The Stool

A daily check of your stool and urine can tell you also a lot of what goes on in your body, as "what goes in" minus "what goes out" = the health of your body.
First the frequency:
the best frequency is close to the number of meals (except while fasting of course).
Second the form:
stool that is soft, loose and floating indicate a yin/ expanded condition, the extreme case would be, of course, diarrhoea. Stools that are firm, well-formed (S shaped) and floating indicate a healthy, balanced condition.
Stools that are small, hard and sink to the bottom of the toilet bowl indicate yang / contracted condition. The extreme case would be yang constipation.
If after stool, you need to use a lot of paper, this means that your stool is too Yin too, one to two wipes should be enough.
Third the color: brown is healthy, dark brown/black is too Yang, yellow to green is too Yin.
Now the urine:
more than 5 times a day and it looks like water? Too Yin, so you should drink less, less than 5 times a day and dark color? Too Yang , so you should drink more.
For women: menstruation: 5-8 days? Too Yin, adapt your diet. Normal periods should last 3-4 days.

Diagnosis 1

A good diagnosis in very important to heal, and who is better placed than YOU to diagnose yourself?
A few months ago I went with a western guy to the traditional Chinese hospital in Chinatown. While driving his car, he could not stop talking (too Yin), and when we came into the doctors office, I saw that the doctor had diagnosed him before he sat down: she smiled at me, she looks at his tongue, his face, felt the pulses the Chinese way, but that was just to confirm her first diagnosis.
Just to say: when you know what to look for, diagnosis is not that difficult: you just have to find the right book for you (see below).
There are a lot of ways to diagnose ourselves:
our dreams, our thoughts, our behavior; our looks (tongue, eyes, face), our stool, our urine, the first 3 being mental, the latter being physical.
The first symptom that something goes wrong, comes in our dreams:
if we have scary dreams, we have a problem with the kidneys, if we have a lot of anger in our dreams we have a problem with the liver. If we ignore our dreams, the same symptoms will appear in out thoughts, and if we ignore those symptoms, it will show in our behavior; people who are anxious all the time have kidney problems, people who are angry easily have liver problems.
The same way you also can diagnose problems from every organ, it needs just a little bit of study and a lot of experience. I will write more about diagnose through looks, stool and urine next week.


Have a nice weekend everybody!!