I just asked this question all the time Clara what's the difference between phlegm and dampness? well today I'm going to shed some light to help you understand those two entities and how we view them in Chinese medicine. hi I'm Clara, if it's your first time here I create Chinese medicine content for acupuncture students and practitioners making it easy to grasp and fun to learn! if you haven't subscribed yet go ahead and do it and click the Bell so you don't miss out on any future videos. okay so the phlegm/dampness thing in Chinese medicine what so I'm not sure what to do with it a lot of my students always ask that okay so no matter what phlegm and dampness or accumulation of fluids. Phlegm is thicker, dampness is a little bit less thick more fluid... remember that in Chinese medicine body fluids or thick fluids and thin fluids right the thin fluids could be urination tears wall or sweat the thick fluid is more um organs, the brain, the marrow, that is very much more thicker. So, that's the normal stuff let's talk about excess dampness and excess phlegm which are not easy to get rid of unfortunately! excess dampness will show up with symptoms of water retention like bloating edema swelling that's excess dampness! Having excess saliva in the mouth. Having excess vaginal discharge for women that is abnormal like a lot of vaginal discharge that is abnormal having tendency to have very loose stools or diarrhea that is all damp! having tendency to have post nasal drip right our nose is dripping all the time that is excess dampness. Let's look at excess phlegm: excess phlegm is going to be coughing phlegm right the word phlegm we coughing phlegm, phlegm can be due to a cyst so cysts are made of phlegm but also blood stasis as well so cysts are going to be phlegmy. it doesn't matter if it's a ganglion or an ovarian cyst this is phlegm make sense okay! phlegm is going to be something that is going to be very crystallized as well so for patients that have rheumatoid arthritis and they start have deformity in their joints and the joint starts to puff up really bad with crystals that is phlegm as well! now what's interesting I found in TCM is that phlegm & damp have the same tongue and pulse! slippery pulse and greasy tongue coating they also have tendency to have easy nausea that is for both of them right if you have greasy skin or greasy hair greasy scalp that could be excess dampness or excess phlegm. How do we differentiate and can someone have both? yes! Someone can have dampness and phlegm, not easy to treat however to differentiate there's one thing that you can differentiate when you go to look at symptoms is the bowel movement! If there is dampness as the main bad guy we're gonna have loose tools or diarrhea. If there is phlegm we will have formed tools but sticky tools... It means we need a lot of toilet paper papers to clean it up! that's sticky! but it will be formed stools. so formed tools with sticky stools versus dampness which is more diarrhea or loose stools. that's the difference when it comes to treatment if you're not sure when it comes to acupuncture if your patient has more Damp, more phlegm you can do both points Spleen 9 is best point for dampness, stomach 40 best point for phlegm okay! those two together can work really well! However one more point when there is phlegm compared to dampness there is also invisible phlegm we have visible phlegm like the cyst and coughing phlegm and having um you know excess excess phlegm in the body uh works as thick mucus I should say but there is invisible phlegm invisible phlegm affects the mental health the brain and that can cause things from depression to Alzheimer's disease which in TCM we say is phlegm it could be do it could be causing manic behavior bipolar a lot of anxiety a lot of mental health issues in TCM we said there is phlegm misting the mind or misting the brain or misting the area so that is phlegm and it affects the mind and stomach 40 still works specifically for anxiety depression all those but obviously we have to dig a little bit deeper when the mind is affected by phlegm because it's very difficult to treat when it comes to food we want to avoid all mucus forming food so for phlegm and for dampness Dairy no no sugar no no processed food no no so those things are not great right beer alcohol not great neither unless it's hard liquor I guess um so in general we want to have food that is going to be more healthy full of vegetables things that get rid of dampness asparagus really great for dagness dandelion great for dampness lemon ginger those are great to dry dampness some are worms some are hot depending if you know we have tendency to be more warm or hot when it comes to phlegm Ginger is great for phlegm as well turmeric is great for that as well so there is a lot of food that can help but it's really important to stop eating the food that promotes it that makes sense so I just wanted to go on quickly today to make this video because I get this question all all the time I hope I was able to shed some light on the difference between phlegm and deafness and if you want to check out my books my three books you welcome to they're also available in digital uh version as well you can go on my website acuproacademy.com and check them all out they are very popular and the feedback on all of them has been very very positive I'm so happy and so proud that they're helping so many people no matter what you're doing keep rocking it using TCM and I wish you a great rest of your day