Q: How to understand blood stasis in TCM?

When I diagnosed a patient with blood stasis, many people didn’t quite understand what this blood stasis represented and where it was located. Let me explain here briefly.

First of all, blood stasis is a very important concept in traditional Chinese medicine. It refers to a pathological product formed by blood coagulation in a certain part of the body due to abnormal blood circulation. Other pathological products include water retention and phlegm. Blood stasis can occur in various parts of the human body, blocking the meridians and viscera, some blood stasis is visible, and some is invisible. Visible features of blood stasis include: purple-black tortuous blood vessels on the skin, purple-black spots on the tongue, spots on the face, tortuous sublingual veins, menstrual blood clots, rough skin on the calf, etc.; the palpable blood stasis includes fixed tingling pain on the body, particular abdominal pressing pain, etc. There are also many invisible blood stasis features. Common symptoms can be the stiff lower abdomen, irritability, mania, abnormal fever, abnormal sweating, amenorrhea, nightmares, forgetfulness, acne, cracked heels, and disease that appeared on one side of the body only. Various tumours in Western medicine, which is called Zhenjia in Chinese medicine, multiple diseases in gynaecology and strokes are often closely related to blood stasis.

From the perspective of TCM, the blood-related disease is located in the deepest position of the body, and the treatment of blood stasis disease cannot be achieved quick. If it is gynaecological-related blood stasis, it generally needs to be gradually improved with the treatment in several physiological cycles; if it is caused by “dry blood” stasis caused by the accumulation of many years, it is more challenging to solve.

Generally, after the blood stasis issue is improved, the blood-stasis related symptoms will be significantly reduced or disappear, and at the same time, the patient’s complexion is highly likely to have a significant brightening effect.