What is Liver Qi Stagnation?

Let’s talk about Liver Qi stagnation.

Maybe you’ve heard of the term, or maybe it’s completely new to you.

If you don’t already know, Liver Qi stagnation is a term used in Chinese Medicine; it is one of many diagnosis patterns that we use to assess health.

So, let’s first break Liver Qi stagnation down by each word:

Liver: Well, we all know what a liver is. It’s a large filtering organ in our body, located under the ribs on the right side of our bodies. It detoxes fat soluble waste in the body (which includes both the waste our bodies make and the waste we take in from our environments). The Liver in Chinese Medicine encompasses all of these physical roles of the liver, as we know them from anatomy and biochemistry. However, we build upon those physical roles, by also looking at the emotional and energetic roles (including the energy pathways) it has on the body as well. The emotion corresponding to the Liver is anger, frustration, inflexibility, and annoyance when it is imbalanced, and creativity, and being easygoing and flexible when in balance. The energy pathway goes from the big toe, up the inner side of the leg, circles around the genitals, enters the lower abdomen, goes up to the stomach, liver, gallbladder, the diaphragm, and lungs and then goes up to the eyes, cheeks, the throat, inside the lips, and the top of the head. As you can see, it covers a lot of ground. The season that the liver relates to is Spring, which you can read more about here.

Qi: Qi is another concept in Chinese Medicine. It roughly translates to life force energy. It is the energy that moves things in the body, like lymph and blood. It is what keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing. I like to think of it as our spirit and the part of us that God breathes into us when we are conceived/born. Without Qi we are not alive; it is the current that moves the river. Qi is meant to always be flowing. Stagnancy is never a good thing. Think of Qi like electricity. Without electricity flowing through a house, there will be no light. Electricity is the conduit. If there is a break in the pathway, the electricity cannot flow through it, and there is no light. Which brings us to our next term.

Stagnation: The name pretty much describes itself. Stagnation is when things are not moving the way they are meant to move. It’s a lack of free flow. There is a term in Chinese Medicine that goes a little something like this: when there is stagnation there is pain. when there is free flow, there is no pain. Stagnation is what causes disease and imbalance in the body. Much like a river, our bodies are full of lots of liquids that need to keep moving. We can have different forms of stagnation, depending on what is stagnated and where the stagnation is. For example, the blood can get stagnated, and so can fluids. If blood isn’t moving it can create clots. If fluids aren’t moving it can create infections. If Qi isn’t moving it can eventually lead to a stagnation of blood or fluids.

So, let’s put all these terms together. There is lack of movement in the life force energy (or electricity) of the Liver, which detoxes fat soluble waste and filters our blood. When we look at everything the Liver detoxes in the body, we can see why it is a problem if this process gets stagnated or backed up. The Liver detoxes blood at a rate of more than a liter of blood every minute (22 gallons per hour!). The Liver detoxes things like our own metabolic waste, heavy metals, hormones, environmental toxins, etc. It does a lot to keep us alive. To put it into perspective, without a functioning Liver we would die within 24 hours due to the toxicity. The Liver also detoxes and processes our emotions. This is actually really cool, because we can see it on a physical level too—our emotions all have chemical effects on the body through our hormonal system. When we are done feeling an emotion, that hormone gets detoxed through the Liver. The most common hormone we release in relation to our emotions is adrenaline. If we are not detoxing this hormone at the rate we should be, and fully excreting it from the body through the digestive system, then it can build up in our bloodstream. Then, we feel constantly in a state of stress. Everything feels dire and overwhelming, and relaxing seems like the farthest thing our mind is capable of. We can’t sit still, we are not flexible, and we are easily irritated and annoyed. So many people are living in this state.

Now, the term Liver Qi stagnation is not a dire, life-threatening diagnosis. But, it can be an uncomfortable one. It shows us an imbalance much before it becomes a huge problem. It is the most common diagnosis pattern seen in Chinese Medicine, and many people have it. It is caused by stress (including physical, mental, and emotional stress), overworking, a poor diet, an unhealthy lifestyle, and anything in our diet or lifestyle that causes us to over-produce hormones like estrogen or adrenaline (caffeine, fragrances, sugar, stimulants, high stress environments, etc.). It’s easy to see how we got here in our modern society. For women, because the Liver detoxes estrogen, they can experience something called estrogen dominance which shows up in symptoms like pms, breast tenderness, bloating, mood swings, acne, headaches/migraines, heavy periods, painful periods, fibroids, cysts, PCOS, fibrocystic breasts, infertility, cancer of the breasts/uteris/cervix/ovaries, and endometriosis. In men estrogen dominance can also be seen, which causes testosterone to be low and can result in changes in mood, depression, anxiety, fatigue, enlarged breast tissue, prostate cancer, and infertility.

So, now that we know what Liver Qi stagnation is, what do we do about it?

The most important thing to do first is to start eliminating things from the “causes” list. We want to clean up our environments as much as possible in order to give our Livers the best chance at staying in balance. If you know you work long hours, eat a crappy diet filled with sugar and greasy foods, consume caffeine everyday, or use fragrances in your home or on your body—you already have many action steps you can take towards treating your Liver Qi stagnation. The next step will be working with an Acupuncturist/herbalist to give you individualized care that can include Acupuncture and a personalized herbal formula and/or supplements. Lifestyle changes can take time to implement, so be patient with yourself and know that Chinese Medicine has a lot of tools that can help you even if there are some lifestyle factors you don’t have full control over right now. Maybe you can’t quit your job quite yet, but you can take some herbs and schedule in a 10 minute breathing exercise everyday.

Let me know if you have any questions, or want to schedule in an appointment with me. I see people in person for Acupuncture and also do Telehealth visits for herbal/supplement protocols.