It was my 15th trip to the Emergency Room that month. The ER doctor recognized me. He took the usual blood and urine samples as I waited in the room in pain. When he returned he had a packet of papers that he printed out.
“I have a suspicion you have interstitial cystitis,” he said and handed me the stack of papers. “You should see a urologist to get the official diagnosis.”
In Chinese medicine, different parts of the tongue reflect what’s going on in different Organ systems. In the first 3 parts of this series on the basics of tongue diagnosis, we got into what tongue body color, tongue shape, and tongue coat ha
The first part of this series focused on tongue color, the most important feature in tongue diagnosis. We now focus on tongue shape, the second most important feature. Tongue shape is a good indicator of excess and deficiency-related imbalances in the body. An example of excess is too much heat in the body. This, in turn, leads to a deficiency in fluids, essentially burning them off.