What’s the difference between Stomach Heat and Stomach Fire in Chinese medicine? What are the causes, and consequences if not they’re not addressed, and what about treatments? How about the best acupuncture points for ST Heat and ST Fire, and diet recommendations for patients with these TCM patterns?

Today, I’ll answer all these questions, so grab a pen (or your phone) and get ready to take notes!

I truly hope you benefit from this entire content, including the 3 bonus tips you must tell your patients to do at home in order to get faster results!

Keep rocking using TCM,
Clara
TCM Geek

PS: If you want more, make sure to check out The Stomach Channel & its 45 Acupuncture points and All About the TCM Stomach! And if you haven’t invested in my book AcuPoints Made Easy, get your copy here! 🙏

Stomach Heat/Fire (Symptoms, Causes & Acupuncture Points) in TCM

Differentiating Symptoms between Stomach Heat & Stomach Fire

They both have the following symptoms:

  • Burning sensation in epigastrium
  • Heartburn
  • Acid reflux
  • Bad breath
  • Nausea/Vomiting
  • Thirst for cold fluids
  • Constant hunger
  • A full rapid pulse
  • A red tongue with a yellow coat

Stomach Fire also has the following symptoms:

  • Bleeding gums
  • Cracked red lips
  • Possible vomiting Blood
  • Constipation
  • A cracked tongue in the center

Western disorders associated with Stomach Heat/Fire: Heartburn, Acid Reflux, Gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), Peptic ulcers, hiatus hernia, and indigestion.

Causes of ST Heat/Fire: diet (alcohol, spicy foods, acidic foods like tomatoes, trigger foods like coffee, fatty or spicy foods, or chocolate for some), emotions (stress, anxiety, worry, overthinking), lifestyle (smoking, eating too fast and too much often), being overweight, hormonal imbalances like in pregnancy (baby pressure on the stomach).

Consequences if not addressed: ST Yin deficiency, Body fluids deficiency, LI heat, and Phlegm Fire (with Plum pit syndrome, nausea, sour regurgitation, sticky stools, mental restlessness, insomnia with lots of dreams).

Best Acupuncture Points for ST Heat/Fire

  • To clear Fire: ST 44
  • To Clear Heat: LI 11
  • To relieve Stomach pain: ST 34
  • To balance the digestive system: ST 36,
  • To harmonize the TCM Stomach: REN 12 & BL 21

Stomach 36 is the BEST acupuncture point to support the digestive system

Stomach 36 acupuncture point


ST 44 is the BEST acupuncture point to clear Stomach Fire

Stoamch 44 acupuncture point

Other TCM treatments for Stomach Heat/Fire

Auricular (Ear points): Stomach, Ear Shen Men, Sympathetic, and Hunger point.

Best Chinese Herbal Formula: Qing Wei San (which has Sheng Ma, Huang Lian, and Mu Dan Pi to cool blood and clear heat, Sheng Di Huang to protect the Yin and fluids, and Dang Gui to cool down and relieve pain).

Foods recommendations: cooling foods that won’t affect the Spleen is tricky: avoiding triggers (alcohol, spicy foods…), and adding baking soda, apple cider vinegar, celery juice, parsley juice, watermelon, cucumber, fennel, coconut water, leafy greens, avocado, and salmon. Also recommending some fermented foods such as kefir, sauerkraut, and kombucha can help but for some patients, this may be too much (especially for SIBO patients).

3 bonus tips: Aloe vera juice daily to cool the stomach. Not laying down after meals and eating the last meal 3 hours before bedtime. It’s key to eat and drink slowly. And we can use lemon balm essential oil drops on PC 6.

To fully understand the TCM patterns of diagnosis and their treatments, watch this video on Spleen Qi deficiency causes, consequences and treatments, it will clarify everything for you, and bring you full circle with their connection!

The Stomach Heat/Fire (Symptoms, Causes & Acupuncture Points) Video Transcript

What are the differences when it comes to symptoms between Stomach Heat and Stomach Fire according to Chinese medicine? Which are the best treatments, acupuncture points, formula food recommendations, and what are the Western disorders that have Stomach Heat or Stomach Fire as their main pattern of diagnosis? What are the causes of Stomach Heat and Stomach Fire according to Chinese medicine?

I’m going to talk about all of this and so much more today to really help you clear out the differences but also how to treat it and how to look at it from the perspective of Chinese medicine.

Welcome back to my channel! If it’s your first time here, I’m Clara from Acupro Academy, and I create Chinese medicine and acupuncture content for students and practitioners, making it easy to grasp and fun to learn. Today, I decided to film outside, so you might hear the birds, the rooster, the dog barking, but hey, let’s make it fun! It’s a beautiful sunny day in British Columbia, Canada. Let’s go!

As I said in my introduction, I’m going to differentiate Stomach Heat versus Stomach Fire because my students ask me that question all the time.

Of course, both of them are excess Heat or excess Yang in Chinese medicine; however, there are a bit of difference.

Fire is much worse than heat, which makes sense, right? So both of them are going to have stomach cheery Belling with some Heat symptoms.

Common Symptoms

Let’s look at the common symptoms, then we’ll look at the differentiation between the two. Both Stomach Heat and Stomach Fire have acid reflux, and acid regurgitation. Both have bad breath, and thirst for cold drinks, and they pretty much gulp all day long because that’s excess heat, right? They may have insomnia if they eat too much.

Both may also have constipation, the tendency to feel hot all the time, specifically after a meal, and they have a full rapid pulse and a red tongue with a yellow coat.

Oh, and I wanted to add that both have red lips because the Stomach opens into the mouth and reflects on the lips, right? So red lips indicate excess Heat in that instance. They also have a burning sensation in the epigastrium area.

What are the differences?

Fire, as I said at the beginning, is much worse than Heat.

With Fire, there’s usually bleeding, which means there could be vomiting blood or bleeding gums. The difference between canker sores on the tongue, is heat Fire. In the mouth, that’s Stomach Fire because the Stomach opens into the mouth, but the Heart opens into the tongue in Chinese medicine.

See, looking back at the foundation always can help us figure out everything. When it comes to Stomach Fire, mouth sores which can be bleeding also may be vomiting blood if it’s really, really bad or bleeding gums. The tongue with stomach fire would be very cracked because there’s so much fire that it dries the fluid.

So it’s still red; there’s still a yellow coat, but it would be really cracked. Does that make sense? So that’s the differences.

What are the similarities?

However, they’re both excess Heat, and excess Yang, and they both have that Stomach Qi rebelling affecting them.

Common Western Disorders associated with Stomach Heat or Fire

Heartburn, acid reflux, GERD, hiatus hernia, indigestion, and peptic ulcers are probably the most common ones.

Causes of Stomach Heat & Fire

Medication, diet, of course, a lot of spicy food, acidic food, coffee. Alcohol, emotions, specifically anger, irritability, fear. And stress can create that Liver Qi stagnation, overpowering, over-controlling stomach, creating stomach cheery Belling. That makes sense, right?

Lifestyles like smoking, obesity, and anybody that’s really overweight may have a lot of pressure on the Stomach area, and that may create some Stomach Heat, Stomach Fire.

Also during pregnancy, the CHONG and the REN can be out of balance or not harmonized, and that can create some nausea, vomiting, and also a lot of heartburn. That’s very common with pregnant women, right? Drugs can do that as well.

How we address it in TCM

There are a lot of causes. Sometimes we can manage those because we may not be able to remove them, for instance, during pregnancy. But other times we can obviously eliminate them by changing the diet or distressing the person.

Acupuncture is so good when it comes to distress. And what are the consequences if Stomach Heat to Stomach Fire are long-lasting and not treated well? They both can lead to Stomach Yin deficiency, Large Intestine Heat, body fluid deficiency, and phlegm fire, which can affect the mind as well.

So we need to really address it before it escalates. That makes sense.

So let’s look at how we address this pattern in Chinese medicine.

Let’s start with acupuncture points

The best one to clear heat is Large Intestine 11. The best one to clear fire is Stomach 44. So we can put those two, plus they’re both Yang main meridians. The Large Intestine is a hand Yang meridian, and the Stomach is a foot Yang meridian. Those are really strong in clearing Heat and Fire. So that will be the perfect combo to start with.

Then, because it’s affecting the Stomach, we want to put the digestive commander point, which is Stomach 36. We want to put Ren 12 because it’s the front move point of the Stomach, or we can put Bladder 21, which is the back shoe point of the Stomach, depending if you want to do a front treatment or back treatment.

Nutrition

Now, when it comes to food, we need to cool that Stomach heat down. However, if we cool it too much, we may create some problems for the Spleen. The Spleen does not like cold. So we have to be a bit more gentle. However, we can use food that is cooling like fennel, greens, and leafy greens. Specifically and have parsley juice, cucumber juice, or apple cider vinegar, which is really good. It’s calming that Stomach acidity.

Baking soda and anything that’s fermented like sauerkraut or kombucha. Does that make sense?

3 Tips you can give your patients

Let’s look at three amazing tips you can give your patients to support them while they go home after they have treatment with you.

One, they have to chew their food and eat slowly and mindfully, but they also cannot lie down right after a meal. So they should stop eating at least 3 hours before they go to bed. That’s number one.

Number two, aloe vera juice, is very good at alkalizing the Stomach acidity. It’s a really good powerful cooling juice that can help. It comes from the cactus family, right? It’s aloe, and it’s really cooling, so that helps. But it won’t affect the Spleen too much. However, I wouldn’t overdo it, just maybe once a day to cool the Stomach.

And three, lemon balm essential oil applied on Ren 12, Ren 17, and PC 6. Very good to calm that Stomach Qi rebelling and to cool the Stomach heat. Isn’t that awesome?

Healers are Teachers

So remember those three tips so you can give them to your patients, and they can be part of the healing process because we are educators. We are teachers, and we are here to help and support our patients to the best of our ability always. The spleen and the stomach are opposite, but they work together in the digestive system, right?

Like the Stomach has a tendency to go up while the Spleen has a tendency to go down. When you’re fatigued and lose tools, the Spleen has a tendency to be damp and cold, while the Stomach has a tendency to be dry and hot.

They’re really opposite. I would recommend you watch my Spleen Qi Deficiency: Causes, Consequences, Symptoms, and Treatment to give you an idea of how to address Spleen deficiency, which is literally the opposite of Stomach Qi rebelling or Stomach Heat.

I hope that was useful. No matter what, keep rocking it using TCM, and I’ll see you in the next video, maybe outside.