Eating REAL Food is Part of the Chinese Medicine Prescription of Good Health

Since nutrition is one of the five branches of Chinese Medicine, it is something we can’t ignore when you study Chinese Medicine.

I attended a workshop titled, “Eat Real Food; Nutrition in the 21st Century" by Nishanga Bliss, L.A.c. and she reminded us that in Chinese Medicine, good food means food that is not processed, not refined, is eaten in season of your local area, and is NOT filled with hormones and/or chemicals.

Most of us don’t eat this way.

Most of us these days eat prepared food, fast foods, packaged food or junk food, and as a result, our bodies tend to become reservoirs of chemicals, toxins, plastics, poisons, and crud. Over the years, we start to exhibit signs and symptoms of interesting health problems due to eating the way we do. Many of our health problems could be treated, mitigated, or even eliminated if we started to eat REAL food.

To start us on the road to eating REAL food (and hopefully changing some of our bad habits), our instructor, Ms. Bliss, recommended we start with some baby-stepping guidelines to move towards eating REAL FOOD:

• Don't eat packaged food that has over 5 ingredients listed on the label.
• Eat locally produced food. If it is not locally grown, then eat organic.
• If not organic, then eat food from a family farm.
• If not from a family farm, then from a local business.
• If not from a local business, then from the region.
• Go to the Farmers Market before trying the Supermarket. Plan your meals around local ingredients you find at the Farmers Market.

Our instructor then asked if we thought we needed to go to a deeper level of the REAL FOOD process; that of being CLEANSED? (My immediate thought was Oh, NO! Enemas!) But that is not what she had in mind at all.

Cleansing (the Chinese Medicine Way) is to take nutritious REAL food and only consume that food for a period of 3 weeks. The REAL and good food will then start to work its ways through your entire system and go to all your nooks and cranny's (including the mechanisms that take 28 days to get restarted) and pull out the toxins and stuff we don't need or want.

Three weeks of eating REAL and GOOD food will help your system remove the chemicals and junk stuck in your itty bitty tiny weeny cells and purge it out through your gut, your lungs, your sweat, and out through your urine. After a period of 3 weeks, you should look and feel "clean", "different", "better"...and maybe even "new".

Ms Bliss recommends you do this type of diet cleanse each spring or whenever you have two or more of these kind of symptoms over a period of two months.

• Allergies
• Skin rashes or breakouts
• Tight neck and shoulders
• Headaches
• Constipation, loose stools, or both
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• PMS
• Menstrual cramps
• Restlessness, irritability, or anger
• Mood swings
• Frequent infections or colds
• Poor memory
• Mental fogginess

Here are the rules for this simple, food-based cleanse of REAL food our instructor recommended:

CHOOSE

• Vegetables. Eat all types as much as you wish. Raw vegetables are more cleansing, cooked ones are more strengthening. People who are robust and those cleansing in warmer climates can choose more raw foods (50% of more). Those who are tired or deficient and those cleansing in cool weather should choose more cooked foods (75% or more).

• Cleansing Vegetables. Eat at least 2 of these per day; avocados, artichokes, asparagus, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, burdock, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chives, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, jicama, kohlrabi, leeks, mushrooms, onions, peppers, rutabaga, radishes, especially daikon and Spanish black radish, sea vegetables, turnips.

• Leafy Greens. All leafy greens, such as arugula, beet, daikon, and turnip greens, dandelion greens, kale, and collard greens, mustard greens, swiss chard, spinach, lettuces of all types, edible flowers.

• Fruit. Choose any fresh or frozen fruit, with an emphasis on seasonal fruits from your area. Try to each twice as many veggies as fruit. No dried or canned fruit.

• Fats and Oils. Choose only expeller-pressed organic olive oil, unrefined coconut oil or ghee for cooking, and organic expeller-pressed flax oil and olive oil for dressings

• Beans. One to three servings of organic lentils, mung beans, chickpeas, or other beans daily. Soak all beans overnight before cooking. Avoid unfermented soy (tofu or soy milk)

• Grains. One to three servings of organic brown rice, wild rice, or quinoa daily, and prepare these by soaking overnight before cooking.

• Animal Foods. Choose from organic or pastured poultry, beef, lamb, or goat, and wild-caught, low mercury seafood only, up to four 2-3 ounce servings per day. One to three organic or pastured eggs daily. Prepare animal products by boiling, baking, roasting, or poaching, or raw(no raw egg whites). No cured, smoked, or preserved meats, but canned salmon and sardines are OK.

• Seasonings. Natural wheat free tamari or shoyu, chickpea miso, raw apple cider or other raw vinegars, fresh lemon juice, celtic sea salt, or other unprocessed salt, fresh or dried organic herbs and spices, raw honey, nutritional yeast.

• Fermented foods. Raw sauerkraut or lacto-fermented pickles, ideally with each meal.

• Beverages. Aim for ½ your body weight in ounces of water a day (avg 8-10 glasses). Choose filtered water, herbal teas, kombucha, beet kvass, freshly pressed vegetable juices or pressed fruit juices diluted with water.

The cleanse should be done over 3 weeks. Our instructor said everyone who does this cleanse ends up feeling better and healthier. Some even lose weight.

Since it will soon be spring, which marks the time for spring cleaning the house, consider cleansing your innards (your body).

Perhaps just eating locally is a good place to start to move you on a path of better health. Or maybe it is choosing to not eat anything packaged with more than 5 ingredients. This can help, too.

If you decide to try the 3 week cleanse, you may discover a new healthy body. Switching over to REAL food can make you feel that different.

Who knows? Maybe a new you is what you are going to find this year. After all, food is a part of our life. We can choose to partner with food that is good for us or partner and hang out with food from the wrong side of the tracks.

This may be the year we decide to start hanging out with food that is REAL and can help us feel better.

Eating REAL Food is Part of the Chinese Medicine Prescription of Good Health

Leave that Fat in Your Dairy!

First off, to my children, I'm sorry.

I learned at our Chinese Medicine nutrition workshop that skim milk is a disgrace (nutiritionally speaking) with all the other milk choices available. Lowfat yogurt should be an embarrassment. And let's not even talk about low fat sour cream!

I became aware during our Chinese Medicine Nutrition workshop that "the previous generation", which is MY generation, did a great disservice to their children (including mine) by having them drink adulterated dairy products. We should have allowed, and encouraged them, to drink WHOLE milk and all the dairy products with all the fat left in them. Also, it would have been better if we allowed them to drink the NON-pasteurized stuff, too, so they could improve their guts anaerobic bacteria. It is also believed that pasteurization has helped produce a generation that is lactose intolerant. But no, we listened to the recommendations at the time and fell into the trap of thinking low fat would be better for us. Now we are learning it was a LIE!!! Yes, a LIE!!

The BEST course would have been letting our kids drink straight from the cow, or at least get milk straight from a local dairy with cows chewing on the grass with music playing around them singing songs (think happy cow).

I can't believe all the things I'm learning that I did wrong! I may need to go to the bar and sulk away with a fat loaded and sugar infested milkshake swirled with lots and lots of vodka to help flush away my new found guilt.

Leave that Fat in Your Dairy!

Food is a Basis for Qi Production

Food is the basis for the production of Qi and blood in your body.

• If no food is eaten for half a day, the Qi is weakened.

• If no food is eaten for a whole day, Qi is depleted.

Food is very important in Chinese Medicine.

Fasting is not seen as being therapeutic.

Food is a Basis for Qi Production

Traditional Foods that Move the Liver Qi

According to my instructor, Liver Qi Stagnation is the most common problem we have in the USA.

Liver Qi stagnation is usually caused by improper food intake, such as eating pre-packaged foods, fast foods, fatty foods, cold, and/or raw foods, or foods that are wrecked (such as being transported long distances or grown with pesticides). In other words, the typical American diet.

The usual symptoms of stagnant liver Qi may include the following:

• Red face, feeling of heat
• Thirst
• Irritability, depression, moodiness, outbursts of anger
• Feeling a lump in the throat
• Hypochondrial/epigastric distention, pain in your sides
• Irregular/heavy periods (in women)
• Premenstrual tension & breast distension (PMS)

Traditional foods that can help move the Liver Qi and keep the Qi from getting stagnant are:

• HERBS AND SPICES (anise, basil, bay, cardamom, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, cilantro, curry, fennel, garlic, ginger, horseradish, mint, mustard, nutmeg, oregano, parsley, vanilla)

• BEANS (navy, baby lima, cannellini, and other white beans)

• VEGETABLES (collard greens, green garlic, kohlrabi, leeks, onions, radishes of all types, turnips and their greens, watercress)

• FRUITS (grapefruit, lemon, lime, kumquat, plum, tangerine)

My instructors other recommendations are to eat REAL food. To do this, she recommends the following:

• Eat locally produced food. If it is not locally grown, then eat Organic.
• If not organic, then eat food from a family farm.
• If not from a family farm, then from a local business.
• If not from a local business, then from the region.
• Go to the Farmers Market before trying the Supermarket. Plan your meals around local ingredients you find at the Farmers Market.

Traditional Foods that Move the Liver Qi

Balance a Key For Maintaining Health

Chinese Medicine stresses balance as a key to health. When you are ill, there is a disharmony going on within you. Identifying the cause of the disharmony is important because you can learn how to avoid it, prevent it, or correct it. If you don’t treat the cause of the disease, it is like ”pouring water into a container with a leaky bottom”.

Good health is based on a balance of nutrition, sleep/rest, and exercise. When you are out of balance, you may start to exhibit symptoms in different organs, in your energy level, in your emotional state. Climatic conditions can also cause a disease if there is a relative imbalance between the body’s Qi and an exterior pathogen.

In Western medicine there is emphasis on the external aspect of a disease, such as bacteria and viruses. In Chinese medicine, the emphasis is more on finding out what is out of balance and causing the problem and getting you to return to a state of balance.

So how do you keep from getting sick?

In Chinese Medicine, good health is all about having a balance between exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Diseases may be caused by a weak constitution (what you were born with), or being overworked, or a lack of (or even excessive) exercise. It can also be due to excessive sexual activity (think Charlie Sheen). It can also be related to your diet (of course). In addition, disease can be caused by trauma, poisons & parasites, drugs, and having been given the wrong treatment (woops!). All of these factors can make a person be out of balance and as a result, impact their health.

So when you find your self not feeling well and you are starting to have symptoms, it is your alert that something is out of balance and you can start to look at how to get back in balance. Is my diet out of whack and I have eaten too much fast foods? If so, have a meal filled with nutrients, especially something like soup or warm cooked foods. Is your Qi stagnated? if so, engage in some stretches, exercise, Tai Chi, or Yoga and get the Qi and blood circulating so the nutrients can help combat that new symptom.

Did you know that pain is considered to be a sign of Qi stagnation? It usually says that something is not flowing how and where it should and as a result, fluids are stagnating and are stuck. As a result it hurts. So how do you get unstuck? Acupuncture helps as does movement.

A sore throat can be your alert that your defensive Qi (or defensive mechanism) is weak and you may be inadvertently allowing pathogens into your body. If so, make sure you are drinking enough warm fluids and getting rest You may even decide to take some herbs to help stimulate more of your defensive Qi to be created or get to where it is needed to defend your body.

Chinese medicine looks at everything going on in your life and environment to help assess what imay be out of balance and what needs to be treated or fine tuned. The goal is always to get you back in balance and keep you there.

What I find so fascinating in Chinese medicine is that you can be out of balance in one area and it can show up in unrelated area or organ of your body. For example, if you have unresolved grief, it can show up in your lungs. LUNGS??? Yep. You get symptoms like shortness of breath or even a dry hacking cough if you don't resolve your grief. And if you are a worrier, it knots your Qi and you can have symptoms like fatigue, abdominal distention, constipation, or diarrhea, and even sighing, just from worrying!

Chinese medicine can be pretty interesting.

Balance a Key For Maintaining Health

Sex and Chinese Medicine

In Chinese Medicine class this week, part of the lesson was on how too much sex can cause loss of Jing.

In my spirituality teachings, however, I have been taught that sex is good for you. In fact, sex can prolong life. When sex is combined with love, it can actually create spiritual energy. In addition, sex can be used to clear and align the chakras and can affect the Kundalini.

So as I sat in Chinese Medicine class and listened to this lecture being a bit stunned to hear the Chinese version of sex.

The only thing I can think is they must be talking about sex WITHOUT love. I do agree that sex without love should be limited. Maybe it is that kind that causes a loss of Jing.

Sex and Chinese Medicine

Treating PMS with Chinese Herbs

According to Chinese Medicine, Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS (as it is known on the street) is due to Qi (chee) being congested. When Qi gets stuck it can produce some common PMS symptoms, such as backache, headaches, cramps, breast tenderness, fatigue, weepiness, depression, and a smidge of irritability (OK....a LOT of irritability.)

Chinese herbs are a great way to help treat these PMS symptoms and the herb that every practitioner seems to recommend is

XIAO YAO SAN

This herb is very effective, safe, and has very few contraindications (if any). For those of us who are novices at this Chinese herb stuff, I was told that not even I could screw it up, so there you have it. It is safe.

The American name for this herb is also called "Happy Pills" or "Happy Tea" because it helps you “go with the flow” and can ease your anxiety. (Several of the students in the class were raving about this herb in class, and to be honest, they seem to be the happiest students in class. I now think the tea they were sipping during the lecture has something to do with their happy mood.)

Anyway,

other names for this herb includes “Easy Wanderer”, “Happy Pills”, “Ramblin Power”, or “Free and Easy Wanderer”. You can even purchase this herb at Whole Foods under one of those American slang names, and since I'm lousy at remembering the proper Chinese names of things, I appreciate the slang to help remind me what the herb is supposed to do.

Even though I am long past the days of PMS possibilities, I'm going to get some of the Xiao Yao San just in case I get a smidge of some MENOPAUSAL IRRITABILITY. I will swallow some of those herbs and go with the flow.

Treating PMS with Chinese Herbs