Hannah Zulueta One Direction Reversed
That is what vomiting actually is.
In Chinese Medicine, vomiting is called Rebellious Qi, energy moving the wrong way. What the vomit looks like, when it happens, and what makes it worse all point toward a specific pattern, and the pattern is what decides what to feed next.
Qi has a direction. Vomiting means it reversed.
Stomach Qi, Lung Qi, Heart Qi, Intestinal Qi, Kidney Qi, and Bladder Qi all move downward when the body is working correctly. Spleen Qi moves up. Liver Qi moves in every direction at once. Vomiting happens when Stomach Qi, which should be moving down, gets pushed up instead. The question is never just “why is my dog vomiting.” It is “what pushed the Qi the wrong way, and which pattern is that.”
Call your vet before anything else
Vomiting can be the first sign of infection, or simply a body clearing something it should not have eaten. Either way, if your dog is not back to normal within the day, that is a vet visit, not a wait-and-see.
- Infection or inflammation
- Gastritis, food intolerance, stomach cancer, a recent surgery
- A mechanical block: bowel obstruction, pyloric stenosis
- Trauma, or a neurological cause
- Stress or anxiety
- Medication or a toxin
An experienced vet can rule out the serious biomedical causes before anything holistic gets layered on top. From there, Chinese Medicine asks a different question: which pattern of disharmony is this.
What the vomiting is telling you
Vomiting in TCM sorts into one of six patterns: Stomach Heat, Stomach Cold, Stomach Qi rebelling upward, Damp Heat, Food Retention, or Blood Stasis. Tap through what you are actually seeing to narrow which one fits.
- Acute with cramping abdominal pain: an external pathogen, or Liver Qi stagnation
- Epigastric distension, belching, bad breath: food stagnation
- A clear emotional trigger: Qi stagnation
- Vomiting and diarrhea together: usually an external pathogen or gastroenteritis
- Worse with strong odors: Phlegm or Dampness
- Worse with emotion or stress: Liver Qi stagnation
- Sour and foul smelling: Heat
- Undigested food: food stagnation, or Yang deficiency
- Dry retching: Yin deficiency
- Watery and offensive: deficient Cold, or Phlegm fluids
- Yellow foam: Heat
- White foam: Cold
- Red blood: extreme heat
- Purple blood: Blood stasis
Blood in vomit warrants emergency care. Go to the nearest clinic.
Foam gets called bile by default, but it is not always bile. It can also be fluid from the lungs or stomach.
What the diet may have set up
Any food fed in excess, or out of step with your dog’s constitution, weakens the digestive system over time. Six ways that shows up:
Frozen
Feeding straight from the fridge or freezer has a cumulative effect. Cold has a contracting quality, and when it hits the stomach repeatedly, the digestive organs weaken even if nothing looks wrong at first.
Sticky
Dairy is a sticky food in TCM terms, not meant for daily feeding. Too much raw goat’s milk or kefir leads to poor fluid metabolism and lets fluid accumulate into Phlegm.
Raw
A healthy, robust dog with strong Yang usually handles raw well. A dog whose health is already compromised may do better on cooked food until strength rebounds. Cooking unfolds protein structures, so less energy goes toward digestion and more stays available to fight off whatever disharmony is present.
Dry
A consistently dry diet depletes the body’s fluids over time, and digestive function weakens along with it.
Under or over nutrition
The body is exposed to too little or too much of a specific ingredient or supplement, and either direction of imbalance can show up as vomiting.
Inappropriate
Sometimes the cause is simply something the dog should not have eaten in the first place.
What to do in the meantime
This is not a substitute for veterinary care. It is what to lean on if you are genuinely far from one or cannot get in right away.
- Keep your dog well hydrated: water, bone broth, meat broth, or canned pumpkin
- If they will not eat their regular meals, a warm, slow-cooked dish of turkey, pumpkin, and a small amount of grain, simmered for hours with a little bone broth until soft, can be easier to take in than anything raw or cold
- For treats, mix ground turkey or beef with oatmeal, grate in a very small amount of ginger, and bake at 350 degrees for twenty to thirty minutes
Grain in an acute situation is a judgment call, not a rule. If your dog will not eat anything else, a well-cooked, high-moisture grain paired with lean protein can be the difference between getting some food and hydration in or not. Chicken is the default; lean beef works if poultry is not an option.
Fasting
Puppies should never be fasted. Adult dogs can sometimes benefit from resting the digestive system for a day, as long as hydration stays consistent throughout.
More than one way in
Chinese herbal formulas for vomiting are not one-size-fits-all. Some warm a cold stomach. Others cool a hot one. Food stagnation calls for formulas that purge and move digestion along. Liver involvement calls for something that eases stress on the system. Damp Heat and Phlegm each have their own formulas built to dry or transform them. This is exactly why the pattern has to come first: the right formula follows from it, not the other way around.
Work with a TCVM-trained vet for herbal prescribing. If you need a referral, the Chi Institute and the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society both keep directories of TCVM-trained vets, or ask me directly during a consult.
Work with your vet while your dog is sick. Then get curious about what steps keep it from happening again.
If you want help building the recipes and the herbal plan around your dog’s specific pattern, that is what a consult is for.
Book a consultation
Hannah Zulueta obtained her Certificate in Canine Nutrition from CASI Institute. She is also studying for her Doctorate in Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Herbalism from the esteemed Pacific College of Health and Medicine. If you’re as keenly interested in health for yourself, visit her website for human health: Satori Acupuncture and Herbs.
She resides in San Diego with her three dogs, Maggie, Orbit, and Mr. Higgins.
She is available for one on one consultations. She develops evidence-based recipes that meet both NRC and AAFCO nutritional standards while integrating the therapeutic food principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine into her formulations.
Additionally, you can find her sharing free content on Instagram.
