When our grandfathers were young, when they met and greeted each other, the most common saying was “Have you eaten yet?”
This is the most popular but also the most real greeting from hungry people at that time.
With the passage of time and the progress of cognition, some popular and temporary words have faded out and some hot concepts have been eliminated. However, some statements are still [firmly] active among the public, such as [kidney deficiency].
In some so-called [experts, scholars, researchers] and advertising campaigns, Chinese kidney is always weak. Infertility, white face, aversion to cold, tiredness, laziness, dizziness, tinnitus, amnesia, alopecia… those symptoms and signs that can be said and unspeakable discomfort seem to be attributed to kidney deficiency. However, once symptoms like impotence and spermatorrhea appear, many people’s first reaction must be [to tonify the kidney].
Is there any reason for this kidney deficiency?
To be fair, there are some reasons, but they are not complete.
The [kidney] of traditional Chinese medicine is vague, it is more like a functional definition, which seems to include many functions of kidney, adrenal gland and hypothalamus-pituitary axis in modern medicine (it seems that [kidney] is not clearly stated in various traditional Chinese medicine books as what).
According to this comparison, patients with adrenocortical insufficiency do show signs of fatigue and burnout. However, when pituitary axis function problems occur, impotence and infertility may occur.
As many as one in ten people in the crowd may have chronic kidney disease. Patients with adrenal and pituitary diseases, There are only single digits in a hundred thousand people. When some Jianghu doctors feel the pulse, However, there are many people with kidney deficiency. Some of the so-called “kidney deficiency” symptoms can be explained by nephropathy, adrenal cortex insufficiency and pituitary diseases, but the [disease] mechanism of other [kidney deficiency] patients usually cannot be explained by nephropathy, adrenal diseases and other mechanisms. It is really inappropriate to start treating diseases without understanding.
On the one hand, the proliferation of the concept of kidney deficiency is related to the unclear definition of this concept in traditional Chinese medicine itself; On the other hand, it is related to the hype of the concept of health care products by merchants in recent years-the more people are empty and the more people need to be supplemented, the better health care products can be sold!
We introduced the basic function of the kidney in the last issue. There are really many things the kidney has to do (click to view the article)-about 1 litre of blood needs to be filtered every minute, They also have to bear the heavy responsibility of balancing water and salt and secreting some hormones-however, despite such a heavy workload, the kidneys can do without difficulty. However, those volunteers who donate kidneys, with only one kidney left, can still live a normal life.
There is no reason for such a competent kidney to be easily [weak]. It is mostly useless to supplement it at will.
Many middle-aged and old friends like Zuo Zongtang, and there is such a sentence in his family letter:
To put it in plain English is to cure diseases and prevent diseases. Don’t always think about how to make up for them.
This kidney is not as weak as everyone thinks.
Our understanding of diseases is still in gradual and continuous development. Not only scientists and doctors, but also some public cognition needs to keep pace with the times. Since in modern medicine, there are more accurate descriptions to classify diseases and there is still room for sustainable development, then don’t always stick to old things, but try to understand new and more accurate concepts with an open and scientific attitude.
Admittedly, there are still many imperfections in modern medicine. But will the treatment plan based on clinical experiments and large population survey data be more credible than a vague [empty is real]?
Living conditions are better, and fewer people are hungry, so the sentence “have you eaten?” Has been sealed up in the memory of the times. Similarly, with the development of medicine and the deepening understanding of diseases, will the word “kidney deficiency” slowly grow old?