Mystery condition: Kidney yin/jing, qi deficiency, weak spleen and herbs not helping. Why?

Hello friends, I’m 40 yrs old male in search of some desperate help with condition that has lasted over five years and drained my financial and emotional resources. If any of you could look into this and provide your thoughts I would be forever grateful!
My symptoms are too numerous to list here and they seem to be all over the board: heating turning to cold, cold turning into heat, change with season, change with weather, changer with climate and so on.

Tongue has pale/grey coating all over, no teeth marks. I was told my pulse is weak.
It all slowly started with becoming sensitive to dairy and wheat – would feel very lethargic or tired for hours after eating these foods – most of the time I thought I had to stay away from high glycemic foods (made me tired) and dairy as I thought it was lactose allergy. I experienced h pylori infection, appendix inflammation and surgery, etc.
Then I started feeling constant lower back pain and these strange periods where I felt very wired where I could sleep much less than needed to and it seemed like I had insane energy for everything that came with restlessness. I could go on even if I felt tired – tired but wired. Then this would subside and my body was able to relax but then a while later start again and go one for days.

At the base of it all I must have a spleen deficiency with aversion to cold foods, liquids, raw food. A raw salad later in the evening can keep me up all night for some reason, sometimes with some strange cold pulses from my abdomen down into my legs. Even if I eat right I still have insomnia and it manifests in a variety of ways over the years. I usually fall asleep OK but then I’m up three hours later every single night. If I eat anything later than 6pm I wake up around midnight hot. If I eat right, I still wake up around 2:00am feeling very warm, restless, sometimes hungry. I drink water and often fall asleep but wake up very early again, usually being warm again. I have to urinate multiple times at night. Most of the time I wake up tired, unrefreshed and experience heart palpitations and shortness of breath during the day.

Strangely, if I eat anything with wheat and dairy, cream, etc (cake for example) I can be burning half of the night (10am-1am) and nothing would help. There’s something about that food that causes extreme response.

I also can not eat anything too warming like ginger, cinnamon, lamb, etc. This would make me very hot at night and make it impossible to sleep. I also have to avoid high histamine and glutamate foods as those are very stimulating during the night and can keep me up. I once took some L-Glutamine supplements and couldn’t sleep for quite a few days afterwards from a buzz in my head.

One of the most persistent and annoying sensations is this heat in my abdomen about 30-45 following meals. I get the same heat even after drinking cool water. An apple for example can make me very hot. It is worse when I’m reclining.

My stress tolerance is extremely poor although getting better every month from daily QiGong. Fatigue is really bad and I have to project my voice with force in order to speak and I get easily exhausted. I maintain my job (thanks to QiGong, strict schedule and careful diet balancing meat, veggies, select fruit, low glycemic, avoiding liver heat harassing stuff, etc.) but it is a big struggle every day.

Kidney Yin and Yang tonics don’t do anything for me because the biggest issue is my gut now. Any yin or cold, bitter herbs even food will make me chilled and fatigued.
I feel better from liver heat and heart heat clearing herbs but then develop these chills during the triple burner time 9-11:00pm, and also feel cold during the 9-11:00am. Also, two or three days later my fatigue gets so much worse with heavy legs that I can hardly drag around.

Any qi building herbs like astragalus and codonopsis initially give me a boost but then I get irregular heart beat, shortness of breath, feeling hot during the day and at night.
I tried playing around combining herbs for various patterns but can’s seem to find a good balance, mainly because I am not customizing them and play around with traditional herbal formulas like rehmannia six, rehmannia eight, gui pi tang, bu zhong yi qi tang, etc.
One of the better formulas I’ve used was Jia Wei Xiao Yao. It really got things moving inside of me again. No constipation, returned my appetite, etc but I had to stop about 1.5 months into it as I was feeling these really bad chills during the triple warmer time 9-11:30pm, couldn’t sleep at all and nothing helped.

The best formula so far for me has been the Poria Five Combo and some gelatin to nourish yin/protect fluids (closest I could get to Zhu Ling Tang (Polyporus Decoction)). The latter combination helps me retain fluids better at night, not to be so thirsty all the time and prevents frequent urination.

I found out I feel pretty good Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Pian but it gives me sleeplessness.
I’ve consulted with a few TCM practitioners but they recommended things that did not work out for – either address the liver only, or address the yin deficiency only, or try both qi deficiency and yin herbs like ‘bu zhong yi qi tang,’ ‘jin kui shen qi and ‘tian wang bu xin pian’ and but these do not work (together or separately) and create more imbalances for me.

If any of you care to study me further I listed my symptoms and experiences with TCM formulas here but you have the main parts of it here. Here is a photo of my tongue.

What is your take on all of this? What pattern and underlying deficiencies am I dealing with? How can I address them better? I would be so grateful for any input.

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