mèn xīn
Also rendered: Stifling the heart (keeps 悗 as a blockage) · The choked heart (vivid, and it is too strong) · Stifling the heart (the site's convention for a symptom-name)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
What too much sweet food does: sweet qi is weak and cannot rise to the upper burner, so it stays in the stomach with the grain; the stomach slackens, the worms stir, and the region below the heart feels stopped up. 悗 is the exact opposite of 洞 — not a hollow but a blockage. As with 洞心, the 心 here is the epigastrium rather than the organ: the chapter’s symptoms are all located below the heart, and none of them is a disease of the heart itself.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | stifling the heart | the sensation, not the organ |
| Literal | confusing the heart | the Shuowen gloss, and wrong here |
| Clinical | epigastric fullness after sweet food | clear, and interpretive |
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