Your body (whether you are a man or woman) can make astounding contributions to your sexual and general health if you only learn to follow its lead.
Learn to look at little, little things you least would have thought about, and note them in your mind.
Look at your stool in the morning. Observe its form, odour etc. Also, observe if you see anything unusual about it. Also observe its colour. If the stool is always too light in colour, you could be lacking sufficient Bile.
Sufficient Bile may be indicated in stool as a rich brown colour of stool. Observe your wee-wee especially in the mornings and at other times. Many dissolved waste materials from what you have been drinking (including water), eating and inhaling, are the things that urine is made of.
The kidneys eliminate excess water, salts and minerals, as well as urea from protein digestion, uric acid, creatinine, hormone waste and toxins. Also eliminated is urochrome, which is a yellow pigment that comes from the processing of dead blood cells in the liver. The urochrome gives the urine a pale yellow colour, which is its normal colour. Other colours can indicate (mineral, vitamins, protein) imbalances in your diet, problems and disease, if these colours continually show up in your urine.
If urine is a little foamy and cloudy, it may be an indication of how your body is handling proteins, etc. If amino acids (members of a family called protein) are in excess, there could be excess nitrogen floating freely in the blood and of course, creating real time problems and killing cells. A urine colour that is cloudy kind of, could mean the presence of albumin. That is a fine time to start thinking of kitchen prescriptions to clean up and tonify the nephrons in the kidneys.
I’d like to chip in a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) take on this. From TCM understanding, cloudy urine is an indication of a pathogenic (meaning disease -causing) condition like Damp. Damp sucks, whether it is Damp –Heat or Damp-cold.
Clear urine is different from cloudy urine. Clear urine could mean the person has been consuming excess water. If it is not excess water consumption, then it could also mean that the kidneys are not concentrating the urine very well and one is mainly losing water.
It could also mean that the person has taken something that creates diuresis. Diuretics like coffee or beer etc, also create that effect on urine, causing it to have little or no colour.
If you’re in the habit of taking stimulants like Bitter cola, stimulating drugs or caffeine in quantities that make you over-alert, that over-alertness itself can drain your yin reserves, as a result of yang excess. This habit can bring about yin deficiency problems.
If urine is very concentrated in its colour, it could mean that a person is not drinking enough water. It could also mean that the person’s kidneys are working so hard to remove enough toxic substances from the body. The over concentrated urine may often indicate toxicity somewhere in the body in some cases.
Lead or mercury poisoning can turn the urine somewhat reddish in colour. We ingest some measures of mercury often, in the Salmon, Tuna etc. oily fish, we buy. Mercury popularly hangs out in our kidneys etc. because it has affinity for the kidneys.
We are also exposed to some amount of Lead from Generator exhaust fumes, paints etc. If you suspect you have ingested too much of these toxic metals, and your urine looks reddish, you should see your physician.
If you see what looks like blood in your urine, it is a good idea to go to the doctor.
In TCM, tongues do tell a lot of messages. Your tongue is another part of the body where a lot of hidden messages can be extracted. It is so good to know about tongue language too as you can graphically hazard the state of health of your liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, stomach, spleen, the body’s toxic load, there. Tongue colour should be pinky. If it is so whitish, you could do with needing an internal clean-up, not just some tongue brushing. A whitish tongue body could aIso indicate Damp. A lot of people with hypometabolic functions often have a white coloured tongue body. If calcium is not doing well in business, it could show up in tongue colour or in plaque in the teeth. At that time, you need also to suspect whether your thyroid gland is ‘doing well in business’.
If the colour is purplish, it reflects some organs are not doing well probably with Oxygen, Iron etc.
There are several other things about the tongue like how smooth or rough it is, teeth marks on the edges, heaviness or lightness etc. that tell a lot of things about the state of one’s health.
When the tongue indicates redness, it is speaking a language.
Redness of the tongue is associated with internal heat, inflammation of some sort, inside the body, depending on how red it is. Remember to tie yang conditions to this.
We need to understand yin a little bit here.
Chinese medicine (TCM), is based upon two opposing forces ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ which are two different types of bio-energy, which attract each other.
Just imagine the positive and negative polarity of your handset or car battery, to understand a little about ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ in your body.
Yin represents internal, cold, and chronic factors. Yin represents cooling systems within the body.
Yin is responsible for moistening and cooling. When yin becomes depleted, the body begins to show signs of heating up, dryness etc. You can now imagine what over-alertness tampers with, in your body.
I can imagine how it looks like when cooling systems like the fan belt in a car is not working. Hmm.
Yang on the other hand, represents external, heat, excess and acute conditions.
Most times, the yin or yang force, (kinetic energy or potential energy), always tend to want to dominate depending upon the individual, but there’s need to bring these forces into balance in the body, to encourage homeostasis.
The hair has a lot to say about the state of one’s sexual health. Practitioners of TCM suggest that frizzy hair that has split ends reflect a poor state of one’s reproductive health.
Early greying of hair and balding (loss of hair) indicate the state of health of the kidneys system. I want to bring it to note that TCM regards the adrenal gland on top of the kidney and the kidney as belonging to the kidney system. I encourage anyone with early greying or bald, to keep a useful tab on the need to keep pampering his/her adrenal gland, on top of the kidneys. Look at your body with meaning.
It is no more a time to think up a cover up like dyeing, craping etc. for such head of hair but a time to seriously think about one’s adrenal wellbeing.
I’d like to dwell on microsystems of the body, a little.
From TCM’s understanding of the body, there are several micro systems, from which one can quickly access the state of health of an organ in the body, which may even be distant from the micro map being read/accessed visually.
A microsystem of the body is a representation of several organs, glands, parts of the body, like a micro map, in one part or the other of the body.
Micro systems of the body are found on the face, palm, feet, eye, ear, nose, lips, teeth, tongue etc. Thus from the feet, etc. can access the health of the liver etc.
On the micro system of the face, you can access the health of the spleen system (as known in TCM, not necessarily such as known with the spleen in Western Medicine), on the upper eyelids, lower jaw and some other places like the chin. When the spleen bio-energy (qi) is imbalanced, the upper eyelids tend to droop down (a form of distension) or the chin tends to droop and sag, (distension) making a person look kinda older.
The lips are another micro system of the body and the spleen dominates that area. The spleen quickly shows its health up on the lips.
If you suddenly see cuts on the lips when there is no harmattan, you could be having a “complaining” spleen or your body could be in quick need of some vitamins. The position of the cuts (whether at the edges etc.) determines which vitamins are lacking.
He-y! Have you ever observed that the shape of the ear looks like the shape of a kidney? You may see a sick person with very weak kidney function, touching the ear to dust off an imaginary thing, often. It is a feeling that something is there. Sometimes, it presents to them as a crawling sensation. The kidneys’ health can be observed and accessed in the ear. The ears can be used to reach several parts of the body.
The micro system of the eye is a complete micro map of the body. So many things can happen for good, when Acupressure, is done on the ears. If you are new to acupressure, you may not have to know so much, to strengthen working systems etc. in your body.
You can do the little you can, by yourself. Touch the ear. Use your index finger to trace the lobes, now and again. you will be quietly settling many issues, by doing that.
The whole body is wired together like a huge network. Imagine a pain on a tooth being directly related to a pain on the knee etc. (joint).
The lower jaw has a lot to do with the health of the large intestine. So persistent teeth pain in the lower jaw, could be messages relating the health of the large intestine. The particular tooth affected, has something to ‘say’ about internal organs, glands, systems joints etc. connected to it.
Tooth pain in the upper jaw has something to do with stomach problems, if it is persistent. And the particular tooth that is troubled has something to reflect about the health of the organs, systems, joints etc. connected to it.
Petralyn E-Phil is a Nigerian writer who is leading the way into Self-care through Creative Health. She can be reached on facebook as teboselu.ehiz@facebook