Reading Time 5 Min

In the year 1214, a sea of Mongols was poised outside Zheng Ding’s city gates. The citizens knew that at best it would mean seeing their parents slaughtered, friends tortured, and children enslaved. As the city walls held and the people waited in terror, they began dying. Chinese doctors began to observe that the stress was killing people. They were unable to sleep regularly, digest food and were succumbing to illnesses. At this time Li Dong Yuan needed solutions to the “modern” disorders caused by stress.

Li created new theories of Chinese medicine.[1] His theories eventually formed into a prominent school of thought based on the balance of the digestive system and its relationship to stress. Before that time, disease was thought to come mainly from bugs outside of the system. After the brutal lessons from the Mongols, Chinese doctors better understood the relationship between emotions and digestive health. Since that time, every major formula for digestion has taken the effects of stress into account. Continue reading →