07/12/2026
IBS is one of the most common things I see in my practice. And almost every patient who comes in with it says the same thing: “I’ve just been told to track my triggers and manage it.”
Manage it. As if unpredictable cramping, bloating, urgency, and the anxiety of not knowing what your gut will do today is just something you learn to live around.
In Classical Chinese Medicine, IBS isn’t a single diagnosis. It’s a category that holds several very different patterns — and the treatment depends entirely on which one you have.
The three I see most often:
Liver Qi Stagnation invading the Spleen — this is the stress-gut connection. Cramping that arrives with anxiety, alternating between diarrhea and constipation, symptoms that flare when life gets hard. The Liver’s job is to keep Qi moving smoothly; under stress, it tightens and pushes into the digestive system.
Spleen Qi Deficiency — chronic loose stools, bloating after meals, fatigue that doesn’t make sense given how much you sleep. The Spleen is the center of digestion in Chinese medicine, and when it’s depleted — by overwork, cold food, or years of irregular eating — the gut loses its ability to transform and hold.
Damp-Heat in the Intestines — urgency, burning, inflammation, symptoms that flare with alcohol, spicy food, or summer heat. There’s an accumulation of heat and dampness in the digestive tract that keeps the gut in a state of reactive irritation.
These are not the same condition. They don’t respond to the same treatment. And none of them are treated by elimination diets alone.
What changes things is identifying the pattern — the full picture of when it happens, what makes it worse, what your body is doing underneath the symptoms. Once that’s clear, acupuncture and a custom herbal formula can start working at the root.
