The full paper with all the references is available here.

Qi and Blood Circulation: Reconciling TCM and conventional medicine

To many members of the modern medical community, the concept of Qi as commonly understood, is irreconcilable with modern science. Indeed an in-depth study of this “Qi” from the Chinese historical texts of various sources have shown that it is an amorphous term. It could mean any of the terms: vital energy, breath, air, gas, spirit or some kind of mysterious force that is as ancient and potent as the what makes the universe exist.

Qi has been a key factor in early Chinese philosophy, religion, geomancy, martial arts, meditation methods, acupuncture, herbal therapy, shamanism and almost anything that governs the lives of ancient Chinese. This takes us back to the classical texts that have become the foundation of TCM. The problem of reconciling TCM and conventional medicine may not be with the original texts but with accuracy of their translation.

The foundation of Chinese medicine is often credited to a book called the Huangdi Neijing or “Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine” which is believed to have been written over 2,000 years ago..

The manual demonstrates how advanced Chinese medicine was at the time. The Chinese were already performing detailed dissections and able to describe the functions of the major organs including the heart as the organ that pumps blood throughout the body. Western medicine didn’t discover this until another 1500 years later in the 16th century. The Chinese at the time even knew which vessels were pumping blood away from the heart, which ones back to the heart, and which ones specifically to which organs. In other words they already understood the key elements of blood circulation.

From the time of the Greek civilisation until the 1600s, Western medicine had thought that the heart was a generator of heat and the role of the artery was to “cool’ the blood, aided by the lungs which “fanned” it. In an understanding that were behind the Chinese’ centuries earlier, pre-seventeenth century western medicine thought that the arteries would dilate by sucking in air and then contracting to discharge vapours through pores in the flesh and skin. It was only when William Harvey published his brilliant landmark work in 1628 that blood circulation was presented in the way that we understand it today.

Today the understanding of the function of blood circulation has played a central role in cardiovascular physiology. There is a large body of peer-reviewed publications relating to blood rheology (flow of blood) being the basis of many important health problems. Although these published findings have not been refuted or caused controversy, they are unfortunately simply ignored.

On the other hand, TCM in whatever version recognizes the central role that blood circulation plays by way of blood working together with “Qi” for general well-being and overcoming diseases and disorders. Many TCM practitioners believe that Qi and Blood must co-exist and work symbiotically for the human being or organism to exist. The problem with the concept of Qi as commonly understood today is that it defies any conventional scientific basis in its identification as a “vital energy” or other similar descriptions. To the sceptic this esoteric phenomenon has no place in evidence-based science. There are numerous articles in the same vein but in the end, Qi is not measurable, so it cannot withstand the scrutiny of mainstream research.

Qi is popularly recognised as an entity outside the blood circulation system, and is energy in a metaphysical way. However, the classical Chinese language is very context-sensitive and the relevant surrounding factors should be considered to extract the true meaning of the word. With this taken into account, it turns out that the most accurate translation of Qi is not “energy” but “air” (or sometimes referred to as “breath”). We happen to have embellished a simple word such as “air” and dressed it up as “vital energy”.

When the classic Huangdi Neijing was first documented it was an accumulation of works that were built up during the ages that shamanism prevailed and illnesses were attributable to demonic forces. The idea that Huangdi Neijing distanced itself from superstition and introduced the effects of diet, lifestyle, emotions, environment, and age to address diseases was remarkable and far beyond the times. But it was still a different time, and the understanding of science and medicine as we know it today was virtually non-existent, with no credible scientific bases for cross-referencing.

The Huangdi Neijing and related scripts were written in a Chinese dialect that hadn’t been in common use for more than a thousand years before it was translated first into a European language. It is also not a language that most modern Chinese people can understand. Sivin, an historian of science gave the opinion that "no available translation (of it) is reliable."

Researchers like Kendall re-examined the original texts and assign more precise translations. This discussion has drawn upon Kendall’s work to understand what the original text actually mean in today’s scientific terms. For example, in the Huangdi Neijing, the authors described the lungs breathing in what they call “Da Qi”, which is literally “great air”. This is different from the interpretation of “Qi” as energy, first translated into French by Georges Soulie de Morant, a French diplomat based in Shanghai in the 1930s. Air would be scientifically easier to appreciate than energy. The texts explained that when the lungs breathed in air, they extracted the Qi from the Da Qi – that is, the lungs extracted a vital air substance from “great air”.

What this air substance extracted by the lungs is, can only be interpreted as oxygen. In the Chinese dictionary, there are ten definitions of Qi but none refer to it as “energy”. Now we can start relating Qi more clearly to blood, specifically red blood cells (“RBC”) which are the main formed elements of blood. Their main function is to carry oxygen and perfuse it throughout the body, or as the Chinese say, “nourish the body”. The Chinese at the time would not have known about oxygen as a molecule but they did understand that we extracted something essential to life from the air we breathed – which they sometimes called “vital air”. TCM teaches that Qi resides in blood. Oxygen is the “nourishing” molecule that resides in blood.

In Huangdi Neijing, the authors used “Mai” to describe the vessels. “Xue Mai” would be literarily translated as blood vessel (“Xue” being blood). It was Soulie de Morant (who had identified Qi with energy) who took the word Mai and incorrectly translated it as the French word “Meridian”. This was despite the fact that there was no word for Meridian in the ancient Chinese language. But this has been stuck with us ever since. Based on the persuasiveness of de Morant’s writings, his interpretation of this new alternative science secured a firm hold on European imagination which then deeply influenced subsequent conventional knowledge of TCM.

Soulie de Morant promoted the idea that blood, along with a mysterious and undefined energy (Qi), circulates through invisible “Meridians” in the body . This had no relationship to what was written in the classic texts.

The ancient texts had diagrams of acupuncture points on the body. De Morant took pictures of these diagrams, drew lines to connect them and created the concept of the Meridian system. The original texts already had drawings of major arteries going from the trunk into the legs. The points were arranged along these arterial routes. Therefore the “Meridian” as offered by de Morant was a misnomer for arterial networks.

Based on de Morant’s work, the understanding of Qi would appear to be metaphysical, functioning in parallel while co-existing with the blood system. However with the literal translation of Qi as air (which can be interpreted as oxygen) and Mai as vessel, it becomes clear that there is no disagreement between ancient Chinese medical theory and contemporary principles of physiology for blood circulation. Therefore TCM is not metaphysical but as real as what we understand modern medicine to be. It does establish that the ancient Chinese understood correctly that blood circulation would be the key to health. The primary aim would be to keep that “Meridian” channels unblocked, which would mean to keep the blood circulating unhindered so that the whole body is thoroughly nourished, whether as preventive medicine or as an intervention to overcome diseases.

Early TCM thought leaders like Willem ten Rhijne, back in 1683 (and before de Morant’s interpretation involving energy flowing through meridians took a foothold) had already understood that the Chinese focus was on blood circulation along with the structure and function of the vessels. Today, prominent Chinese TCM researchers such as Xiu Rui-Juan promotes the central role of blood circulation in health, and more pointedly that impaired blood flow to any region of the body, including internal organs, can result in pain and dysfunction.

With the passing of several years of further scientific progress and before he died in 1955, de Morant corrected his definition of Meridians to say that they were actually blood vessels (but he did not correct his definition of Qi being energy). However, one may argue that energy is latent inside the oxygen molecule that the red blood cells (“RBC”) are carrying; and with one degree of separation, the understanding of de Morant, and his many Western TCM followers are perhaps not really different from modern scientific knowledge.

Even the concept of balance (in yin and yang) is not out of place in modern biology. It is equivalent to homeostasis – the condition in which the body or cell maintain equilibrium/stability/balance within its internal environment when dealing with external changes. This is an essential condition for the well-being of a mammalian organism.

The concept of blood stasis

We have established that having good blood circulation is a fundamental principle of TCM. This also means that the state of compromised blood flow, or any form of stagnation should be avoided. In this context, “blood stasis” is a term that is often used in TCM to describe this unfavourable condition. In modern Chinese medicine this is related to many symptoms of old-age, when everything slows down and one becomes senile and vulnerable to diseases, and then eventually the end of life. This knowledge is an advancement from the past TCM theory which postulated that geriatric symptoms relate to the more abstract understanding of “vacuity” or emptiness in the key organs.

Under the microscope, blood stasis will be manifested as RBC aggregation. This is evident from a blood sample in Figure 1 below. Experts in TCM can relate blood stasis to poor blood rheology - which can be identified with RBC aggregation as a factor.



Figure 1: Red blood cell aggregation.


From stasis to red blood cell aggregation

Recent research also shows that stasis in the vein is associated with RBC aggregation. The aggregation is found to be due to the presence of macromolecular proteins such as fibrinogen and globulin. Fibrinogen is the protein which is sensitive to inflammation and helps with the blood clotting function. It is a dominant factor in RBC aggregation. Since inflammation is caused by an illness or disorder, one can attribute the presence of blood aggregation to the presence of an illness or a disorder. Therefore when RBC aggregation occurs, it means that the subject is at least not in perfect health.

Doing it with the Qi-Light therapy device

The Qi-Light from RadiantLife, pictured below is a hand-held portable non-invasive blood irradiation device in use.



Figure 2: Qi-Light device in use


In using this unique device, the nose-clip applicator delivers low level laser into the vascular rich capillary bed in the nasal cavity for 30 minutes, as illustrated below. Any young adult can self-administer it without supervision. There is no feeling of any noticeable discomfort

The method is non-invasive and requires no special training to use. More product information.



The purpose of the device is to disaggregate the RBC and keep the RBC in the circulatory system free of aggregation and hence avoid the health disorders associated with this condition. The figures below are actual before-and-after microscopic pictures of blood samples of a subject that used the device for a 30 minute treatment. The picture in Figure 3 was taken before the treatment, and the one in Figure 4 after the treatment.




Figure 3: Blood sample before using the device




Figure 4: Blood sample after using the device.


Visually, it is clear that the main difference between the two samples is how the RBCs are seen to be aggregated in Figure 3 and disaggregated in Figure 4. More evidence captured in video can be viewed here.