A Hypothesis: Excessive Fear Impairing the Kidney

Xiao-Xu Li＊

1Tianjin University of traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China.

Abstract The theory of seven emotions in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) holds that excessive joy impairs the heart,excessive anger impairs the liver, excessive contemplation impairs the spleen, excessive grief impairs the lung and excessive fear impairs the kidney, etc. According to TCM, kidney is the congenital essence of life and governs the reproduction through the hypothalamus a pituitary axis to complete an ovarian function of the reproductive.Some important events reflects fear affects the reproductive health. Kidney deficiency rat model was induced successfully by the methods of using the cat to frighten the mouse and simulating the scene of cat catching rat to form panic stress. Many experimental research on excessive fear impairing the kidney were carried out. Therefore,we put forward the medical hypothesis of Excessive fear impairing the kidney.

Keywords: Traditional Chinese medicine, Fear, Kidney

The Theory of Fear Impairing the Kidney

Post-traumatic stress disorder refers to a mental disorder in which a person suffers from sudden,threatening or catastrophic life events, which leads to delayed appearance and long-term persistence of the individual. Its clinical manifestation is characterized by re-experiencing trauma, accompanied by emotional irritability and avoidance behavior. Fear is the first and most important experience of post-traumatic stress.Fear can cause sharp neurohumoral changes in the body, such as behavior, autonomic nerve, endocrine and so on. When this reaction is too strong, it will have adverse effects on the body, and even lead to mental and somatic diseases. The theory of seven emotions in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)holds that excessive joy impairs the heart, excessive anger impairs the liver, excessive contemplation impairs the spleen, excessive grief impairs the lung and excessive fear impairs the kidney, etc. The Kidney stores essence and governs reproduction； reproductive essence is an important part of the kidney essence and acts as the original material of offspring embryos. The patients with insufficiency of kidney essence show a group of symptoms mainly including soreness and weakness of waist and knees, fatigue, cold feeling of the whole body, impairment of hearing, looseness of teeth, and even reproductive dysfunction. According to the principle of fear impairing the kidney, kidney deficiency rat model was induced by the methods of using the cat to frighten the mouse and simulating the scene of cat catching rat to form panic stress. The experimental results showed that fear as a stress state with outstanding psychological stimulation, can not only cause changes in behavior and mood of rats,but also cause physiological changes, leading to the expression of kidney deficiency syndrome in rats.Meanwhile, there are different degrees of changes at the levels of behavioral symptoms, tissue morphology,cells.

Evaluation of the hypothesis

There are some important events that support the theory of excessive fear impairing the kidney. On February 5, 2008, the Daily Mail reported that some poultry run around and trample on each other to death as with fear by low-altitude fighter planes； even if they survived,some hens stopped laying eggs； even if they continued to lay eggs, the quality is not up to market standards(https://www.sohu.com/a/222719852_737696). On September 21, 1999, A strong earthquake struck Taichung County of Taiwan at 01:47. After more than a year, the underage native chickens who were frightened in the mountains of Dongshi Township where is the epicenter of the earthquake, still didn't grow and lay eggs [1]. A tornado in the United States swept a group of piglets from a pig farm into the air and miles away, and the surviving piglets were sent back to the original pig farm, but none of these piglets continued to grow, let alone give birth to piglets in estrus. On the other hand, the piglets of the same age who have not experienced such the scare by the tornado in the same pig farm all grew up and developed normally one by one [1]. All of the above are examples that excessive fear leads to the cessation of growth and the severe destruction of fertility. This paper puts forward the medical hypothesis of excessive fear impairing the kidney.

Many experimental research on excessive fear impairing the kidney were carried out. Shen Yan et al. established the kidney deficiency models by the methods of using mice, dogs and cats and it was found that the number of mature spermatozoa of the male of the three kinds of animals mentioned above decreased after the establishment of the model [2].Wang Miqu et al. established the model of kidney deficiency by frightening mice with cats, and found that the mice in the model group had the phenomenon of abortion and premature delivery； compared with the control group, the litter rate and litter size of the model group were lower, and the physique of their offspring was weakened, physiologically abnormal,and the reaction state was abnormal. The direct and obvious manifestation of its physiology is that the birth weight of the offspring is generally reduced [3-6]. Feng Xinling used cats to scare rats from the first day of pregnancy to delivery； the cats were used to intimidate pregnant mice twice a day for 2 hours each time； the results showed that in the model group, the number of pregnant mice per fetus decreased, and the time of teething and coat of offspring was delayed；the average body weight on the day of birth and 14 days after birth was on the low side [7]. Xiao Min et al. found that the number of fetuses decreased and the contents of serum FT3 and FT4 increased significantly in threatened pregnant rats [8]. Zhang Xiangeng, et al.used the simulated earthquake method to stimulate the pregnant rats； it was found that the turning ability of the offspring in the model group was lower than that of the control group, and the average body weight and length of the model group were lower than those of the control group [9-10]. There are similar records in medical records. Wu Yunfeng once reported a case in which a man was infertile due to excessive fear of falling into a pit, resulting in a low survival rate of spermatozoa.The man was treated for fear of kidney injury, and his wife successfully conceived and gave birth to a child[11]. The influence of earthquake on the birth weight,length, birth defect rate of the newborns and pregnant women enriches the scientific connotation of the theory of "kidney is the congenital essence of life"[2]. There is such a phenomenon in animals, and so are the humans,but due to the limitation of ethics, animal experiments are often used to study the growth, development and reproductive disorders caused by kidney injury.

Excessive fear impairing the kidney is one of the important problems in TCM genetics. In recent years,the research on the animal model of excessive fear impairing the kidney has made rapid development, but there are still some shortcomings to be further studied.Traditional methods have their limitations to study such complex problems. The modern stress theory and the genomics of the genomics research (genomics,transcriptome, proteomics, metabonomics) provide a powerful tool for the study of excessive fear impairing the kidney [12-13]. It has found a breakthrough for the genetics of TCM to the world science, in order to reveal the systematic biological characteristics of "fear impairing the kidney".

Modern Research

Stress or stress response is a comprehensive reflection of the body's response to stimuli produced by internal and external environmental changes (including mental, neurological, endocrine, immune, etc.). In the neuroendocrine immune network, the reproductive endocrine system is not only an important system involved in stress response, but also vulnerable to its harm. And it plays a very important role in the balance, development, reproduction and aging of the internal environment, and whether the function of these aspects is normal or not is related to the kidney [14].There are many axis mechanisms (skill axis) in the Tibetan image hierarchical network system of TCM including brain-heart-kidney axis, brain-heart-lung axis, brain-heart-liver axis, brain-heart-spleen axis,etc. The elements of this axis interact, influence and restrict each other through hormone secretion. Modern research believes that the biological basis of tonifying kidney and essence (marrow) includes promoting energy metabolism and utilization of neuronal cells and activating endogenous [15]. Therefore, the TCM(compound prescription) for tonifying the kidney can obviously improve the disorder of the network system by regulating neurotransmitters, neuropeptides,hormones, cytokines [16].

Many panic related genes have been found. In 2002, only 32 genes related to panic were found in NCBI Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, OMIM)website (23 for fear, 7 for panic and 2 for fright), and it increased to 112 genes (fear, panic and fright are 80,29 and 3 respectively.) in May 2010 [17-20]. In March 2020, 751 genes for fear, 7 genes for fright, 99 genes for panic were found in NCBI website. Wang Miqu et al. established the rat model of excessive fear impairing the kidney by simulating cats and mice, and detected the neurons of rat brain by immunohistochemical method. It was found that the expression of C-fos in hypothalamus increased in the early stage. This change may be the microscopic mechanism of excessive fear impairing the kidney and one of the material basis of excessive fear impairing the kidney in TCM [21].

Deficiency and prospect

With the increasing popularity of emotional research in TCM, the classical theory of excessive fear impairing the kidney has gradually aroused the interest of scholars. Up to now, researchers have explored many aspects, including the effects of animal model fear impairing kidney on reproduction, growth and development, brain development, brain function and mechanism. Limited to ethics and other reasons,relevant studies are mainly focused on animal experiments, but the results of animal studies are difficult to extend to normal human bodies, which not only brings difficulties to the clinical application of these studies, but also causes obstacles to the integration of relevant TCM research and modern medicine. In the era of post-genomics and the development of bioinformatics and systems biology, in addition to the retrospective use of existing reproductive data, it is more important to follow up observation and animal experiments on forward-looking quantitative upgrades.It is necessary to follow up individual cases and their families for a long time. Starting from the macro physiology, cases and behavior, the new techniques and methods of the genomics research (genomics,transcriptome, proteomics, metabonomics) at the forefront of micro life science are introduced [22]and studied in depth, and the progress of scientific research is prospectively quantified, informationized,systematized and integrated.