Every now and then, I can feel pain underneath my lower rib cage. Sometimes it’s unilateral, sometimes it’s bilateral. All I was thinking about was what type of disease I can have in the rib area…It’s not easy to think of a disease that affects the rib since it’s not the most popular part in an animal’s body that diseases arise from.
When I was studying for my acupuncture class last night (yes, I am writing about acupuncture again) I read something called “hypochondriac pain,” and I was like, what is that? I’ve never heard of that. But in the acupuncture lecture, the professor explained it as a disorder associated with the liver, and people who have hypochondria always notice some sort of pain underneath their rib cage. This is exactly what I’ve been experiencing for the last couple years, especially after I got into vet school. So I immediately looked it up and figured out that it’s something most commonly seen in a frustrated female; it’s basically an anxiety-induced disorder rather than true pathology that’s actually going on.
From a traditional Chinese veterinary medicine (TCVM) standpoint, hypochondria is due to liver disharmony, which can be reflected as one being emotional or irritable, and it can also cause pain because the liver is responsible for smooth Qi flow in the body. Wherever there is blockage of Qi flow, there is pain. Therefore one can easily understand why you could have pain in the lower rib cage area (pretty close to the liver) when you are in a bad mood.
There are a couple of fairly easy ways to deal with hypochondria. The first is to eat more green food such as vegetables, because the liver is associated with “green” (think the green color of bile to understand this). Second is to go to the gym or exercise more to let out your internal anger, because in TCVM the liver is also related to tendons and ligaments, so exercising makes sense in this case. Third is more common sense, which is to take a couple of deep breaths, and by doing this your diaphragm is doing an internal massage on your liver and helping to calm down your angry liver.
As I learn more about TCVM, I like it more because it really makes a difference in my life and allows me to better understand things that are going on.
