Are You Ignoring Your Body’s Red Flags? A Lesson from an NYC Acupuncturist

Pay attention to what your body is telling you

We all went to school with a Eugene Abdemanik. He was a small, skinny kid with a puffy black afro and a puberty mustache that his parents desperately should have encouraged him to shave. Eugene didn’t have a ton of friends (0 friends), often picked his nose (this led to less friends), but if I remember, I think I was nice (that’s 50/50) to him. Eugene was in my Latin class. 

Dr. Barrett the Latin teacher was an older guy, and was completely over teaching high school. Don’t ask me why I was taking Latin as I still think about how ridiculous this decision was. On the scale of caring about learning Latin, I was at a 0. I would always show up late and instead of walking in I would hurry to the Latin section of the library and pile up as many books as I could carry. I would run into class 15 minutes late with the books higher than my head, trip over the door frame and fall forward, spilling all the books on the ground screaming I was doing research and that’s why I was late.  It was a crowd pleaser.

I was sitting in Latin class, daydreaming of all the better things I could be doing at this time (like studying Spanish/French, any living language) and noticed Eugene was passed out on his desk.  Face planted on the hard wooden desk with drool surrounding his face. I was so grossed out I was staring and memorizing which desk it was so I would make sure never to sit at that desk ever again.

He suddenly jerked up from his sleep. My reaction was to look away quickly as though I was the one who should be embarrassed. He put his hand to his side of his mouth to break the saliva string and raised his head. I of course immediately looked back and couldn’t look away (plumber butt crack scenario). He then looked around, decided the coast was clear and nose-dived into the saliva sucking it all up. I lost it. Started screaming with my hands up as though I was under arrest, running from a fire in the building. Very, very mature response.

In Chinese medicine, nothing is random — not even drooling on a Latin desk.

Eugene falling asleep face-first into a puddle of saliva would’ve made an ancient Chinese doctor immediately start observing patterns. Excess drooling in TCM is often connected to the Spleen system, which governs transformation of fluids. When the Spleen Qi is weak, dampness accumulates, energy drops, concentration fades, and a person can become tired, foggy, and sluggish.

So while I saw Eugene sleeping through Latin, a Chinese medicine practitioner might’ve thought:
‘Ah yes… classic damp accumulation with Spleen Qi deficiency.’

The dramatic saliva clean-up operation afterward? That’s where the story becomes a lesson in instinct and embarrassment overriding awareness — another thing Chinese medicine talks about often. When people are disconnected from their body, exhausted, stressed, poorly nourished, or chronically fatigued, odd behaviors start appearing.

The Chinese medicine part is realizing the body was probably waving red flags long before it happened. Eugene needed better sleep, less dampness, and acupuncture.

To most people it was disgusting.
To a Chinese medicine practitioner, it was a full-body case study.

Everything has a reason. Your body is talking to you all the time — through your tongue, your bowels, your urination and your pulse. But when you don't understand what your body is telling you it’s a one-way conversation, which is not a conversation at all. The same way your friends get upset when you ignore them, your body does too. Give your body an hour each week to check-in (weekly acupuncture sessions) and watch your quality of life improve.