The tongue: The body
It changes over months: it speaks of the background. 6 activities, about 13 minutes.
Two layers, two clocks
舌診 shé zhěn
You are looking at two superimposed things running at different speeds. The body takes weeks or months to shift; the layer covering it changes within days. Reading them together is the error that spoils most diagnoses.
- The tongue body
- the background state, slow
- The coating
- what is happening now, fast
- If they disagree
- no contradiction: two timescales
Common mistake: Judging whether treatment is working from the body colour after two weeks. There has not been time.
A patient with fatigue, pallor, dizziness on standing and cold hands. What tongue body do you expect?
Fixed stabbing pain always in the same spot, worse at night, after an injury. What body colour?
Colour is a scale, not a list
Between pale and dark red there is a continuous run, and what informs you is which way this one has moved from normal. The names label stretches, not boxes.
- Pale
- blood or yang deficiency
- Pink
- the normal reference
- Red
- heat
- Dark red
- heat that has entered the blood
- Bluish or purple
- blood that is not circulating
Common mistake: Arguing whether a tongue is «strong pink» or «light red». What decides is which way it moved, and that is seen by comparing.
Which tongue body goes with each picture?
- Scanty periods, brittle nails and palpitations on exertion
- Strong thirst, agitation and constipation with strong breath
- Persistent high fever with skin lesions
- Fixed stabbing pain with marked varicose veins
- Coldness, loose stools and copious clear urine
- Bleeding with unrelenting heat and extreme dryness
Where do you read the Liver and the Gallbladder?
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Study content. The exercises describe concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine; they are not medical advice.
