Many of you have heard of the saying “If you have gastric energy, you will live; if you don’t have gastric energy, you will die”, from the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. Some people may say, “I have already received surgery to remove the whole stomach, where is the stomach qi? In fact, the “gastric qi” mentioned here is what people call the middle qi, which is what Chinese medicine says is the essence of the afterlife, and does not refer to the surgically removed stomach. In addition to stomach qi, there are also yuan qi, wei qi and ying qi in the human body, which together drive the transformation of energy and metabolism in the body. To understand stomach qi, we need to talk about “yuan qi” first. According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, vital energy is the result of the innate essence, which is given by parents before birth, hidden in the kidneys after birth, and nourished and replenished by the spleen and stomach later in life. The vital energy is vital to maintain the health of the human body, and when the vital energy is sufficient, the internal organs will be strong and healthy. If the spleen and stomach are deficient, the vital energy will fail, and if the vital energy fails, all diseases will arise. The pathological characteristics of gastric cancer determine the weakness and intolerance of stomach qi as its prominent symptoms, so special attention should be paid to protect stomach qi during the treatment of gastric cancer. As long as the gastric qi can be maintained to a certain extent, there is hope for treatment and the patient may gradually improve; if the gastric qi is gradually weakened to the point of decay, then treatment is very difficult and the prognosis of the disease is very poor. It is based on this important understanding that the saying “if you have stomach qi, you will live; if you don’t have stomach qi, you will die” was introduced. When the patient’s stomach energy is not strong, dieting is the key to protect the stomach energy, and one must not eat beyond one’s digestive capacity. In clinical practice, this situation is often compared to a “broken cart and light load” to patients. For patients with advanced gastric cancer who are weak and have no appetite, it is recommended to consume more hot porridge, especially millet porridge, to protect stomach qi, and at the same time, to appropriately combine with prescriptions to support and strengthen the spleen and eliminate food, so as to promote the recovery of the stomach’s main intake and spleen’s main transport function, and improve the patient’s physical strength and quality of life.