunch was more cereal and another soda, plus a Snickers. Dinner was a frozen veggie burger and Frosted Pop-Tarts, with Diet Coke.
Looking back, it isn’t the acne, the missing period, the insomnia, the illnesses, the injuries, or the crashes that surprise me. It’s that I didn’t even like it. I didn’t enjoy the Diet Coke I drank three times a day. I didn’t enjoy the strung-out highs or the weepy, foggy lows that followed.
More than taste, I craved relief, familiarity, numbness.
Beyond sugar and worry, this is a story about the Spleen—the primary organ of digestion and metabolism in Chinese Medicine. But digestion is only the beginning.
