Spaces and Energy of Life: A Revived View of Human Body and Its system

A Prelude

In the last 30 years, the conversation between my mom and myself has been mostly around one thing - practice Qigong, or in Western language, meditate. While meditation is universally understood, my mom has her own way of practice, her own interpretation of and even theory on why people are all getting sick these days. Well, I do echo her view around the close linkage between dire health deterioration and the damaged natural environment. Nature has her own system and its web of lives operates through her energy and connectivity. When we clear the forests, remove a mountain, fill a wetland with cement or asphalt, contaminate air and water, decimate animals on land and in water, they destruct the energy flows and incur damages to human health. At the end of the day, we are all part of the Big Bang explosion. This is probably the simplest, not necessarily fair, summary of my understanding of my mom's holistic and systemic view of life and Nature. But it's my best try.

The delightful and comforting fact is that, at the age of 80, mom remains active, mentally and physically healthy. Honestly, I have barely seen mom getting tired or exhausted. Taking a walk together, I often cannot catch up with her. In the last three decades, mom has never taken a single pill of medicine. The annual physical checkup always shows how fit she is. God bless!

The Physiological Spaces of Life

My deepening understanding of life and health came a few years ago when I was introduced to a well-known Chinese medicine doctor, Dr Zhang Kezhen. Long travels and working overtime over the years have not been very helpful to my physical health; and I went to see him for a miserable back pain. Dr Zhang runs his own clinic while mentoring graduate students at a few universities in China. He was educated as a western medicine doctor in school and served in the army as a military doctor for some years, awarded the highest level of recognition in the country for his outstanding professional performance and contribution. Self-taught, he became a Chinese medicine doctor. After a period of acupuncture and taking some herbal medicines, I totally recovered. And in the meantime, I got fascinated by his view and perception around Chinese medicine.

Dr Zhang published a book in 2006 - The Physiological Spaces of Life. Just recently, on March 4th this year, the Research journal, a joint publication with Science magazine, published his article - The Significance of Physiological Spaces in the Body and its Medical Implications, which interprets the key roles spaces in human body play in the metabolism process. Many experts note that the book has successfully articulated the essence of Chinese medicine in a coherent theoretical framework, a modern theory that can be understood by western medicine professionals so that the two schools can effectively communicate with each other.

Dr Zhang holds that a human body is composed of the physical structure and space, two inter-dependent elements. Like a cup, when it's broken, the cup is gone and cannot hold water anymore. Space is where our energy of life exists and flows. From his decades-long practices, he draws the conclusion that a sickness happens when the space in our body becomes smaller or stuffed. If we can interfere with the spaces' shrinking process, we would be able to discover the sickness at much early stage and cure the patient.

Meditation enhances a person's mind, focus and positive thinking, which in turn strengthens the immune system to fight virus. Spaces and energy are the fundamental elements of life. And meditation helps energy flow and keeps spaces open in our body so that we are healthy and more resilient.

Huang Di Nei Jing

Then, I had the privilege to attend a few workshops and roundtables with Dr Zhang to learn more of his theory and practices. Huang Di Nei Jing is the commonly cited reference. An ancient treatise on health and diseases, Huang Di Nei Jing has been treated as the fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine for more than two millenia.

The treatise stresses that a long healthy life is to follow the natural way of the universe, and diseases develop mostly from natural effects of diet, lifestyle, emotions, environment, and age. Yin and Yang, Qi, and the Five Elements - water, fire, metal, wood, and earth - are some of the major forces in the universe that impact man's health and life. Man can stay in balance or return to balance and health by understanding the laws of these natural forces. It holds that man is a microcosm that mirrors the larger macrocosm. The principles of Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the environmental factors of wind, damp, hot and cold that are part of the macrocosm equally apply to the human microcosm.

The book recognizes that, for everyone, the processes of the body follow certain natural rules and that health and diseases are influenced by natural ageing processes, as well as the environment. All this needs to be understood to ensure accurate diagnosis and specific treatment for a condition.

By this point, I have managed to piece together some puzzles on my mind - my mom's, sometimes sounding "crazy", narrative of her theory and Dr Zhang's physiological spaces of life theory, and their inheritance from the Huang Di Nei Jing and other ancient Chinese civilization. The spaces behave like the internet of life, through hidden "channels' or "vessels" or "subfields" that carry the energy flow and keep the dynamics of life. When blocked, partially or wholly, diseases or illnesses occur and our immune system would often fail to defend against invasion of viruses.

Cure or No Cure?

COVID-19 is the case of the day. A virus with spike proteins invades our respiratory cells and system, causing infection and pneumonia. Taking advantage of human bonding, it spreads fast and far. So far, tt has killed tens of thousands of people and comprised more than one million people's health. And the numbers continue to rise.

Reality shows that we don't have a cure. From western medicine perspective, antiviral and antibody drugs are the immediate cure and vaccine is a mid-term and longer-term solution. Currently, there exist three routes seeking a cure.

- One is to identify an existing vaccine or antiviral drug, approved by FDA and already in use, for some other infectious diseases, like malaria and HIV, and upgrade it for COVID-19. Antiviral drugs target the virus and block its replication. The drugs work by blocking the mechanisms that viruses use to replicate. While most of the drugs in research focus on the virus, I saw a news report on an alternative drug in Germany that is making efforts to upgrade a 100-year-old drug on TB, which does not necessarily kill the virus but focuses on surrounding environment to enhance immune systems. Fingers crossed.

- Two is to develop antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients for their plasma, which can be injected into existing patients' body to help identify infectious agents and neutralize the virus, which mimic the function of immune cells, or in healthy people to prevent infection. And,

- Three is to develop COVID-19 vaccine, which takes 12-18 months, to be available. According to WHO, there are about 60+ teams globally that are dedicated to this today. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Task Force, holds a "cautiously optimistic" view on the vaccine. He said, "In the absence of a vaccine, we're going to have to be careful."

One thing Dr. Fauci had learned one of the crushing lessons from the HIV and AIDS epidemic - There is no promise of a vaccine. “The vaccine of today is public health measures and education to avoid the transmissibility from one person to another,” he said in 1986, when he was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he holds to this day. 

Dr Zhang has his own counter-arguments or objections to this kind of thinking, in particular, when treating patients in critical conditions. In his view, a critically ill patient contracted COVID-19 usually experiences such a process in virus contraction which attacks the immune system, damages the lungs and other organs (those with preexisting conditions especially), which in turn compromises the metabolism, and as a consequence, accelerating the further deterioration of immune system and other organs, which leads to death.

Antibodies might be uniquely capable to kill the virus in the end, but it does not help amend the damaged tissues of those affected organs within a very short period of time, said Dr Zhang. And for the plasma with the antibodies, it relies on blood circulation to carry it to where the viruses are. When a patient in critical conditions has his or her lung functions severely damaged, or in his word "the White Lungs", it is very difficult for the injected plasma to get where it is supposed to go and reach.

Chinese Medicine Practices

From the symptoms of confirmed cases that Dr Zhang and his clinic have handled since January this year, the biggest problem or symptom for the patients is too much or extra "liquid" in the lungs' tissues and among the cells that cannot be discharged. The CT san shows something like "white lungs". As a consequence, the lungs' tissues swell and the patients won't be able to breathe normally, causing oxygen deficit, leading to patients' health deteriorate or death.

In China's recent efforts fighting the pandemic, Dr Zhang has witnessed three different routes of treatment (see the graphic in the beginning).

- Western medical treatment: mostly relies on antivirals, antibiotics, steroid, and infusion. As we have all learned, patients with light symptoms can usually recover themselves, so no need of treatment. For patients with pre-medical conditions, the situation becomes dire. Such treatments have failed to help improve the patient's immune system, causing more liquid stuck inside the lungs and increasing the lungs' burden and workload. And very often, the drugs damage organs and compromise their immunity. The consequences are much higher fatality among those in critical conditions. Warning - difficult to cure and with obvious sequela, such as respiratory failure, kidney failure and hematopoietic disorder, among others.

- Combined Chinese and Western medical treatment: deploying Chinese medical treatment to reduce humidity and chill (typical weather conditions in Wuhan during the winter months) in the patient's body to relax the symptoms, with controlled degree and quantity of infusion, antiviral, antibiotics and steroid. And the Chinese medical treatment can help reduce the side-effects of western medicines, but special attention shall be paid to avoiding overuse of Chinese medicine for the purpose of cleaning away heat and toxic materials. Warning - possible sequela after recovering. And,

- Chinese medical treatment: targets to clean away the chill and humidity in the body, remedy the weakest links, enhance the strong links and reduce emotional distress (fears, emotional distress). The clinic practices during the pandemic outbreak in China prove effective with disappearing symptoms, enhanced immune system, and virus controlled or killed. No sequela at all.

According to Chinese official information, about 60,000 patients who contracted the virus got Chinese medicinal treatment by mid February, 80% of the total confirmed cases back then. Medical records show that Chinese medicinal treatment helped cure patients with light and medium-level symptoms, reduce risk and the number of patents with medium-level symptom to turn to critical situation, and even for those in critical condition, the treatment proved to help improve the breathing and stabilize key physiological indicators.

Skewed Concentration of Resources to Find a Cure?

Chinese experience shows that conventional western medical treatment relies heavily on antibiotics and antivirals in practice (but without really effective cure at all). Clinical experiences demonstrate that they don't work in the case of coronavirus; but rather, they often cause complications. The culprit is they don't really help get the extra "liquid" out of the system as urgently needed for the patient, and they neglect the key factor of how to help enhance the immune system of the patient. On the other hand, people are individuals who have rather different situations with their health status, which often would require case-specific solutions in order to recover and return to the balance, as Hung Di Nei Jing has emphasized.

While I am delighted to see a global race to find a COVID vaccine, among the major economies, I do have my own reservation on how much financial resources and human expertise are now concentrated on finding antiviral and antibodies. I had nothing against them, but I wish that there were more attention paid to alternative medicines in the US and other western nations, which will not only benefit American people's health, in a more cost-effective way, but also enhance global collaborative partnerships.

The dawn of COVID-19 pandemic puts humanity into a grand new world which the current generation does not know yet, a world in which train after train of virus attacks and climate change will run at us. Leaders of countries, corporations and society are challenged to figure out how to effectively govern and enhance resilience. But rather than leaving our health in the hands of government or corporations, we shall take charge of our own health.

Recent lockdown and shelter-in-home have literally made the time and luxury for me to catch up what's out there on Netflix and Youtube. I encountered a wonderful documentary - The Heal. Yep, it's a Click! Like a scientific and spiritual journey, the key messages of the documentary echo what Eastern medicine has long been preaching and advancing - spaces, energy, thoughts, beliefs and emotions, as well as the physical environmental factors, all impact our health. And very importantly, our body and its system have strong ability to heal because we have more control over our health and life than we have been taught to believe. Thanks, Kelly, for producing such a great product of communication! And the points are well said and conveyed!

You're in my daily prayer! I pray for health and happiness! I pray for our return to harmony between us and Nature!