There's some rather woo woo stuff out there about an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for intercellular signaling as a danger response which involves the mitochondria shifting their metabolism to help cells repel invaders, but which also interferes with the cells' normal activity. TLDR: if there's chronic inflammation cells go into this mode but never get the "all clear". Could this be the qi? Pun intended. It's just anecdata, haven't spent any time looking into it per se.

Stumbled onto this because I've been using TCM (in consultation with an herbalist) for blood pressure, relatively successfully, for a couple of years. Of course they didn't have blood pressure cuffs in the Ming or Han dynasties, so we're not really treating blood pressure... Researching astragalus and di huang is what led me to it.