What Is Dampness in Chinese Medicine? A Guide for IBS

Why does anyone with IBS have to care about the word Dampness? There is one and only one reason: Dampness (a term in Chinese Medicine) is 100% related to your IBS. In post (1), we talked about bloating. However, if you also have cold limbs, if your levels of energy is low, and if you have irregular menstruation, your body is calling for help as it is suffering from excessive amounts of moisture: Dampness.

What (on earth) is Dampness?

What exactly is Dampness? There is too much moisture in your digestive system (the Spleen, in terms of TCM) and the moisture blocks your Qi (the invisible trains in your body).

Basically, your Spleen (your digestive system) READERS KNOW SPLEEN? works as a factory to process food and water into nutrients and then deliver them to different parts of your body. However, think about what happens if the factory of Spleen cannot process food and water properly. The result is: wastage is produced and that wastage is what Chinese Medicine calls Dampness.

Well, you still think that the idea of Dampness is too abstract, too Asian?

What is Dampness in Western medicine?

In term of Western medicine, Dr Heyne thinks of Dampness as accumulation of mast cells, a situation that is less than normal. What are mast cells? In a word, mast cells are a type of white blood cells you can find in your intestines and they send messages to inform your immune system to do something. And that something makes you rush to the washroom.

Besides rushing to the washroom, there are three other effects of Dampness on your body, explained by Dr Tong, a TCM doctor but with knowledge of Western medicine. Dampness:

lowers the level of oxygen in your blood, making it hard for cells to breathe
slows down blood circulation, making your cells get less nutrients
(worst of all) forces your cells to have no choice but live with garbage as wastage produced by metabolism stays and accumulates

The final result: cells slow down and and your doctor tell you that you are sick (e.g. IBS).

Well, any method to solve the problem of Dampness, to dry our digestive system (the Spleen), and to make us healthier?

Spleen as a tumble dryer

To solve the problem of Dampness, you have to picture the Spleen (the digestive system) as an appliance in your home, a tumble dryer.

What does that mean? Our body, our digestive systems do not like too much moisture, and we have to think of the Spleen as a tumble dryer, a machine that evaporates the water in wet clothes and if it works well, the clothes are dried.

However, what if the tumble dryer does not work well? This is exactly why we have IBS: Dampness is found in our bodies because the clothes (by analogy, food and water taken) are not dried. Stated simply, it is our inability to rid the body of excessive amounts of moisture that makes us suffer.

A formula to fight Dampness

In fact, in the world of Chinese Medicine there is a herbal formula to dry moisture in our body and to make Spleen healthy. It is:

Shen Ling Bai Zhu San (參苓白術散)
(knowledge from PubMed)

Its main components have the following functions:

Bai Zhu (Poria, 白朮) & Fu Ling (Poria, 茯苓): Strengthens the Spleen and dries Dampness.
Ren Shen (Ginseng, 人參): Tonifies Spleen and Lung Qi.
- Combining with Bai Zhu, it enhances the functions of the digestive system.
Shan Yao (Chinese Yam, 山藥): Tonifies the Spleen and the Lung, and stops diarrhea.
- Combining with Fu Ling and Bai Zhu to deal with problems of loose, watery stools.
Lian Zi (Nelumbinis, 蓮子): Stops diarrhea.
- Combining with Ren Shen, Bai Zhu and Shan Yao, for chronic diarrhea.
Bai Bian Dou (Dolichorus, 白扁豆): Dries Dampness.
- Combing with Bai Zhu and Shan Yao for diarrhea or vaginal discharge