A Workplace Epidemic

A Real Epidemic

The majority of Americans struggle with chronic disease, according to the CDC1. In total, 6 of 10 American adults have one chronic illness, and 4 of 10 have two or more chronic illnesses caused by: smoking, poor nutrition, lack of physical activity, and/or excessive alcohol intake - activities many people turn to because they are stressed out and have very little time for more healthy pursuits.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS)2, approximately 157.5 million Americans had full time jobs in 2019. According to the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO3, 88.4 million Americans worked as “professionals” across a variety of industries in 2019. The BLS defines the “professional” workforce as including all workers in the “Management, Professional, and Related Occupations” group. The population of the U.S. (humans, regardless of age or work status) in 2020 was 329.5 million. Combining these statistics, we can roughly estimate that, between 2019 and 2020, 27% of all Americans were working as professionals, and almost half of Americans worked full-time jobs.

Prior to dedicating my life to the practice of Chinese medicine, I spent 25 years working long hours for large companies. I suffered from a form of anticipatory anxiety known as the Sunday Sads. Around 3 pm or so on Sunday, I’d begin to feel an overwhelming sense of dread; irrational anxiety about the week at work to come. I say “irrational” because I lived a corporate life that most people would consider very successful for 25 years – what was I worried about? And yet, I had Sunday Sads for most of those 25 years. So-called better and better jobs also provided me with more stress, more feeling of loneliness, more sadness, and more poor habits. I also felt less vitality and less desire to get up in the morning, to the point where what remained of my ambition was to get through the next day. I was pale, flabby, exhausted, and the light had left my eyes. Life became a painful exercise in repetition. I was a corporate zombie.

According to a 2018 LinkedIn survey4, 80 percent of professionals say they experience depression on Sunday afternoons (the Sunday Sads), often triggered by a rush of anxiety associated with work-related stress and dread. While it’s not a highly scientific study, LinkedIn has 822 million members, so I’m comfortable including the results of their survey in making this point: most of today’s workforce struggles with stress and anxiety, and the myriad of resulting illnesses. When the entire population of a geographic area becomes ill, it’s called an epidemic. I’m not aware of a word that is used to describe what happens when half the population is sick, and that same half of the population drives the economic engine of the country.

Chronic illnesses are typically attributed by conventional Western medicine to a specific organ, or defect with a specific part of the body, versus the holistic approach by Chinese medicine that hypothesizes that any illness in the body is a function of an imbalance of the whole, or at minimum multiple facets of the physical and spiritual body. The result is that modern doctors generally tend to ignore or medicate symptoms of stress, depression, or anxiety, and introduce a synthetic drug specifically for the chronic condition. One of the most indispensable classic texts of Chinese medicine, the Huangdi Neijing, states: “The superior physician makes it their prerogative to treat disease when it has not yet structurally manifested, and prevents being in the position of having to treat disorders that have already progressed to the realm of the physical.”5 In contrast, “the low level physician finds themself salvaging what has already manifested in physical form, and treating what is already ruined.” In Chinese medicine, the “superior physician” operates at the level of the spirit of the human heart, known as “shen.”

The CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion notes: “Four of the 10 most costly health conditions for US employers — angina pectoris (chest pain), high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack — are related to heart disease and stroke. In addition, work stress is the leading workplace health problem and a major occupational health risk, ranking above physical inactivity and obesity.”6

According to the classic texts, maintaining a strong, balanced shen is the best defense against disease.

Disharmony of Shen

Anxiety, insomnia, forgetfulness, chronic restlessness and, in more severe cases, difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, depression and mania, are some symptoms classically associated with disharmony of the shen, in classic Chinese medicine. The term “shen” is often translated to English as “spirit.” In its most basic definition, shen is both the mind and consciousness of a person. That said, the term “shen” cannot be confined to just the basic definition; shen is one of the more complicated concepts in Chinese medicine. According to Chinese Herbalist Heiner Fruehauf7, the main functions of shen are:

Mental activity (consciousness), at the heart of all mental focus, planning, and intelligence; “any thought or idea, the will to carry it out, mental focus, planning, and intelligence can thus be considered to be manifestations of shen.”
Governing the seven emotions and their outward expressions of facial expressions, body movements, gestures, sighs and moans. The seven emotions are joy, anger, sadness, grief, fright, apprehension, and worry.
Control and regulation of the subordinate shen spirits. If we consider the spirit shen as the central computer of the human being, shen controls and regulates four additional spirits that are housed in the other organs. These include our self-awareness and self-control mechanism; the body’s basic reactive instincts; ability to think logically and remember; and our will.

As shen is one of the body’s most vital essences, the heart is entrusted to store shen. In addition to its role as the house of shen, the heart is considered the empress of the entire organ network, and the master of the body, and a critical component of our physical circulatory system. Li Ting wrote: “Despite its elusive nature, shen commands our body’s every action and every part … we have to understand that diseases of the structural heart are always caused by unbalanced emotions such as depression, anxiety, obsession, or sadness, which open up a pathway through which noxious pathogens can enter.”8

The Huangdi Neijing also teaches us that the heart is the emperor of the organ networks; if the heart flares, then all of the organs will get out of line. When an internal organ is injured as a result of an injury to the heart, or by stress and anxiety, the organ and its functions will be impaired. An example of an organ impairment commonly seen today in acupuncture clinics, is liver qi stagnation. Liver qi stagnation reflects an impaired flow of the body’s energy (qi.) The liver not only stores blood, it’s responsible for the uninterrupted free flow of the body’s substances, including qi, blood, and other fluids. This free flow of qi and blood ensures all of the aspects of the body are appropriately nourished. If the liver is injured, typically as a result of stress or anxiety, as well as poor nutritional habits (thank you, 50 hour work weeks,) then the free flow of vital substances is slowed or otherwise impaired. The resulting illnesses include: depression, self-doubt, a feeling of stuckness, impatience, temper tantrums, congestion or stuffiness in the chest, obstructed bowel movements, dry eyes, and menstrual cramping, to name a few. Incidentally, emotional stress, which leads to qi stagnation and subsequently increased body heat, can manifest itself as a red tip of the tongue (the tip of the tongue reflects the Heart and the shen.)

When a person has no spark behind their eyes, we say they have lost their shen. When you feel as if you don’t have the will to go another step … that’s shen too. A person whose shen is in balance will present as healthy and emotionally balanced. A person with disharmony of shen will present with a lack of spirit, irregular emotions, challenges in their ability to reason, symptoms of mental illness, and a lack of health. Liu Zhou, a 6th century philosopher wrote: “If the shen is at peace, the heart is in harmony; when the heart is in harmony, the body is whole; if the shen becomes aggravated, the heart wavers, and when the heart wavers the body becomes injured; if one seeks to heal the physical body, therefore, one needs to regulate the shen first.”9

Conclusion

When an unexpected increase in the number of disease cases in a specific geographical area occurs, the CDC calls it an epidemic. The disease of the modern worker is one of the heart, and it’s now at epidemic levels. Our goal at Song Acupuncture is to provide hardworking people with life-changing experiences through Chinese medicine, in the face of palliative pharmaceutical-based medicine, and the pressures of the modern world. We as Chinese medicine practitioners will be successful when we can broadly convey a salient message of hope to workplace zombies, and provide them with an opportunity to fully reconnect to their spirit, and an opportunity to transform themselves back into vital, lifeful beings ... to be “healthy” again.

Citations

About Chronic Diseases (2022, May 6). CDC.gov https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/index.htm
Employment in the United States from 2013 to 2023 (2002). Statista. United States - Employment 2023 | Statista
The Professional and Technical Workforce: By the Numbers (2021, Sept 27). dpeaflcio.org
Heitmann, B. Your Guide to Winning @Work: Decoding the Sunday Scaries | Official LinkedIn Blog (2018, Sept 28). Linkedin.
Wang, B. (1115) The Su Wen of the Huangdi Neijing Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor. [Place of Publication Not Identified: Publisher Not not identified], [1115 to 1234]
Workplace Health Promotion (2022, June 9). CDC.gov https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/factsheets/workplace-health.htm
Fruehauf, H. (2015). The Organ Networks of Chinese Medicine, Hai Shan Press, 32-38
Ting, L. (1575) Yixue, A primer of medicine. [Place of Publication Not Identified: Publisher Not not identified]
Zhou, L. (1991) Chapter 1 of the Liuzi (Master Liu), in Baizi quanshu (A Complete Collection of Works by the One Hundred Masters), 8 vols. Shanghai: Zhejiang Renmin Chubanshe, vol. 6