Yangxi

What is LI5?

LI5, or Yangxi, is a Large Intestine channel point in the hollow on the thumb side of the wrist, at the base of the thumb.

The Chinese name Yangxi is usually translated as "Yang Ravine", after the small valley that appears between two thumb tendons when you lift your thumb away from your hand. Anatomists call that dip the anatomical snuffbox. LI5 sits in it, level with the wrist crease.

In classical theory LI5 is the Jing-River point of the Large Intestine channel and its Fire point. Texts link it mainly to problems along the channel's path: wrist and thumb pain, toothache in the lower jaw, sore throat, red or sore eyes, and headache. Some older sources also list it for tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and for agitation.

The honest verdict on evidence: there is essentially no human research testing LI5 on its own. Acupressure research as a whole is mostly small, unblinded and short-term, and LI5 is not one of the points that has been studied directly. Any relief people report from pressing it may be real, but it has not been separated from rest, attention, warmth or simple expectation.

Two things are worth stating once, clearly, and they apply to everything below. First, a long traditional record is not evidence that a point works; points were selected by theory and observation, not by controlled testing. Second, a long traditional record is not evidence that a point is safe either — safety here depends on what is physically under your fingers, and under LI5 there are tendons, a nerve branch and a small wrist bone that can be injured.

Everything on this page is self-applied finger pressure on your own skin. Nothing here involves needles, heat, suction or anything that breaks the skin. If you want needling, that is a separate decision to make with a licensed practitioner.

Where is LI5 and how do you find it?

LI5 sits in the small hollow at the thumb side of the wrist crease, between the two thumb tendons that stand up when you lift your thumb.

• Rest your arm. Put your forearm on a table, palm down and thumb upward, so the hand is relaxed and supported.
• Make the "hitchhiker" thumb. Stretch your thumb up and back, as if signalling a lift. Two cords will pop up on the thumb side of your wrist.
• Find the dip between them. The triangular hollow between those two cords is the anatomical snuffbox. It is about the size of a fingertip.
• Drop to the wrist crease. Follow the hollow back toward the forearm until you reach the level of the crease where the hand meets the wrist. LI5 is in the hollow at that level.
• Check the bone edge. Just above the point you can feel the hard knob at the end of the radius, the forearm bone on the thumb side. LI5 is below and slightly toward the thumb from that knob, in soft ground, not on the knob itself.

In traditional measurement LI5 is described as being at the radial end of the wrist crease, in the snuffbox depression. There is no "cun" distance to convert here — it is a landmark point, found by feel rather than by counting thumb-widths.

A useful cross-check: LI5 is not the fleshy web between thumb and index finger. That is LI4, a different point further down the hand. LI5 is at the wrist, in the dip. Both points are on the same channel, which is why they get mixed up in videos.

If the hollow is sore to a light touch and you have recently fallen onto your hand, stop and read the "Who should avoid it" and "When to see a doctor" guidance before pressing. Tenderness in this exact hollow after a fall is a known warning sign.

How do you apply pressure to LI5?

1. Settle the arm. Rest your forearm on a table or your lap, palm down, thumb relaxed. A supported arm lets you feel the hollow instead of bracing against your own grip.
2. Place one fingertip. Use the pad of the opposite thumb or index finger. Sink into the hollow between the two thumb tendons rather than sliding onto the bony knob above it.
3. Press gently inward. Aim your pressure straight down into the dip, toward the centre of the wrist. Build up slowly over two or three seconds.
4. Keep it moderate. Firm enough to feel a dull ache or fullness, never sharp. On a scale of one to ten, stay around three or four. Hard digging bruises easily here because there is little padding.
5. Hold or circle. Hold steady for 30 to 60 seconds, or make small slow circles for the same time. Breathe normally; do not hold your breath.
6. Release and repeat. Ease off, wait a few seconds, then repeat two or three times. Swap sides and do the same on the other wrist if you wish.
7. Limit the session. A few minutes per wrist is plenty. Two or three short sessions a day is a reasonable ceiling.

Stop immediately and do not continue if you feel a sharp pain, pins and needles, numbness, or an electric sensation shooting into your thumb. A surface branch of the radial nerve crosses this area, and that sensation means you are compressing it.

Also stop if the skin reddens and stays red, if a bruise forms, or if the wrist feels worse an hour later rather than the same or better. Soreness that builds over days is a signal to rest the wrist, not to press harder.

Use fingers only. Do not use pressure pens, hard tools, clamps or wristbands cinched tight over this spot — the structures here are shallow and easy to irritate.

What is LI5 traditionally used for?

• Wrist and thumb pain. The most common traditional use, and the most plausible one, because LI5 sits directly on the painful area in thumb-side wrist complaints. No trial has tested finger pressure at LI5 for this. Gentle local pressure may feel soothing in the moment, which is not the same as healing a tendon.
• Toothache in the lower jaw. Classical texts list LI5 for tooth pain because the Large Intestine channel is described as running to the jaw. There is no human evidence for LI5 and dental pain. Tooth pain has a cause that needs a dentist; pressure does not treat decay or infection.
• Sore throat. Another channel-based claim from the old literature. No controlled human research supports it. A sore throat with fever, difficulty swallowing or a rash needs medical assessment, not acupressure.
• Red, sore or tired eyes. Traditional sources connect LI5 to the eyes through channel pathways. Nothing in the human evidence base tests this. Sudden eye pain or vision change is an urgent medical problem.
• Headache. LI5 appears in classical headache prescriptions, usually alongside several other points. Acupuncture research on headache has mostly used multi-point formulas, so it cannot tell us what LI5 contributes on its own, and it used needles, not fingers.
• Tinnitus and ear ringing. Listed in some older texts. Evidence for acupuncture in tinnitus is weak and inconsistent, and none of it isolates LI5.
• Agitation and restlessness. Classical sources mention LI5 for "mania" and agitation. This reflects historical theory rather than tested effect. Sitting still and breathing slowly while you press may account for any calm you notice.

Read this list as a record of what the tradition claimed, not a list of things LI5 does. Where a claim has been tested and supported, this library says so plainly. For LI5, that has not happened yet.

Are there tips for using LI5 effectively?

• Find it with the thumb lifted, press it with the thumb relaxed. Extending the thumb makes the hollow obvious. Once your fingertip is in place, let the thumb soften so you are pressing muscle and soft tissue rather than a taut tendon.
• Warm the wrist first. A warm cloth or a minute of rubbing makes the area more comfortable and makes it easier to feel the dip. Cold hands tend to press harder without noticing.
• Use the clock, not your tolerance. Time a 30 to 60 second hold instead of pressing until it "feels like enough". That habit keeps pressure moderate and sessions short.
• Pair it with a real break. If your wrist aches from typing, phone use or a tool grip, use the minute of pressure as the start of a genuine rest, plus a slow wrist and thumb stretch. The rest may be doing more than the point.
• Try the opposite side. Traditional practice often presses the point on the side opposite the symptom, and it gives a sore wrist a break. There is no evidence one side works better, but it is harmless to try.
• Keep a simple note. Record what you felt before and an hour after, over a week or two. Honest notes separate a real pattern from a good day.
• Keep your nails short. The skin over the snuffbox is thin. A nail edge can nick it, and broken skin here should not be pressed at all.
• Set a stopping rule in advance. Decide that two weeks of no change means you talk to a clinician. That stops a self-care habit from quietly delaying a diagnosis.

None of these tips makes LI5 more effective in a tested sense. They make the practice safer, more comfortable and easier to evaluate honestly, which is the most a reader can reasonably ask of an untested point.

What do people get wrong with LI5?

• Expecting a cure. The biggest error. LI5 is not a treatment for toothache, tendon damage, infection or tinnitus, and no acupressure point cures a structural problem. Expecting relief for a minute is realistic; expecting a fix is not.
• Confusing LI5 with LI4. Many videos show the fleshy web between thumb and index finger and call it LI5. That is LI4. LI5 is at the wrist crease, in the hollow between the thumb tendons.
• Landing on the bone. Pressing the hard knob at the end of the forearm bone instead of the soft hollow just below and in front of it. Bone gives no sink and the point is in the dip.
• Pressing a wrist that was injured in a fall. Tenderness in this exact hollow after falling onto an outstretched hand is a classic sign of a broken scaphoid, a small wrist bone. Pressing it hard can make things worse and masks a fracture that needs imaging.
• Pushing through nerve sensations. Treating pins and needles or a zing into the thumb as a sign the point is "working". It is a sign you are squashing a nerve branch. Stop.
• Using tools. Pressure pens, clips and hard massagers concentrate force on thin skin over tendons. Fingers are enough and give you feedback.
• Marathon sessions. Ten minutes of hard pressure does not beat one minute of moderate pressure. It just bruises and irritates the tendons.
• Replacing care with pressure. Using LI5 to get through a worsening toothache, a swallowing problem or a wrist that is losing grip strength. Those need a dentist or doctor.
• Judging it in one go. Deciding after a single session either that it is miraculous or useless. Short-term changes in pain are noisy; a brief written record is more informative.

What does the research on LI5 actually say?

No useful human research testing LI5 on its own was found. There is no controlled trial of finger pressure at Yangxi for wrist pain, toothache, sore throat, headache, eye complaints or tinnitus. That is the honest starting position for this page.

LI5 does appear occasionally inside multi-point acupuncture prescriptions in studies of hand and wrist conditions and of head pain. Those studies used needles, not finger pressure, and they combined several points in one session. Even when such a study reports benefit, the design cannot tell you what LI5 contributed, or whether pressing it with a thumb would do anything similar.

It is worth knowing what the wider acupressure literature looks like, because it sets expectations. Most trials are small, run for a short time, and cannot blind participants — people know whether someone is pressing their wrist. That design lets expectation and attention inflate results, especially for symptoms that are self-reported, like pain and nausea. Reviews repeatedly describe the evidence as low quality and call for larger, better-controlled trials.

There is one clear counter-example in the field, and naming it keeps the comparison fair: PC6, on the inner forearm, has genuine controlled human evidence for reducing nausea and vomiting, including after surgery and in pregnancy. That is what reasonable evidence for an acupressure point looks like. LI5 has nothing approaching it.

The neighbouring point LI4 has been studied more often than LI5, in pain and in labour, with mixed and generally weak results. Those findings do not transfer to LI5. They are different points with different anatomy under the skin, and borrowing one point's evidence for another is exactly the error this library tries to avoid.

What this means in practice: treat LI5 as an untested comfort measure. If pressing it feels pleasant and you keep the pressure moderate, there is little to lose. If a symptom persists, worsens, or has a cause that medicine can identify, the research gives you no reason to delay seeing someone.