PATHOGENESIS
 The onset of disease can be generalized as being due to disharmony of yin and yang and conflict between pathogenic qi and antipathogenic qi.
Antipathogenic qi, known as zheng qi, refers to the functional activities of the human body as well as to its ability to resist disease. Pathogenic qi, known as xie qi, refers to all the various causative factors of disease. For disease to occur, there must be present both a relative weakness of antipathogenic qi and the presence of pathogenic qi. Whilst both together constitute the two major factors underlying the occurrence of disease, however, antipathogenic qi is primary, being the internal factor that allows the invasion of the external factor i.e. pathogenic qi. The seventy - second chapter of Plain Questions states : " Pathogenic qi cannot invade the body if the antipathogenic qi remains strong. " The thirty - third chapter of the same book further states : " The antipathogenic qi must be weak if invasion of pathogenic qi takes place. "
This dialectical approach, which pays attention to both internal and external conditions, in particular, the former, has played a major role in traditional Chinese medicine in understanding the nature of disease and guiding clinical practice.
Although diseases may be very complicated and varied, they can be generalized and understood in terms of pathological processes in the following three ways : disharmony of yin and yang, conflict between antipathogenic qi and pathogenic qi, and abnormal descending and ascending of qi. These three aspects of the development of disease are closely interconnected.
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