Sharing and TCM Fluids.

The competition is over. My classmates do not need to compete against each other. We've been accepted into our professional program of choice and are now officially colleagues. We are now working together to advance the mainstream acceptance of our field of medicine. An example of our cooperativeness is our Gmail account. Every year, the first-year CCNM students create a Gmail account for their class to use during their four years together. Every classmate has the password to this account and the purpose of the communal email account is that any student who has typed-up good study notes, has found an awesome review website, or audio-recorded a lecture, can email them to the group account for their fellow classmates to use in their studying. Whats-more is that the upper years share their email addresses and passwords with us, so we can learn from them too. Here at CCNM, we like to share :)


Some terms from Traditional Chinese Medicine:

Ye and Jin Fluids

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the body has two types of fluids: Ye and Jin fluids. Ye fluids are thin, defensive, and are coat many areas of the body (e.g. mucous, saliva, sweat). Jin fluids are thick, nutritive, and are located in cavities of the body (e.g. bowels, brain).

Qi, Essence, and Shen

Qi is what makes us alive. Blood in our body has Qi, but dried blood on a band-aid does not. Another example (given by my professor, not me!) is that a cow has Qi, but a steak does not. Qi flows through our body and regulates many bodily functions.

Essence is what we are born with. It can be compared to our genes. We measure our essence by evaluating the quality and quantity of our growth and development. Our essence can't change.

Shen is our spirit. It is our demeanor, our thought processes, and our personality. Our shen can change frequently, depending on our mood, our health, our age, etc.