Traditional Chinese Medicine: FOOD is Medicine

Food is timeless! Food has properties that can remove and create stagnation in the body. When you are eating you are connecting with nature, making the five elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine take on an important role. The five elements are Wood, Earth, Fire, Water, and Metal. Different foods can move heat, cold, dryness, and dampness around to a level that brings harmony together from within. Food can be listed in those four categories to help balance out the Yin and Yang of your body!** Different types of food can truly give you the balance you are needing during particular times.

**For those of you that are new to the concepts of Yin and Yang, here is some basic information regarding these components of the body. Yin is cooling and heavy in nature. Yin is moisture as well as rest and relaxation. Yang is heating and exciting, stimulating in nature. Yang is also dryness and our drive to do physical activities.

Most food has a drying or a moistening property about them. They can also have cooling and heating properties. There are some foods that will remain neutral, foods that don't direct your body one way nor the other. How you choose to change up your diet, depends on what your body is telling you (E.g. determining properties for your meal planning - moistening, drying, warming, cooling, etc.), your body will give you cues. Let’s dive into the corresponding flavors of the five elements! 

Each element has a flavor that relates to different organs. Earth (Stomach/Spleen/Pancreas) needs sweet foods provided to it for nourishment. Foods such as rice, honey, molasses, wheat, brown sugar, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, beef, and root vegetables are a few of your sweet foods. Metal (Lungs/Sinuses/Large Intestines) likes pungent foods. Garlic, ginger, fennel, cardamom, black pepper, and onions are your typical types of pungent foods. Those pungent foods are warming, making them great foods for the colder times of the year. Water (Kidneys/Adrenals/Reproductive) like salty foods. Seaweed and miso are a great example of salty goodness for your kidneys. They are great for dissolving stagnation in your kidneys. Wood (Liver/Gallbladder) loves sour foods! Lemons, limes, pickles and vinegar are a few sour foods. Last, but not least, we have the Fire element (Heart/Pericardium/Small Intestines). The Fire element enjoys bitter foods. Bitter foods are such things as dandelion/dark leafy greens, watercress, and bitter melon.

Fun Fact: Although the bitter flavor is for the Fire element, it also benefits the Wood and Earth elements. Bitter helps to stimulate movement within the Liver/Gallbladder and improve the production and release of bile for digestion. The Bitter flavor also has a surprising quality of settling an upset stomach. This is just another reason as to why it's important to eat your Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, and other dark green veggies!

Image above provided by Paige Hill, Clinical Herbalist, with some modifications specific for this blog. Following the outer ring/arrows, this is the order of how energy flows from one organ to another, strengthening and building each element. Following the arrows in the middle, this is how the different elements suppress or reduce one another.

Now that you can see the different flavors that have an affinity to each different organ, it's time to look at foods and what properties they have as per dry, damp, cold, and hot! Clinical Herbalist, Paige Hill, has devised a list of "food energetics". She has made this list from many different good references, her chart is shown below. Using these charts, let's go through an example of how food can heal:

Someone has a sickness with a dry spastic cough. To balance things out, this person would choose a food that is dampening to help give the phlegm body and release it from the lungs. Typically, dry and hot things run together, so you would possibly want a cooling, dampening food. If you have a wet cough you would turn to heating and drying foods. The spicy heating nature of these foods helps to break up the existing, stuck mucus to help you find harmony, once again, within your body.

If your skin is dry, dampening sour foods may help you find balance, unless the problem is dampness causing dryness, but that's a complicated situation that get's left to the professionals! If your stools are loose that could be a sign of dampness in the body and you would look for drying/astringent foods to balance things out. Unless the problem is a state of deficiency, but that's a complicated situation that we will also leave for the professionals! There are a lot of other examples, if you listen to your body you can figure out what you need to balance it out!

With further questions regarding the energetic properties of foods or TCM theory, feel free to reach out to Paige for more information: paige/olh7@gmail.com  Food is amazing! If we find the right combination, we can find that balance that our body wants! Happy Eating!