Symptoms
The main symptoms of Heart Yin Deficiency are:
- General Yin Deficiency symptoms such as feeling hotter towards the late afternoon, night sweats.
- Palpitations.
- Irritability.
- Being easily startled.
- Insomnia.
- Dream disturbed sleep.
- Mental restlessness.
- A poor memory.
- The tongue becomes redder with a redder tip, no coat and a deep midline crack.
- The pulse become rapid, floats or lifts upwards and has an empty quality.
Aetiology
The main aetiologies for Heart Yin Deficiency are:
- Heart Yin being damaged by deep emotional problems such as long standing anxiety or excessive joy.
- An invasion by external Heat that has affected Heart Yin.
Pathology
The main pathologies for Heart Yin Deficiency are:
- The Empty-Heat from Yin Deficiency gives rise to heat symptoms that become more prominent towards the late afternoon, evening and night time – these are times when Yin should be rising.
- The Empty-Heat disturbs the Shen which resides in the Heart giving rise to irritability, insomnia, dream disturbed sleep and mental restlessness.
- The irritability and mental restlessness become more prominent towards the evening or night time.
- Heart Yin Deficiency can develop from an underlying Heart Blood Deficiency as Blood is a Yin substance so any loss of Blood will result in a loss of Yin.
- The pulse becomes faster due to the Empty-Heat and starts to float due to the Empty-Heat lifting the pulse upwards and is empty reflecting the underlying deficiency.
- The tongue becomes red to reflect heat and has no coat as the Empty-Heat burns off the coating.
Treatment Principle
The treatment principle for Heart Yin Xu is to nourish Heart Yin, calm the Shen and nourish Kidney Yin.
A point prescription for this treatment principle could be:
- Heart 6 nourishes Heart Yin and clears Empty-Heat.
- Bladder 15 tonifies the Heart and calms the Shen.
- Yintang calms the Shen.
- Du 20 clears the Mind.
- Kidney 6 nourishes Kidney Yin, clears Empty-Heat and calms the Shen.
- Bladder 23 tonifies Kidney Yin.
