Nutrition Counseling

The Stomach as a Pot

It is said in Chinese that the stomach has an aversion to dryness. In other words, stomach function is dependent upon the creating of a mash or soup in its pot. It is also said in Chinese that the spleen fears dampness. Since spleen function is likened to a fire under a pot of distilling the essence from the mash held in the stomach, it is easy to understand that water or dampness can injure that fire. This explains that TCM suggests eating cooked food rather than cold or raw food.

Cooked vs. Raw Foods

Since cooking is predigestion on the outside of the body to make food easily digestible on the inside. By cooking foods in a pot on the outside of the body, one can initiate and facilitate the stomach’s digestion in its pot on the inside of the body. Cold and raw food require that much more energy to transform them into warm soup within the pot of the stomach. TCM suggests lightly cooked food, not overcooked food to the process of predigestion.

Cold Food & Liquid

If we drink or eat chilled, cold, or frozen foods or drink iced liquids with our meals, we are only impeding the warm transformation of digestion. Water and Cold puts out the digestive fire which is needed. This does not mean that such liquids or foods are never digested, but it does mean that often they are not digested as well, which can lead to stagnant food or dampness in Chinese Medicine.

Dampening Foods

Because the human body is damp, most foods are somewhat damp. We need a certain amount of dampness to stay alive. Dampness in food is yin. Some foods are excessively dampening,( such as sugar, oils, ice cream, milk products, fruit juices) and since it is the spleen which is averse to dampness, excessively damp foods tend to interfere with digestion.

The Basic Healthy Diet

Humans should mostly eat vegetables and grains with small amounts of everything else. We should mostly eat cooked and warm food which is not too sweet, not too greasy or oily, and not too damp. In addition, we should eat moderately and chew well. It is healthful to drink a teacup of warm water or warm beverage with meals.  It is unhealthy to drink or eat chilled, cold and frozen drinks and foods with meals.

In general, I would emphasize that most Americans do not eat enough vegetables. It is easy to load up on breads, grains, and cereals, but not as easy to eat plenty of freshly cooked vegetables. Grains, like meat and dairy products, are highly nutritious but heavy and relatively more difficult to digest. If overeaten they can cause accumulation of dampness and phlegm.

5 Flavors & Spices

The five flavors are: sweet, bitter, pungent, salty and sour. Each of the five flavors correspondents to one of the five elements and therefore has an effect on one of the five major organs of Chinese Medicine.

Just as overeating sweet injures the spleen, overeating salt injures the kidneys, overeating sour injures the liver, and overeating spicy food injures the lungs. I know of no one who overeats bitter food. A little bit bitter food is good for the heart and stomach.

Moderate use of acrid, warm spices aids digestion by strengthening the middle burner fire.

That is why traditional cultures found the use of pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace and cloves so beneficial. A moderate use of such spices is good for the spleen but their overuse is bad for the stomach and lungs.

Pesticides, Preservatives, & Chemicals

Eating food which is contaminated by pesticides, preservatives, and chemical dyes and additives is not good for our long term health and well being. Therefore it is advisable to eat food which is free from these as possible. That means organic produce and grains and organically grown meat

Remedial Dietary Therapy

Treatment should primarily be based on pattern discrimination.

The first of these principles is to select foods which correspond to the patient’s pattern.

The best is to base the treatment on the person’s pattern, rather than on the disease. Thus it is said in Chinese Medicine:

-One disease, different treatments

-Different diseases, one treatment

This means that if two patients both suffer from the same disease but exhibit different patterns of overall signs and symptoms, they will receive different TCM treatments; while two patients with different disease diagnoses may receive the same treatment if their TCM pattern is the same. In Chinese Medicine disease is seen as an imbalance. In terms of remedial Chinese dietary therapy, this means that foods are selected on the basis of whether they help or hinder the restoration of the patient’s overall pattern to a state of balance or health. Those which promote a movement back to balance should be eaten and those which aggravate the person’s imbalance should be avoided. “If there is heat, cool it; if there is cold, warm it; if there is dryness, moisten it; if there is dampness, dry it; if there is vacuity, supplement it; and if there is repletion, drain it.”

Food Allergies

Food Allergies are common diagnosis amongst Westerners and especially those who seek their health care from so-called alternative practitioners, such as chiropracticer, naturopath, and homeopaths. In Chinese Medicine there is no such disease as food allergies.

Most food allergies begin in infancy where our current Western lack of nutritional sense is most glaring and apparent. Chinese medical theory states that the child’s stomach-spleen or their digestion is immature until at least six years of age. Babies need to be fed beginner’s foods. That means mother’s milk, watered down cereal soups, mashed, cooked vegetables, and small amounts of animal soups and broth. Instead, we ply our infants with cold fruit juices, raw carrots, apples, oranges, cheese, fried foods and chips, peanut butter, and cold milk and sweetened yoghurt out of the refrigerator.

As we have seen, such foods are very dampening and relatively hard to digest. These foods may be very nutritious for a grownup with a strong digestion, but they are very difficult to digest for a child below the age of six. Because these things are damp and hard to digest, they further impair the digestion and tend to cause phlegm and dampness which clog the system. Most food allergies manifest according to TCM as some versions of heat and /or dampness and phlegm.

It is no wonder then that foods which are most prone to causing food allergies are those which are most dampening and phlegmatic. It was found, that milk, chocolate, cola, corn citrus, and egg were the most common food allergens. Milk allergies are especially common in children under two. Milk is very dampening according to Chinese dietary theory. Therefore, milk, cheese, and all dairy products tend to aggravate dampness and impede the spleen.

If one is fed or allowed to eat the wrong foods as a child, this can cause chronic spleen dampness and weakness. In Chinese medicine, it is said that dampness is heavy and turbid and hard to resolve. Once pathologic dampness is engendered in the spleen and body as a whole, it is difficult to rid. Therefore, dampness and phlegm engendered as a child may persist into adulthood, especially if one continues to eat the wrong, i.e., damp and difficult to digest, foods. When such foods are eaten, they cause even more dampness and possibly heat and the signs and symptoms of allergy appear.