The “false symptoms” mentioned in the title are not fictitious symptoms but rather those that cannot be detected by hospital examinations.
Many patients with acute anxiety may suddenly experience intense fear during household chores, accompanied by a heartbeat that feels like a drum, as if the heart is about to burst from the chest; a feeling of chest tightness and pressure; or difficulty breathing, as if the throat is blocked, making it hard to catch a breath, even leading to a sense of impending death.
As a result, many anxiety patients experiencing panic attacks rush to the hospital for registration or call for emergency help, but after thorough examinations, they often find no significant physical abnormalities.
Mr. Bai was like this before, often forgetting to go to the emergency room in his 30s.
Each time he had an episode, his heart would race wildly, but all tests showed normal results. Despite this, he remained unwilling to believe it and thought there was something wrong with him. It felt like he had lost his soul, living in constant fear every day.
His family also did not understand; since the examinations showed no problems, they thought he was pretending to be ill.
After being diagnosed with anxiety at the hospital, his symptoms improved somewhat each time he took sedatives. However, once he stopped the medication, the symptoms would recur, and the feelings of palpitations and chest tightness would even worsen.
For these types of illnesses, we say that Western medicine provides emergency aid while Traditional Chinese Medicine focuses on conditioning.
From the perspective of Western medicine, it is seen as a psychological disorder, primarily attributed to gallbladder deficiency.
The gallbladder, as the organ governing decision-making, acts as a person’s calming stone. When the gallbladder qi is deficient, people become hesitant and easily panicked, prone to fright.
Physical symptoms such as palpitations, chest tightness, and restless sleep often stem from insufficient heart blood. The gallbladder corresponds to wood, while the heart corresponds to fire; wood can generate fire. Therefore, when the gallbladder qi is weak, it naturally affects the heart, a phenomenon known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as “maternal disease affecting the child.”
The most important thing is to nourish the gallbladder. Relying on sedative medications only treats the symptoms, not the root cause.
Western medicine can temporarily alleviate physical symptoms, while Traditional Chinese Medicine can comprehensively adjust the body’s pathological mechanisms. For patients hoping that emotional disorders will not recur and who do not wish to rely on medication in the long term, Dr. Wang has repeatedly emphasized that only by addressing the fundamental causes of the body’s issues can true recovery be achieved.
