Chinese Medicine

A lot people believe that there is some kind of relationship between anger and high blood pressure. Is that true anger causes high blood pressure? The answer to this question, to some extent, is yes. At least it can be justified from the perspective of Chinese medicine.

In my last post of Types of High Blood Pressure in TCM, I have introduced the regular types of high blood pressure. And for the type of Yang hyperactivity, I think it needs to discuss further about it because a lot of high blood pressure in early stage can be presented in the form of liver yang hyperactivity.

Anger is kind of disease?

In real life, as we know that some people are apt to lose their tempers. People around tend to think that they are just prone to outbursts of temper and very few will associate it with a disease. However, Chinese medicine views abnormal feelings such as anger, irritability and depression as part of the scope of the disease.

Furthermore, Chinese medicine thinks that anger or irritability are correlated primarily with the liver, which is caused mainly by stagnation of liver Qi, liver-fire flaring up and overwhelming liver Qi while spleen deficiency. In other words, if there is something wrong with our livers, it would cause the changes on our moods or the raised high blood pressure.

Liver and liver fire

Chinese medicine thinks that liver works as the official of general, which governs conveyance and dispersion and serves as the reservoir of blood. The emotional impacts by liver present mainly in the aspects of adjusting Qi movement and regulating emotions. It is a common sense that liver enjoys fluency and dislikes stagnation. Fury injuries liver, and in turn the injured liver loses the control of emotions, in which the vicious circle finally would worsen the condition of high blood pressure if left untreated.

Liver fire refers to a kind of energy in human body. In the perspective of Chinese medicine, liver is the organ storing the blood and blood is the main storehouse of the main energy. When a person is exhausted, the liver would dispatch the reserved energy from blood. This kind of backup energy is called liver fire in Chinese medicine.

Imbalance of liver and kidney causes high blood pressure

Chinese medicine thinks that the causes of high blood pressure are mainly involved with imbalance of liver and kidney, in which deficiency of essence and blood in liver and kidney is the root cause, while yang hyperactivity, flaring fire, wind swings and turbid phlegm are the symptoms of high blood pressure. In early stage of high blood pressure, the main causes are the stagnation of liver Qi and the flaring up of the liver fire.

The symptoms of liver imbalance include:

• Frequent sighing;
• Inappropriate anger;
• Dizziness;
• Tendonitis;
• Menstrual pain;
• Headache;
• Irritability;
• High blood pressure;
• Distention and pain in the chest and hypochondriac region.

Basic rules in high blood pressure treatments

The treatment of high blood pressure with Chinese medicine should follow the principle of syndrome differentiation to adjust the imbalance between Yin and Yang.

• In early stage of high blood pressure, it mainly involves with liver. The commonly seen types are pathogenic fire derived from stagnation of liver-Qi, flaming up of the liver-fire or liver yang hyperactivity, which are syndrome of excess and should be treated with method of clearing and descending.
• In medium stage of high blood pressure, it involves with liver and kidney. The commonly seen type is yin deficiency and yang hyperactivity, which should be treated with method of nourishing yin and tranquilizing liver yang.
• In later stage of high blood pressure, it involves with deficiency of both yin and yang, which should be treated mainly with tonification accompanied with suppressing hyperactive yang.

In summary, anger doesn’t cause high blood pressure directly. That is to say that anger is not the immediate causes for high blood pressure. However some kind of relationship between anger and high blood pressure does exist. The key is that we have to know well the functions about the liver and kidney first. Anyway, just in case it would cause confusion, I think I need to clarify that the concept of liver in Chinese medicine is different from that of western medicine. As we know that Chinese medicine and western medicine are two totally different knowledge systems.