There is one and only one reason women with IBS should care about this weird word: Dampness. Dampness (a term in Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM) is 100% related to your IBS. What does that mean? It means Dampness could be the root cause of your IBS.
In post (1), we talked about bloating. However, if you also have cold limbs, if you feel drained most of the day, 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?
So, what exactly is Dampness?
In TCM, Dampness means there is too much sticky, heavy moisture in your digestive system. However, they do not call it the digestive system but the Spleen System, which roughly corresponds to your digestion as a whole.
How does the process happen? Or more importantly, how does Dampness cause your IBS? When there is excess moisture, it blocks your Qi (the invisible trains in your body that carry energy through your body). When Qi cannot move, things get stuck, which is why you have bloating.
Basically, you may picture your Spleen (your digestive system) as a food-and-fluid factory:
- Its job: turn everything you eat and drink into clean, usable nutrients.
- Then it ships those nutrients to your brain, muscles, skin, and uterus, every part of your body.
However, think about what happens if the factory of the Spleen cannot process what you drink and eat properly. The result is: wastage. The wastage is not just poop, but sticky one that lingers in your gut and tissues. All the sticky and lingering things are what TCM calls Dampness.
Well, you still think that the idea of Dampness is too abstract, too Asian?
Dampness in Western Medicine
Now, go to the universe of Western Medicine. Picture this.
According to Dr Heyne, your gut lining is patrolled by small security guards (mast cells, a type of white blood cell). Before you had IBS, these guards did their jobs properly and actively. However, there are times when they are too active (overactive) that they fire off alarm signals to your immune system, triggering inflammation, which is also the thing that 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 to live with garbage, as the waste produced by metabolism stays and accumulates
The final result: cells slow down and your doctor sees a cluster of symptoms and says, “This is IBS.”
Well, any method to solve the problem of Dampness, to dry our digestive system (the Spleen), and to make us healthier?
Spleen: your body’s 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.
Tumble dryer booster: Model TCM
TCM has a well-known herbal formula designed to dry dampness and turn your Spleen back into a strong tumble dryer:
Shen Ling Bai Zhu San (參苓白術散)
(Wisdom 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
Sources of wisdom
- Alexander Heyne, California and NCCAOM board-certified doctor of Oriental medicine
- Tang, Y. (唐雲) (2021). Disease codes: Unveiling the full process of Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment and exploring the mysteries of nature, life, and illness. Jimu Culture Publishing.
- Wang, H., Hou, Y. N., Yang, M., Feng, Y., Zhang, Y. L., Smith, C. M., Hou, W., Mao, J. J., & Deng, G. (2022). Herbal formula Shenling Baizhu San for chronic diarrhea in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Integrative Cancer Therapies, 21, 15347354221081214. https://doi.org/10.1177/15347354221081214
