营养 YINGYANG - NUTRITION

BRIEF HISTORY OF TCM NUTRITION

DIET BEFORE DRUGS
Sun Simiao lived and practiced in China during the Tang Dynasty 619-907 AD. Born in 581 AD in Huayuan, Jingzhao; he was a sickly child, and the cost of medical treatments that reduced his family to poverty, motivated him to enter into the study of medicine. He rapidly learned the wisdom of Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, mastered the Chinese classics by age twenty, and was quickly renown for his apothecary skills. 

He advocated the primary importance of proper diet with the simple axiom that ‘living beings have always depended on food to maintain their life.’ Sun Simiao wrote on the beneficial and harmful aspects of foods in words that ring true to the present day; he cautioned that ‘those who practice medicine must first recognize the origin of an illness; they must know which violations have caused the suffering, then they must treat it with dietary means. If dietary therapy does not cure the illness, only then can they employ drugs.’ Despite his masterly command of herbal medicine and folk remedies that earned him the title ‘Medication King’ or Yaowang, he warned against the indiscriminate and careless use of drugs: ‘The nature of drugs is violent, just like that of the imperial soldiers. Because the soldiers are so wild, how could anybody deploy them recklessly? If they are deployed inappropriately, harm and destruction will result everywhere. Similar excessive calamities are the consequences if drugs are thrown against illnesses carelessly.’

The pioneer Chinese diet text entitled The Qien Qin Yaofang (One thousand ounces of gold classic), written by one Chinese physician Sun Shu Mao in 652 AD, was one of the largest encyclopedias on Chinese ethnomedical system. He traveled with a bag of herbs and acupuncture gold needles from town to town throughout China. This classic contains 30 chapters and in them Sun Shu Mao exacts the dietary treatments for various diseases of that epoch, such as goiter, beriberi, and night blindness.  In the West, such diseases have been under control for a long time, thus such instructions are no longer useful.^[1]

The Chinese diet is different from the Western diet; there are two basic differences between them: in the West, the diet focuses mainly on weight loss, while the Chinese diet focuses on disease prevention made delicious, and for imbalances already present. The second difference is that Western diet considers foods in accordance to their protein, carbohydrate, calorie, vitamins, and mineral contents, while Chinese diet considers foods by their energetic properties, flavors, and organic actions.^[2]

FLAVORS OF FOODS AND THEIR ACTIONS

The five Chinese flavors of foods are sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. The flavors in food are important in the Chinese diet because different flavors have different effects on the ZangFu organs.

Sour Foods: obstruct the movement of energy in the body by its properties of absorption, consolidation, and astringent functions to guard against abnormal discharge of body fluids and substance, as in excessive perspiration, diarrhea, seminal emission, spermatorrhea. Some samples include mango, plum, pear, lemon, and vinegar. Sour flavors are absorbed by the liver and gallbladder.

Bitter Foods: clear body heat, dry body fluids, and unblock stagnation in the small intestine. Some samples are lettuce, rhubarb, radish leaves, apricot kernels, and kale. Bitter flavors are absorbed by the heart and small intestines.

Sweet Foods: have the function of tonifying, harmonizing and relaxing. In cases of fatigue or deficiency, sweet flavors have a reinforcing and strengthening action. Sweet flavors also slow down acute symptoms and neutralize the toxic effects of other foods. Some samples are honey, yams, rice, cherry, chestnut, banana, date, fig, and watermelon. Sweet flavors are absorbed by the spleen and stomach.

Pungent Foods: induce perspiration to disperse pathogens; invigorate and promote circulation of Qi, blood, and body fluids. Some samples include onion, chive, coriander, parsley, clove, ginger, and peppermint. Pungent flavors are absorbed by the lungs and large intestines.

Salty Foods: soften and dissolve hardness. Moisten and lubricate the intestines and are useful in treating tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, lumps, masses, cysts, and ailments involving the hardening of muscles or glands. In ancient China goiter was treated by seaweed. In addition, for severe constipation drinking salty water lubricate the intestines and promote evacuation. Few samples of naturally salty foods are salt, kelp, and seaweed. Salty taste is absorbed by the kidney and bladder.

Two additional subcategories of flavors are astringent and bland: Astringent falls under the category of sour and its actions are similar to the sour taste, plus its own property of being astringent. Examples of astringent foods are apple, quinoa, tofu, pomegranate, legumes, and sprouts. The Bland flavor is a sub-category of sweet, but its own property is diuretic for it promotes urination and relieves edema. Pearl barley is a bland tasting food.

The five energies of foods are: cold, hot, warm, cool, and neutral; this classification however, does not refer to the present temperature of the food, but it refers to its energy in terms of  what it does in the body once consumed; for instance tea has a cold energy, even though it is usually drank hot.

In general, food is consumed to sustain the Qi of the body and promote good health. The MiddleJiao is where the digestive organs are located; the spleen extracts the Gu Qi or grain Qi, and it sends it to the lung, which in turn mixes it with air and sends it to the heart, which then disperses Qi and blood throughout the body.

Chinese medicine views digestion as a process of internal cooking; the digestive process cooks the foods to allow its essence or Gu Qi to rise to the lung. Hence, the actual cooking of foods before consumption is important to aid the internal cooking that is to take place subsequently. The Chinese system favors the light cooking of foods, which it says makes digestion easier, and the energetic value of the Gu Qi is better retained. Cooking with fried oil can lead to the formation and accumulation of phlegm and damp in the body, which precludes the spleen from doing its function of extracting Gu Qi properly and sending it to the lung.

CHINESE NUTRITION IN COOKING

COOKING ALTERS THE THERMAL NATURE OF FOODS
Raw—————–Cooling
Steamed————Cooling-Neutral
Boiled—————Neutral
StirFried———–Mildly Warming
Stewed————-Warming
Baked————–More Warming
Deep-Fried——–Heating
Barbequed——–More Heating
Grilled————-More Heating
Roasted————Most Heating

COOKING FOR THE SEASONS
Spring——–Soup, fresh food, sprouts, steam
Summer–—-Stir fry, steam
Fall———–Simmer, braise, stew
Winter——-Grill, BB-Q, Casseroles
Boiling——-good for all seasons

FOODS
Adzuki Beans: to dry and drain damp, detoxify
Almonds: moisten the LU, breathing problems, relieves cough
Bamboo Shoots: cooling, clear heat
Beef: warm and sweet, builds blood, nourishes Yin fluids
Beef Liver: builds Blood
Cherries: expels wind, especially wind cold if sour cherry
Chicken: most famous base for a tonic, medicinal soup, warms the interior
Crab: promotes mending of fractured bones, nourishes Yin and marrow
Daikon Radish: cool, sweet, bitter, eases cough
Rye: dries damp, breaks up LV stagnation
Eggplant: cooling, clears heat and removes blood stagnation
Black Fungus: scrubs the intestines
Kelp: cooling and salty, engenders fluids, lubricates dryness
Lotus Root: cools the blood quickly
Mung Bean: detoxifies, clears heat, diuretic
Fresh Ginger: warming, transforms phlegm, disperses cold phlegm
Plum: clears heat, calms the LV
Pork: tonifies blood and Yin, nourishes KD Yin
Yellow Sesame Seeds: nourishes LV, problems with dizziness and vertigo
Spinach: lubricates the intestines, eases constipation

SOME DIETARY RULES
Cook food lightly and eat warm
Avoid cooking in oils
Eat cold and raw foods sparingly
Chew food well without haste
Use energetically hot and spicy foods
Do not drink iced water
Do not use microwaves to warm foods
Drink hot water instead of coffee in the morning
Take time and sit to eat.^[3]

Chinese nutrition in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) emphasizes disease prevention rather than cure. Chinese nutrition in TCM differs from Western nutrition in that it does not rely on analyzing the biochemistry of foods, but rather determines the energies of foods and their combinations with other foods; taking into consideration the seasons, methods of preparation, geographical location; and the principles of Yin & Yang for balance.

For millennia through trial and error, in the same way that acupuncture and Chinese herbology developed, the Chinese have been experimenting on the effects of natural foods on the human body as foods have specific inherent qualities. Through these experiments came the classification of foods as sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty; as well as their energies of  cold, hot, warm, cool, and neutral, and their influence on the health of the consumer.

At FullCircle Acupuncture HealthCentre, a thorough nutritional consult and plan is part of the mainstay of the HealthyLongevity^© protocol.

FASTING & DETOX

LONGEVITY

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________REFERENCES
^[1] Chinese communication theory and research: reflexions, new frontiers and new directions/Edited by Wenshan Jia, ‎Xing Lu, ‎D. Ray Heisey – 2002
^[2] Benedict, R (1952). Patterns of Culture. NewYork: Longman.
^[3] Personal classroom notes. 2005–2009.

-Above Article Written by Dr. Osorio, Gloria DAOM, L.Ac. 2012.