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Relationships among the viscera
 Heart and Lung
 Heart and Spleen
 Heart and Liver
 Heart and Kidney
 Lung and Spleen
 Lung and liver
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Heart and liver
 The heart governs blood and liver stores blood;
 The two viscera cooperate with each other and
commonly maintain normal blood circulation;
 Heart blood and liver blood often affect each other and
will result in blood deficiency of both the liver and heart
or blood stasis of both the heart and liver pathologically.
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Heart and lung
 Blood circulation is dependent upon the propelling of heart
qi, and also the assistance of lung qi
 The lung connects with vessels to assist the heart in
circulating blood.
 Only when blood circulates normally, and the lung gets its
nourishment of blood, can the lung’s function of controlling
respiration keep normal.
 Pectoral qi is produced through combination of the fresh air
inhaled by the lung and foodstuff essence-qi transformed
and transported by the spleen and stomach.
 The pectoral qi can both go along the gas tract to promote
respiration, and permeate through the heart vessels to
circulate qi-blood; thus it strengthens the mutual relation
between the blood circulation and respiratory movement.
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Heart and spleen
 The heart governs blood circulation;
 Heart qi drives blood to circulate in the vessels;
 The spleen controls blood and spleen qi holds blood to
keep it circulate within the vessels;
 If the heart qi gets weak to circulate blood, it may lead
to blood stasis;
 If the spleen qi gets too deficient to control, it may lead
to some disorders of qi deficiency with bleeding.
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Heart and Liver
 The heart governs blood and liver stores blood.
 The two viscera cooperate with each other and maintain
normal blood circulation.
 Heart blood and liver blood often affect each other, as a
result, blood deficiency of both the liver and heave, or
blood stasis of both the heart and liver can be noticed.
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Heart and Kidney
 The heart , as it is located in the thorax and belongs to
fire in the five elements, should descend to warm the
kidney water;
 The kidney, being located in the lumbar region and
belong to the water element, should rise to assist heart
yin to restrict heart yang.
 If the heart fire fails to descend or the kidney water fails
to ascend, it will appear as “discordance between heart
and kidney”.
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Lung and Spleen
 The function of the lung in governing respiration and the
function of the spleen in governing transformation and
transportation are responsible to generate qi;
 Pathologically, the lung qi deficiency and spleen qi
deficiency often mutually affected, thus to develop a
syndrome of dual deficiency of the lung and spleen.
 If the spleen fails in transporting and transforming water
properly, water-dampness may appear and often the
lung in diffusing and descending, and symptoms of
phlegm, fluid retention, coughing and panting
manifested.
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Lung and Liver
 the liver is characterized by ascending qi and the lung
descending qi.
 The coordination between ascent and descent is of
important regulatory role to freedom of the whole body’s
qi dynamic.
 The disorders of liver and lung qi often affect each other.
 Adverse rising of liver qi, or up-flaming of liver fire
consumes lung yin, which may lead to failure of lung qi
to purify and descend.
 If the lung fails t purify, dry-heat will get hyperactive
internally; as it involves liver yin and then yin fails to
restrict yang, it may further result in hyperactivity of
liver yang.
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Lung and Kidney
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
The lung’s function of controlling respiration requires assistance from the
kidney’s reception of qi;

Thus body can keep the depth of inspiration and prevent hypopnea,
ensuring the smooth respiratory movement.

Pathologically, deficiency of lung qi often results in the failure of the
kidney in receiving qi with deficiency of kidney qi; and vice versa.

The lung and kidney act on each other to maintain the normal process of
water metabolism,.

If the lung’s or kidney’s function gets disordered, it will cause
disturbance of water metabolism, and then there will appear symptoms
like edema.

Lung yin and kidney promote each other. When lung yin is sufficient, it
will descend to the kidney and enrich the kidney yin. The enriched kidney
yin will ascend to the lung to enhance the lung yin.

They are also mutually affected pathologically.
Liver and Kidney
 The liver stores blood, and the kidney stores essence.
 The kidney essence is one of the essential materials for
generation of blood;
 The generation of blood depends upon the sufficiency of
essence qi in the kidney;
 The liver blood and the kidney essence are
physiologically supplementary to each other and also
affect each other pathologically.
 Inadequate liver blood will result in deficient kidney
essence, and vise versa.
 When both the liver blood and kidney essence and
deficient, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, deafness, soreness
and weakness of the waist and knee may manifest.
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Liver and Kidney
 Liver and kidney support each other to regulate
menstruation in women and ejaculation in men.
 Disorder of menstruation, impotence, spermatorrhea will
manifest if both are not in harmony.
 The liver and kidney are closely related in yin-yang.
 The kidney yin nourishes the liver yin so as to restrict
liver yang .
 If the kidney yin fails to nourish liver yin, will lead to yin
deficiency of both liver and kidney and result in
overactive of liver yang.
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Spleen and Kidney
 The kidney is the root of innateness and the spleen is
the root of acquirement.
 Sound spleen functions are supported by kidney qi.
 The abundance of essence-qi in the kidney also
dependent upon the nourishment of foodstuff essence.
 The kidney and spleen also affect each other
pathologically, leading to the deficiency of both viscera.
 If both suffer from qi deficiency, there may appear
symptoms of abdominal distension, sloppy stool,
soreness and coldness of the waist and knees, diarrhea
at dawn, or diarrhea with undigested foodstuff.
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Spleen and Kidney
 The spleen distributes water to prevent effusion of
water-dampness.
 The kidney governs water to manage and regulate
distribution and excretion of water.
 They work with each other to maintain equilibrium of
water metabolism.
 If both suffer from deficiency, water-dampness
stagnates internally, there may appear symptoms of
oliguria, edema, abdominal distension, sloppy stool,
soreness and weakness of the waist and knees.
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Relationships among the Six Fuviscera
 The relationships among the six Fu-viscera are mainly
manifested as association and cooperation in the process
of digestion, absorption and transportation of foodstuff,
and excretion of the waste as well.
 After the stomach decomposed the foodstuff, it sent
down into the small intestine.
 After the small intestine separate the clear and turbid of
the foodstuff, the clear is transported throughout the
whole body by spleen.
 The turbid is transported into the large intestine,
becomes stools discharged out of the body.
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Relationships among the Six Fuviscera
 The water permeating into the bladder and through qi
transformation, turned out into urine to be discharged
out of the above.
 The above process is also dependent upon the
gallbladder to excrete the bile to help digestion and the
Sanjiao to sooth water passage ways to circulate water.
 Rampancy of gallbladder fire may often invade the
stomach to make it fail in normal descent of stomach qi,
thus there appear symptoms like vomiting with bitter
liquid.
 If stomach heat consumes the liquid, it will lead to
constipation with obstructed conveyance of the large
intestine.
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Relationships between
Zang and Fu-viscera
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Heart and Small Intestine
 heart yang warms the small intestine in its reception and
digestion of the foodstuff and its ability to separate the
clear from the turbid.
 The small intestine absorbs foodstuff essence and sends
it up to the heart;
 The heart turns the essence into blood to nourish the
heart-vessels.
 If heart fire gets hyperactive, the heat may be
transported into the small intestine and symptoms of
dysphoria, red tongue with sore, scanty urine will
appear.
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Lung and Large Intestine
 The purification and descent of lung qi is conducive to
the large intestine in conveyance of the waste.
 The smooth conveyance by the large intestine is also
beneficial to lung qi’s purification and descent.
 If the lung qi fails in purification and descent, and the
fluid cannot be sent down, then the liquid in the large
intestine will be short and constipation due to intestinal
dryness.
 If the large intestine fails in smooth conveyance, and the
intestine qi gets obstructed, it may also affect the
diffusion and descent of lung qi to cause the symptoms
of chest fullness, cough and panting.
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Spleen and Stomach
 The stomach belongs to yang and likes moisture and
hates dryness.
 The spleen belongs to yin and prefers dryness and hate
dampness.
 Only when dryness and dampness supplement each
other, and yin and yang are harmonious, both the spleen
and stomach can coordinate normally.
 If the spleen is encumbered by dampness, spleen qi fails
to ascend, and the deficient spleen qi will affect
reception and descending of the stomach and appear
symptoms of abdominal distension and diarrhea.
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Liver and Gallbladder
 The bile originates from the surplus qi of the liver.
 The secretion and excretion of the bile are regulated and
controlled by the liver’s function in governing free flow of
qi.
 The stagnation of liver qi will disturb the bile’s secretion
and excretion.
 If the gallbladder is invaded by dampness-heat, and the
excretion of bile gets obstructed, it will affect the free
flow of liver qi, dampness-heat in the liver and
gallbladder, and blazing of liver and gallbladder fire.
 The liver is in charge of deciding and the decision
depends upon the gallbladder.
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Kidney and Bladder
 The function of the kidney in governing water is
influenced by the bladder’s function in storing and
discharging urine.
 if the bladder functions abnormally in storing and
discharging urine, it may affect the kidney’s function in
qi transformation and controlling, manifesting as the
changes of urine in color, quality and quantity.
 If the kidney fails in qi transformation or controlling,
there will appear disturbance for the bladder to store
and discharge urine, manifested as scanty urine,
incontinence of urine.
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