Jin 津 and Ye 液 (Body Fluids) and Tuo 唾 and Xian涎 (Saliva): What are the differences and How Does It Affect Your Herbal Prescription by Dr. Liao, Chien-Fu, translated by Tina Chen
The next up Chinese speaker for eLotus in December 2019 is Dr. Liao, Chien-Fu who sees 120 patients a day. I worked with him while he came to lecture in the US in 2017 and am helping with translation for his class. I came across something very interesting again that I thought I’d share w you. This guy is great. He explains the most complicated thing in the simplest way and many times in his lecture after his explanation, I think to myself “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Today’s I want to share his thoughts on the difference between Jin and Ye (body fluids) and Tuo and Xian? I never thought much about this since it seems like it’s just terminology that we learn in school but never very practical in the clinic since Jin and Ye are just fluids and when yin is deficient, just tonify yin. Well, there is more to it…let me explain what he said in class.
What exactly is Jin, and what is Ye? We all know what they are in terms of TCM, but if you explain it in Western medicine terms, Jin is fluid that your body needs to in order to function properly like saliva. Ye is fluid that your body doesn’t need, such as tears, sweat, nasal discharge, etc.
What is Tuo and Xian? Both are saliva so what is the difference? When you spit at someone, are you spitting Tuo or Xian? Saliva has many components. The base is fluids and it contains digestive enzymes and antibacterial compounds, etc. Tuo is the fluid which is just fluid without any function while Xian is what makes saliva has its function. In other words, Xian is the useful part of Jin (the type of fluid that is useful for the body or has a function). The concept is the same with semen. There is the part that is just fluid and there is the useful part, which contains the sperms, vital life force. So semen is considered Jin and not Ye.
How does understanding this help in your practice?
Dr. Liao mentions that if you understand this concept, you can understand how to better treat cases of stomititis, or oral ulcers, cancer sores in cancer patients. The go to diagnosis is Stomach heat with Stomach deficiency. But many times you will notice that after you clear the stomach heat and nourish stomach yin and the patients may have more saliva, BUT the sores remain. Why is that? The reason is because you have tonified the Tuo, the fluid part of the saliva, but not the Xian. In order for the mouth to be free of sores, you need to tonify the Xian.
How do you tonify the Xian? Dr. Liao uses Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang. The ratio of the heat clearing, yin tonic and Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang can be adjusted depending on the patient’s presentation. His go to formula to treat chemo, radiation side effect of dry mouth, lips, burning, sores, etc is Gan Lu Yin. His clinical experience tells him that if the body is strong enough, it can then produce not only Tuo, but also Xian. And Xian is the useful part of the saliva that is going to heal the sores. In other words, qi tonics can strengthen the body so that the immune effects of the saliva take place so the body can heal itself. Qi and the Yang represent the functional part of the organ so that’s why tonifying qi additionally will give you better result than just tonifying yin and clearing heat.
Going back to the semen….you will notice great Kidney tonic formulas like You Gui Wan has BOTH kidney yin and yang tonics inside. I feel like the logic is the same here. Tonfying the yin is like tonifying the Tuo when we talked about saliva earlier and tonifying the yang is like tonifying the Xian.
I hope this post makes sense and helps you to think more about Jin, Ye, Xian and Tuo and how you can better use herbs in your practice. If you are not seeing results with heat clearing herbs for cancer sores or other sores in cancer patients, try his method. We are all looking for ways to get close to 100% success in our clinic with herbs. Thought that is a hard goal to achieve, every little bit we learn from these teachers who have walked the path before us can help us be more enlightened and get better results.
I hope to see you online when Dr. Liaos’ webinar airs in 2019 and 2020. He is a young and successful practitioner who sees over 100 patients a day and uses around $20,000 USD worth of herbs each month. He prescribes both concentrated granules like Dr. Jimmy Chang and also raw herbs. If you are an herbalist, you know he must know what he is doing and will jump at the next opportunity to learn from him as I did. https://www.elotus.org/bio/chien-fu-liao [1]