"What should I eat to get well?"
While a Western medical doctor might prescribe medicine and leave the question of diet to the nutritionists, a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practioner sees "food as medicine and medicine as food." He or she is expected to know the use of everyday food to balance one's health.
All substances taken into the body through eating and drinking inevitably affect the balance of the various bodily systems to some degree. When such effects are mild, the substances are commonly seen as food. When these are potent in upsetting or redressing such balance, they are prescribed as medicine. In this sense, drugs are extreme cases of "curative" food. Thus potatoes and apples are "food" while their medical properties are often overlooked, and cinnamon, ginger and ginseng are "medicine". Click to learn Chinese herb Rhizoma Phragmitis (Lugen).
Diet design for health maintenance and recovery has been heavily emphasized since day one in Chinese history. In the Zhou royal court (5th century BC), the nutritionist ranked above surgeons and other medical practitioners in service to the emperor. All medical giants since then have been accomplished nutritionists.
Eat wisely, recover quickly
Unlike Western nutrition science, where there is a relatively static view of nutrition (e.g., peppermint is good for the immune system, and therefore colds; carrots have vitamin A, and are therefore good for the eyes; potassium is good for beating cancer, etc.), TCM sees food as a dynamic system. What food one should eat depends on the individual's temperament, current physical/mental state, the seasons and the combination of food together. Click to learn Chinese herb Herba Lophatheri (Danzhuye).
1. Physical condition - TCM regards our health as a balanced system. "Illness" is a result of these imbalances, and therefore a holistic number of procedures are used to address this imbalance. Therefore, when treating the patient's illness (e.g., advanced bone cancer) as such, TCM may apply remedial procedures. That could include diet design, acupuncture, massage, energy work, etc in response to the diagnosed systemic biases. These procedures attempt to redress the balance accordingly - along parameters like "hot/cold", "strong/deficient", and "dry/wet" (based on the well-known theory of "yin and yang" in the Taoist philosophy, "hot", "strong" and "dry" fall in the "yang" or male category and therefore need something belonging to the "yin" or female camp for balance).
To take a more common example, if you are at this moment "hot, wet and strong", then foods like tomato, winter melon, chrysanthemums, and chestnut would serve you well. All these, however, would do more harm than good for people in "hot, dry and strong" conditions. Those would benefit instead from eating pears, apple, banana, peanuts and ginseng.
2. Preparation method - Lotus root is "very cold" when eaten raw, and therefore highly damaging for people with "cold" body types. When steamed and well-cooked, it turns neutral and is good for both "cold" and "hot" people. When boiled for hours (as in soup preparation), it becomes "warm" and is suitable for "cold" people, but not "hot" ones.
3. Time of consumption - The same papaya would bring different effects when eaten in the morning, at noon or in the evening. While the difference is negligible for healthy people, it can become crucial and even life-threatening in some situations. Click to learn Chinese herb Rhizoma Coptidis (Huanglian).
4. Locality - People living in hot environments would benefit from "cooling" foods, and "dry" foods are good for those living in humid areas. Also, the same vegetable grown in different regions contains different nutrients and has different medical effects. As a rule, it is good for health to eat local and avoid foods flown in from distant countries.
5. Season - According to Chinese medicine theory, one should always eat seasonal foods as much as possible. Nature has the knack of giving us exactly what our body needs, and out-of-season foods would come with properties incompatible with our health. Again, while the effect of these is subject to a number of other parameters, adjusting one's diet according to the season of the year is paramount for healing.
6. Taste - Foods with the various tastes (salty, sweet, bitter, spicy-hot and sour) have different effects and affect different organs and systems of the body. For example, salty food (such as seaweed and soybean paste) helps digestion and releases congestion, while spicy hot foods (such as ginger, black pepper and garlic) increase blood circulation and help to eliminate wastes.
7. Individual traits - Factors like the lifestyle, habits and temperamental background of the patient, too, must not be overlooked. Manual workers making a living outdoors need different foods from someone sitting before a computer in an air-conditioned room all day. Spicy food will not help type A personalities to slow down and stay calm.
As the saying goes, "One man's meat is another man's poison". The nutritional benefits of all foods are subject to a large number of factors. Our bodies, just like our Earth, live according to a delicate balance. Learning to eat naturally and in balance is the way to live healthily. Click to learn Chinese herb Radix Gentianae (Longdan).
Article source: chinadaily