all right let's talk about observation of the body colors so i'm not talking about the tone i'm talking about the body colors the body can be either red yellow purple bluish or pale okay so let's start with red if there's redness in the lips or the nose or the eyes or those red rashes anywhere in the skin it's either an excess heat or it comes from a yin deficiency okay so if you have red lips it could be that there's excess heat in the stomach because the lips are reflected in the five element to the stomach and spleen so if the lips are red it's in excess heat in the stomach it could also be a yin deficiency in the stomach if the lips were red and cracked so that's the difference and of course you would have to look at symptoms and as the tongue as well right so if those red eyes for example like chronic red sclera of the eyes it would be that there's probably some liver heat or liver fire that's affecting or heat that's affecting the liver does that make sense so it's kind of our observation skill that we use in that perspective to look at colors right yellow yellow palms i always look at my patient's palm uh yellow palms connotate dampness so it kind of gives you an idea if there's a lot of dampness in that person of course if those yellow sclera or the eyes yellow eyes that's usually a sign of jaundice right which affect the liver and in tcm john this affects liver and spleen and there's excess damp heat usually the nails if the nails are yellow same idea right it is containing usually jaundice as well oozing skin so of course if we see yellow pus um yellows um anything that's oozing and that's yellowish that's dampness makes sense purple so purple is always blood stasis purple nails would make liver blood stasis because liver reflects in the nails purple lips would be more blood stasis affecting the digestive system especially the stomach purple bruises all over the body right has sensitive bruise easily that can come up with a spleen not holding the blood within the blood vessels which can create bruises or if someone has punched you you have a bruise and that's blood stasis it's painful and booze uh big blood clots in uh the menstruation blood doing menstruation also shows purple blood stasis bluish color uh that's usually an excess cold so usually a lot of time if we have bluish color we may have bluish purple because if there's excess cold it creates a congeal it stops circulation and can create blood stasis so it's very often we have a bluish purple together when there's excess cold so it could be acute or chronic of course um if you have really really blue lips that's usually probably because you're really freezing so maybe you uh we see kids often right kids can play in the water in the ocean or in the lakes and they're freezing their lips are blue but they still want to play because you know they're having fun they don't even know they're cold um of course blue fingers means there is definitely excess hand excess cold no circulation that could be due to um frostbite that could be due to reynolds disease right so there's a lot of possibilities for that and of course pale uh always always connotate a deficiency and pale can either be she deficiency blood deficiency or young deficiency usually if it's um something that is young deficiency you're gonna have pale and puffy like some swelling with it right so some shine to it if it's a blood deficiency it will be pale maybe more on the drier side and cheese deficiency could be completely pale so someone that has pale lips that's usually um it could be a screen sheet deficiency uh someone that has very pale blood um when they have the menstruation if it's just pale blood it's blood deficiency if it's pale pinkish blood that's very runny and watery that's more young deficiency okay so but no matter what it's either achieved blood or young deficiency you need to have all the symptoms and the inquiry palpation and all the other methods of diagnosis to figure out which one is more affected so let's play with what we just saw right so if you look at those two actresses uh the one on the left is very pale she's definitely blood deficient that's very much a pale compared to the one that's on the right she's spill but you could see it's a very different pail it's more of a with a yellow hue to it so when there's stillness with a yellow hue that means there's dampness right we said yellow is dampness in body skin observation and pale is deficiency so this is usually a kidney and spleen deficiency that obviously creates dampness because when skin she is deficient there's always dampness that occurs so that's the difference between the two of them now let's see what do we see so this person if you look at her what do you see red cheeks that's a yin deficiency and definitely more reddish lips her lips are pink but definitely dark pink more on the red right so it's either excess heat or in deficiency but because of the red cheeks i would say it's more of a yin deficiency make sense this person what do you see purple right purple eyes or purple shade around the eyes purple lips purple face definitely it's more on the purple side which is more blood stagnation the lips i would say are a bit purple pale so there could be some blood deficiency as well we need to look at the tongue to see if it correlates but there's definitely some blood stasis observation of the area of the eyes so that's interesting i don't use this in clinical practice a lot but as you can see each area of the eye represents or reflects different organ in the body tcm organ in the body right so the one i use the most is the sclera or the white of the eye which represents the lungs so if the sclera is really really red or if there's issues then this issue belong right long heat it could be but because it's affecting also the eyes and the eyes is always the liver then i would say there's also liver heat so this is a if the red sclera usually that's long and liver heat tells you give you some idea right what i use a lot more in observation is the upper lid represents the splint spleen sorry and the lower lid the stomach so if it's puffy on the lower lid there is definitely some darkness affecting the stomach if it's puffy or heavy on the upper lid it's a spleen issue so often sometimes people have droopy eyelid the upper eyelid that's droopy that's usually a screen she's sinking but there's people that also have very heavy highlight or puffy one and that's a spleen and if it's the lower stomach if there's a little bit of redness on the inner canthus or the inner part of the eye that is usually heat or fire in the heart so that gives you an idea right all those little observations so let's put this a little bit in practice let's look at circle under the eyes right so if we look at um those two people she has definitely black circle under her eyes he has more purplish circle under his eyes right so hers are more black more black means kidney it's affecting the kidney does a kidney deficiency here's a more purple so that's more of a blood stasis that's definitely affecting um is lower lid area that's almost purple so there's got to be something with the stomach as well puffy eyelid like i say this one really the lower one right you can see that it's super puffy on the lower part and so that's dampness specifically affecting the stomach and this one if i look at observation she definitely has a greasy t-zone so her nose or forehead is very greasy so there's definitely some excess damage so phlegm that's affecting her and the red cheeks right so there's some yin deficiency from the red cheeks but there's definitely also a t-zone so she has yin deficiency and some dampness of flam again while you do the rest of your diagnosis you can correlate it all this to your observation skills okay so let's look at another eye this is really red right so you can see the inner canthus is very red so that's hard fire and the whole sclera is red meaning that lung has fire or heat and liver has fire or heat it definitely looks like an infection right which makes sense which affects liver lung and heart in that perspective this one is jaundice we could see it the yellow sclera very yellow that's a jaundice that affects liver of course we understand that yellow nails so again that's john dislike right it's really bad for the livers um it's really correlates to a damp and heat in the liver which is usually jaundice compared to this this uh these nails have ridges and they are very very very pale so that's more of a liver blood deficiency let's look at lips beautiful lips so i don't know if those are naturals but i wanted to try to give you an idea so i wanted to kind of practice what do you see there for the color this to me is a purple pale kind of lip so it's lips that are lavender so purple is blood stasis pale is blood deficiency usually so that's a blood deficiency in bloodstasis which is very common to see in clinical practice those lips are red we agree a little cracks are definitely red right so if they're cracked it could be that it's a yen deficiency because they're cracked so there's not enough fluid uh it could be excess heat that's leading to yin deficiency this one's definitely purple and dry right so we have definitely the dryness because the lips are cracked and the purple polish which makes it bloodstasis and some body fluid deficiency or some excess dryness in the body those are definitely body fluid deficiency super cracked super dry as you can see so this body fluid deficiency and the lips are very very pale so it's either a tree deficiency a young deficiency or a blood deficiency i would say they're a little bit more puffy so i would say it could be young deficiency but of course we need more of a diagnosis to be able to continue to do that all right observation of the nose in chinese medicine we go through every little area as you can see a dry nose is usually heat invading the large intestine or stomach why not belong right if it's a dry nose it's the skin that's drying usually it's affecting the meridian and the stomach and large intestine meridian go by the area of the nose that's why if we have clear discharge like runny nose post nasal drip and it's just water coming out of your faucet of your nose that is definitely excess cold if we have yellow discharge that's excess heat okay so remember that yellow is dampness on the body on the skin but not in mucus okay yellow in mucus or on the tongue coating will be more heat that's the thing that all my students make mistake yellow palm would be dampness right yellow color on the skin like oozing discharge is definitely a bit of dampness but if it's discharge of the nose or mucus it's always heat when it's yellow and it's cold when it's clear okay let's not mix them up a blue nose usually affects the stomach or the large intestine and create and is creating or created by abdominal pain so it's acute usually abdominal pain and a red nose red nose like with all of the reindeer is usually long heat or excess heat in the lawn