Does Kidney Jing provide you with a natural/genetic immunity, or, does it actually predispose you to ancestral diseases?

Today I will be throwing out a hypothetical discussion about Kidney Jing, genetics and hereditary diseases/disorders, especially in the context of diseases and immunity. For example, does Kidney Jing provide you with a natural/genetic immunity, or, does it actually predispose you to ancestral diseases?

I have felt compelled to write about this particular topic for over a year now and have kept getting way-laid. The idea came about as I was spending a couple of weeks on a high end detox diet called ‘Gerson Therapy’, which, apart from being an excellent cleansing body diet, is also supposedly good for cancer patients. So as I’m detoxing I wanted to know more about the therapy I was using. This involved reading a selection of books which didn’t just explain the detox, but also explained how it was good for people that suffered from cancer. So this got me thinking about the TCM view on diseases such as cancer, and how the Kidney Jing can play a part; and that, as they say, is how this post/idea was born.

I assume that most of you are aware of Kidney Jing, but as a quick refresher just in case:

There are three types:

·         Pre-Heaven Jing – is made at the point of conception, via the male and females Jing energies. It is fixed in quality and quantity. Basically it is what the parents provide their child in terms of what we might define genetics or hereditary energy. Of course, this theory also implies that your ‘parents parents’ were also partly responsible because of what they passed onto your parents, and so on and so forth; back in time it goes.

·         Post-Heaven Jing – is made from the combined energies of the air we breathe (Da Qi) and the food and drink we consume (Gu Qi).

·         Kidney Jing – the blending of the Pre and Post-Heaven energies.

“The Kidney Essence [Jing] determines growth, reproduction, development, sexual maturation, conception, pregnancy, menopause and ageing … The Essence [Jing] and Qi are also considered to be the material foundation of the Mind (Shen)” (Giovanni Maciocia, The Foundations of Chinese Medicine, 2^nd Edition, Elsevier Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, pp. 46, 48).

So because Kidney Jing is so closely linked to our hereditary make-up and genetic coding, it is the logical substance to discuss when we consider natural immunisation versus ancestral diseases. To pose the question again: Does Kidney Jing provide you with a natural/genetic immunity, or, does it actually predispose you to ancestral diseases?

I am always someone that likes to ponder and pose questions and hypothesise when I research Chinese medicine and so that is how I am going to lay out the rest of this blog. I won’t be providing you with any concrete answers, but rather a reference point for you to ponder over and then hopefully, respond. In that way we can get a little community discussion started.

1)      Cancer:

Let’s start with the obvious discussion about genetic diseases such as cancer. In this regard, according to TCM, we can theoretically blame our parents or our more distant ancestors, for acquiring the cancer; and this is via the Pre-Heaven Jing. This theory tends to suggest that there was pretty much nothing you could have done to prevent this happening. The Pre-Heaven Jing provided to you by your parents and distant ancestors were the cause and you were just unlucky.

But could we have done anything about it? One could argue that if we ate and drank only the most pure and organic meals we would have an incredible Post-Heaven Jing, and since that combines with the Pre-Heaven Jing, we have a scenario where the good (Post-Heaven Jing) is holding the bad (Pre-Heaven Jing) at bay. This would obviously suggest that the genetic cancer cells were still inside the body ready to let loose the minute some poorer food and drink is consumed. However, this scenario does suggest that if you remained healthy your entire life, then you are a chance of not getting cancer.

But perhaps, no matter how healthy you were, the Pre-Heaven genetic cancer cells were just too powerful and would win anyway? Sorry to be a party pooper there!!! Haha! Sometimes you just can’t win!

If we leave the Pre-Heaven Jing argument for a bit and discuss the Post-Heaven argument instead, specifically in the context of cancer creation. What if your parents and ancestors provided you with good quality Pre-Heaven Jing, and you wreck your body via your own vices, namely poor eating/drinking choices? This would mean that your Post-Heaven Jing was of a very poor quality; therefore, when it combines with the Pre-Heaven to create Kidney Jing, you end up with a toxic sludge. I think we could all agree that this would be a potential site for disease; perhaps even terminal cancer.

This argument tends to suggest that both options are viable for the development of cancer in the body. In a nut shell, you blame your parents, or yourself, for your cancer!

2)     Alcoholism:

Surely alcoholism is your own fault? Haven’t you been the one that has directly chosen to drink too much? You can’t seriously suggest that alcoholism could be a genetic disease similar to cancer?

Let’s work through this example a little more before we automatically make a decision. As stated above, Kidney Jing is responsible for the material foundation of the Shen. Let’s consider for a moment that the patient has been struggling for quite some time with lifestyle dramas that have negatively impacted on their Shen. Let’s also assume that the patient started life with an inferior amount of Pre-Heaven Jing which hasn’t been nourishing their Shen, thereby making it harder to cope with day to day lifestyle dramas. This patient may have found (via trial and error) that alcohol helped ease the Shen Disturbance, and therefore it becomes the replacement for calming the Shen, that the Pre-Heaven Jing was not providing.

Could we not argue now that alcoholism might (in some circumstances) be caused by poor Kidney Jing?

3)     Infertility:

Those of you who have treated patients with infertility will know that in certain circumstances, Kidney Jing can be directly responsible for the patient’s infertility. Similar to the cancer example discussed above, you can now blame your parents and ancestors for your infertility.

Of course, this is not always the case, and there are plenty of infertile couples out there where it has nothing to do with genetics. If we take just one example from a television show to prove my point. In the cartoon series ‘The Simpsons’, Homer Simpson (father of three) finds out he is infertile as a result of working at the Springfield nuclear power plant for too long. This example suggests that environmental factors were responsible for his infertility, and was not a genetic issue.

4)     Numerology and the Arrows of Pythagoras:

Yes I know this isn’t Chinese medicine but I wanted to include it because it does pose a number of interesting points.

·         Ruling number – on the day you are born you are allocated a number which defines who you are and how you will live in your skin. To work it out I will use my birthday which is 10/10/1973 as the example:

So you add up all the numbers as such: 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 3 = 22. Then the 22 gets split into 2 + 2 = 4; your ruling number is generally a singular. Therefore, according to numerology I live my life in a manner expected of a 4. Assuming this is the case, then this ruling number 4 in linked with my Kidney Jing.

·         Arrows of Pythagoras – similar to your ruling number, you are generally (not always) born with one or more arrows. These arrows give you further insight into the way that you carry yourself in day to day life. Some of these arrows are considered positive and some are considered negative, however I don’t personally believe they are strictly one or the other. I have found over the years that people with supposed positive arrows are really struggling in life, and people with negative arrows are living a terrific life. But more on that in a future blog.

Without going into confusing detail, I personally have two supposedly negative arrows. One is called ‘Arrow of Frustration’ and the other is the ‘Arrow of Hypersensitivity’. These arrows are inherently linked to my core self, which again suggests that they are linked with my Kidney Jing.

·         What is my point? Well it’s got to do in part with what one of my future blogs will be on, which is how numerology can be used to treat patients with Chinese medicine (watch this space!). Let’s use one example here though. If I have a client that wants treatment for frustration, I am going to get ‘Liver organ alarm bells’ going off in my head. I will then explore this more to confirm if the frustration is a Liver diagnosis, and, more often than not, the Liver is responsible. However, if my client has the ‘Arrow of Frustration’, and because this is linked to Kidney Jing, I now need to consider the possibility that it’s a Kidney organ disharmony that I need to treat. Are you still with me? Either way it’s usually not particularly difficult to determine which organ is responsible for the client’s frustration.

To finish off this point though, numerology suggests that we are predisposed to certain personality characteristics; some of these could, therefore, provide natural immunity, whereas others might predispose us to ancestral disease. If we stick with the ‘Arrow of Frustration’ as our case in point, we could now argue that if a patient suffers terribly from frustration (and since we know that emotions can cause disease) then this could lead to potentially life-threatening diseases of the Kidneys (and its associated organs), because of poor quality/quantity of Kidney Jing.

Having said that, one could also hypothesise that if the Kidney Jing inherently recognises this ‘frustration’ emotion, then it essentially becomes immune to the emotion, and considers it a natural part of the inner workings of the individual. This would therefore indicate that frustration doesn’t adversely affect you in any way throughout your life.

So in the end I don’t think I have provided a clear answer in either camp, but that’s what hypothetical arguments can provide you with sometimes.

But what about the possibility that Kidney Jing provides genetic immunity (natural immunisation)? I guess it’s not a big stretch to suggest that you have already worked out that Kidney Jing could also act as a natural immunisation? The answer is in the examples I used above. Where poor quality Kidney Jing could cause disease, good quality Kidney Jing could prevent disease.

Let’s consider this further using childhood diseases as our example. Let’s assume that most of your ancestors have contracted diseases such as measles, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, etcetera. Once they have recovered from the disease they essentially get genetic immunity, and this immunity would then become part of the Kidney Jing matrix, which then gets passed onto you at conception. This would, in theory, mean you didn’t need to get all your Western immunisations that you get pumped with as a young pup, because your parents gave you the immunisation when you were conceived. Imagine it? All those unnecessary needles and poisons that your body doesn’t actually even need because you are already ancestrally immune! It’s perhaps best if we move on from this topic quickly before the drug companies get cranky at me for hypothesising that you don’t need their drugs, because you already have natural immunity so why would you want their synthetic immunity too?

So to close off this discussion by revisiting our blog question one more time: Does Kidney Jing provide you with a natural/genetic immunity, or, does it actually predispose you to ancestral diseases?

I think it’s safe to say that I have provided you with some food for thought and I would absolutely love your thoughts/comments about this question.

My next blog post (be on the look-out for it in coming weeks) is from a presentation I did at WFAS in Houston in 2014, which is about the ‘Origins of Chinese Medicine’.

Love and light to you all

David Hartmann