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. Each arc invites you into a living system, where you begin to recognize patterns of harmony and disharmony and respond with steadiness and care.
If you haven’t yet read last week’s introduction, begin there. What follows builds on that foundation.
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.
What I craved wasn’t taste. It was relief, familiarity, numbness.
This isn’t just a story about sugar and worry. It’s a story about the Spleen—the primary organ of digestion and metabolism in Chinese Medicine. But digestion is only the beginning.
