The five viscera and six bowels in Chinese medicine are different from those in Western medicine. The five viscera include the liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys, and the six bowels include the stomach, large intestine, small intestine, bladder, triple jiao and gallbladder.
According to the basic theory of Chinese medicine, the main role of the five viscera is to store the essence of the human body, and the main role of the six bowels is to digest the ingested food, absorbing the essence of it and eliminating the useless dross.
Nutrients are ingested through normal diet, transformed into water and grain essence through the transportation of the spleen and stomach, and then transported to all parts of the body through the transportation of the spleen, in order to achieve the balanced functioning of the human body and to maintain the ultimate goal of a normal physiological state.
Chinese medicine believes that the body’s internal organs and the limbs and bones are interconnected and interact with each other. The five viscera and six bowels not only harmonize with each other physiologically, but also influence each other pathologically through a certain way or law, and transmit to each other.