↑ reinforcing ↓ reducing ⊥ even method.
Clinical manifestations: Craving for sweet foods, especially sugar or simple carbs, poor appetite despite cravings, bloating and discomfort after eating (worse after sweet or heavy meals), loose unformed stools, fatigue and heavy tired feeling in the limbs.
Tongue: Pale, puffy, tender body with tooth marks and a thin white coating. Pulse: Deficient, soft, and weak, especially at the right Guan position.
Treatment principle: The body senses a shortage of usable energy and craves sweet flavor to boost Qi, but a weak Spleen cannot properly transform foods.
Note: moxa applicable on ST-36/BL-20. Direct exact-name match with this site's own Spleen-Qi-deficiency slide.
2. Damp-Phlegm
Clinical manifestations: Heavy, sluggish feeling in the body and limbs, thick white greasy coating on the tongue, loose sticky stools or sense of incomplete evacuation, brain fog or muzzy-headedness, bland taste in the mouth with no thirst.
Tongue: Pale, swollen with tooth marks, thick white greasy coat, wet surface. Pulse: Slippery like beads rolling under the fingers, or soggy.
Treatment principle: A weakened Spleen fails to transform and transport fluids, allowing Dampness and Phlegm to accumulate, creating heaviness that perpetuates cravings.
Note: no moxa. This site has no plain body-wide Damp-Phlegm slide on any deck, a gap confirmed absent many times over this session — no pattern link is given here; points still link fine individually.
Clinical manifestations: Intense hunger not satisfied after eating, burning pain or sensation in the upper stomach, foul breath, swollen, red, or bleeding gums, thirst with desire for cold drinks, constipation with dry hard stools.
Tongue: Red body, often with a deeper red center and prickles, thick dry yellow coating. Pulse: Rapid, slippery, and forceful, especially strong at the right middle position.
Treatment principle: Stomach Fire is like a furnace burning too hot, driving a constant, gnawing hunger that demands more fuel.
Note: no moxa. Matched to this site's own Stomach-Heat-(or-Phlegm-Heat) slide.
Clinical manifestations: Craving for sweet or fatty foods but feeling cold, bloated, or having diarrhea afterward, early-morning diarrhea (around 5am) with undigested food, cold hands and feet especially below the knees, sore and cold lower back and knees.
Tongue: Pale, swollen, puffy with teeth marks and a white slippery coating. Pulse: Deep, weak, and slow, especially feeble in the rear (Kidney) and right middle (Spleen) positions.
Treatment principle: Weak warming Yang prevents the body from generating adequate heat, so it instinctively craves dense, quick-burning foods it cannot properly transform.
Note: moxa strongly indicated throughout. Direct exact-name match with this site's own Kidney-and-Spleen-Yang-deficiency slide.