The Seven Emotional Factors

The seven emotional factors in traditional Chinese medicine are joy, anger, melancholy, worry, grief, fear and fright. These are normal emotional responses of the body to external stimuli, and do not normally cause disease. Severe, continuous or abruptly occurring emotional stimuli, however, which surpass the regulative adaptability of the organism, will affect the physiological functions of the human body, especially when there is a preexisting over sensitivity to them. The qi and blood of the zang - fu organs will be disrupted leading to disease. The seven emotional factors differ from the six exogenous factors in that they directly affect the zang - fu organs, qi and blood. For this reason, they are considered to be the main causative factors of endogenous diseases.

Ancient doctors believed that different emotional factors tend to affect the circulation of qi and blood of specific internal organs, resulting in the following clinical manifestations and pathology : " Anger injures the liver, joy injures the heart, grief and melancholy injure the lung, worry injures the spleen, and fear and fright injure the kidney. "

" Anger causes the qi to rise up ; joy causes it to move slowly ; grief drastically consumes it ; fear causes it to decline ; fright causes it to be deranged, and worry causes it to stagnate. "

Many of these relationships are validated by clinical observation, but a concrete analysis of each individual case is necessary to confirm which internal organ is impaired and that pathological changes in the qi have developed.

The heart, liver and spleen are most closely involved with pathological changes resulting from the seven emotional factors, although any of the five zang organs may be affected. For example, excessive joy or fear may cause mental disturbance and dysfunction of the heart in dominating mental activities. Clinical manifestations include palpitations, insomnia, dream - disturbed sleep and mental confusion, and in severe cases, abnormal laughing and crying and mania. Prolonged anger or depression can impair the liver ' s function of maintaining the free flow of qi. Clinical manifestations include distention and pain in the hypochondriac region, irascibility, belching, sighing, the sensation of a foreign body in the throat, and irregular menstruation. In severe cases, bleeding due to impairment of the blood vessels may occur. Worry, grief and melancholy often affect the transporting and transforming function of the spleen, causing epigastric and abdominal distension, anorexia, etc.

The seven emotional factors may cause functional derangement of the heart, liver or spleen individually, or may impair the function of more than one of these zang organs. For example, worry can injure both heart and spleen, whilst prolonged depression and anger may cause disharmony between the liver and spleen.