So today we’re going to go over a little bit of the specialness, if you will, of how TCM looks at food.

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Hi, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and today I am. I’m doing part two of the presentation, Food as Medicine, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity. So let’s go to our slides.

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Okay, so last time I mentioned that we, that language can cause experiences, and that a part of what our medicine can do for our patients is give them advice about food. Because food, let’s face it, food is medicine that you can take. three, four, five times a day. Also, Western medicine is looking into it too, but we have a different viewpoint of food.

So today we’re going to go over a little bit of the specialness, if you will, of how TCM looks at food. First of all, we’re going to talk a little bit about the seasons, because in Chinese medicine, food advice can vary with the seasons. Spring is the season of new birth and new growth. And according to Chinese medicine, spring is about the wood element and about liver functioning.

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And we know that some places where we live have a lot of wind in the spring, and the liver is especially susceptible to wind. We know that it regulates chi, regulates emotions, and the liver is a part of our digestive system. If it’s out of balance, then we can say that it’s attacking the digestion. So we don’t only think of spleen and stomach, but also, obviously, liver and gallbladder.

If our patients or us think that If we don’t adapt to the changing climate in spring, we may get susceptible to seasonal health problems like flu, pneumonia, or a relapse of a chronic disease or allergies. How many of our patients only in spring seem to get allergies? And I’ve noticed over the years that sometimes it’s in the more windy spring.

So there we have that relationship between the liver and wind. So we would recommend that they reduce the intake of sour flavors and increase sweet and pungent flavors, because those are the flavors that facilitate the liver to regulate the chi throughout the body. So examples of recommended foods for the spring, there’s a list, would include onions, leeks, leaf mustard, Chinese yam, wheat, dates, cilantro, and you’ll notice that we have a wide variety, like wheat is one of them.

If you have a patient who’s gluten intolerant, we need to have other options for them so that they don’t feel like they are going to have to eat some. In fact, You need to always read the labels of the herbs that you recommend to people because some of them do have weed in them. Fresh and fresh green and leafy vegetables, include those in meals, sprouts and in addition, uncooked, frozen, and frozen vegetables.

Fried foods should only be taken in moderation because, number one, the liver has a harder time digesting fried foods, and of course, cold foods are harder and harder for the spleen and stomach, or your overall digestion, to tolerate. Because remember, You partly don’t get all the nutrition if your digestion is spending all of its time trying to warm up the food.

Also, because previous to spring, sometimes people spend a lot more time indoors during winter. Then they might more quickly develop a heat imbalance in the spring. So some other symptoms people might have in the spring include having a more dry throat, bad breath, constipation, or a thick tongue coating, because those are heat signs, right?

So then we would recommend foods like bananas, pears, water chestnuts, sugarcane, celery, and cucumber to help clear excessive heat. What I do sometimes is suggest that my patients do something like put slices of celery, cucumber, and watermelon rind in water. And that makes a nice hydrating drink. Plus it’s more tasty than just drinking plain water.

So sometimes you have to be a little creative because as I mentioned in part one, We’ll call it attached to their diet plan. They’re very attached to how they eat food. So sometimes they really don’t want us to be playing around with it. In summer, plants grow fast, right? People have more energy. The body’s qi and blood become more vigorous than in other seasons.

Now, Chinese medicine can say that physiological changes make the heart over function and that there’s a little too much yang flowing. around and in the body during summer when it’s hotter. According to five elements theory, an over functioning heart restricts lung functioning. It’s advisable to eat more foods with pungent flavors and reduce bitter flavors, because that’ll enhance the lung and maintain normal sweat mechanisms in summer.

Sweat is the fluid of the heart and also the bladder and the lungs, and excess of sweating can scatter hardship and weaken the mind, according to some theories. So the person can have be more annoyed, have a little bit of depression or a lower spirit, and be restless and have sleeping issues. And this would be during summer heat.

Foods with sour and salty flavors help ease these symptoms. Now, summer isn’t the same in every region, right? I am in Denver, the high desert, so our summers our whole year tends to be drier. I might give my patients slightly different advice than Some are somewhere where it’s hot and rainy, or it’s very humid and damp.

We have to realize where we are living and. and create the plan according to that. For example, if you, in Chinese, in ancient Chinese medicine, the suggestion was to eat the food you grow. In Denver, we don’t have a really long growing season. It’s probably three or four months, but in a place like Gunnison, Colorado, I think it’s 31 days.

In some, again, you have to look at where you’re living And create the food plan according to where the patient is living. Now hot humidity, rainy atmospheres can disturb the fluid and electrolyte balance of the body. And there again, lead to lethargy, weakness, fever, thirst, lack of appetite, and even in the extreme, loose spleen.

stools. So again, looking at that’s dampness causing those issues. So foods that will help keep the body cool and balanced include things like watermelon, strawberries, cucumber. Again, you can help your patient just put those in water and create a nice hydrating cooling drink for the body. In general, The daily diet, even Western medicine says, should contain more fruits and vegetables, always, but especially at this time because they’re cooling and they can help provide adequate fluids to the body.

Now warm and cooked foods help the digestion work better because spleen and stomach love warmth. They do not like heat. Ice cold drinks. So with my patients, I like to start their nutritional advice in what I call baby steps. The first baby step is no ice drinks. So well, maybe sometimes the first baby step, to be honest, is no soda.

I recently, I’m working with a woman, one of my weight loss patients was drinking sodas every day. And so for her, the first step was no soda. Again, know your patient, listen carefully to What they usually eat, and so I might say in this case, no iced drinks, and explain to them that in Chinese medicine, and even in Western medicine, your digestion is warm.

It’s not ice cold there inside your body. So if your digestion has to spend all of its time warming up the food, you’re missing out on some nutrients. So even in the winter, sorry, even in the summer, it sounds like lots of people are like, oh, I could never eat soup in the Summer. Your warm and cooked foods help your digestive system work more effectively.

Whereas, greasy, raw, frozen foods can, what we call, damage the digestive system. And then the person might have less of an appetite, or diarrhea, or acid reflux, or some other stomach upset. In, even in Chinese tradition, in summer, making soups, you can add ingredients that help clear heat and reduce dampness and help the person’s digestion keep working well.

In autumn, things begin to fall fall off the trees and fall off stems, and, but mature, right? Remember, it’s always a cycle, right? help support good soil, and then the next year they grow again. In Chinese medicine, autumn correlates with the lung system. We have things that regulate the skin, respiration, body fluids, immunity, and can be res associated with depression.

The lungs hold grief, so if someone has grief or depression you always need to treat the lungs. Like Lung2, the translation of it is something like cloud break or release the clouds, because it’s talking about the cloud of emotion, and it could be some damp also, but the clouds of grief. Now the vigorous summer is over, and things are moving inward to prepare for winter, where we might even be more inward.

Right now, we’re going to adjust our nutritional advice for the changing seasons, because it, the weather can be drier, and again, the person might get things like an itchy throat, or a dry nose, chapped lips and You might see more hair loss in autumn and also allergies again. Now those can be really related to things like a dry nose.

So I have all of my, I ask all my allergy patients, do you do a nasal rinse? Because a lot of lung issues, it turns out, start up in the sinuses. So doing some sort of a nasal rinse, keeping your nose more hydrated can help with, help prevent things like the flu. For one thing it’s less, the flu doesn’t like moist, doesn’t like dry nasal passages, so it’s helpful to do a nasal rinse.

And we’ll need to promote because they’re going to help lubricate the body as the weather is getting drier. So nuts and seeds are appropriate, pear, pumpkin, honey dairy products. But again, remember too much dairy is cloying and damp. I had a patient who had, was growing these little, tiny little clear nodules on his skin.

They were so small, but you could feel them. It turns out he drank, I’m serious, like a gallon of milk every two or three days, ate ice cream every night. The worst thing you can eat according to Chinese medicine, right? Because it’s dairy, which is cloying and damp and it’s frozen. I suggested that for two weeks, he, cut down on his dairy and lo and behold, those little growths went away.

Dairy can be really cloying and then you can eat more food with sour flavors and reduce pungent flavors like onions and ginger and peppers that can lead to a decrease in body fluids. And then in winter things really. Slowed down to save energy, right? This is why root vegetables grow underground.

It’s like how animals hibernate and even humans might conserve energy and build spring, sorry, build strength wanting to move into spring. Now, there are a lot of people who exercise all winter, who go out all winter, but in Chinese medicine, theoretically, it’s when we’re slowing down and we’re trying to save energy.

So we want to enrich our bodies at that time. Maybe we eat a little more protein at that time. Beef, goose, duck, eggs, Chinese yam. There’s a list of ingredients that are common in Chinese dishes during the wintertime and winter corresponds with the kidney system. So it’s, advisable to eat more foods that associate with the kidney.

And the kidney’s flavor are, is salty. Its color is white. So we might choose foods like, for example, I have asparagus on the list, but maybe you would get white asparagus during that time.

Winter is also a good time to boost your natural constitution. At this time we can help. boost the constitution so that in spring the person’s chronic conditions don’t show up again, for example, allergies. We would be working on the person’s allergies during the winter time so that their body is absorbing the nutrients from those foods that we recommend so So that in spring, their allergies don’t come back.

So it’s harmony between food and weather on a more practical experience. As I said, this, some of this advice might seem to contradict what Western medicine says, or again, you’re going to have to be careful in what part of the world patients live in so that you know how to coordinate the food advice with the weather in their area.

Foods become a part of our body after they’re consumed, so we are treating the person’s body with food. Food is one of the eight foundations of traditional Chinese medicine along with other things like herbal medicine, body work, including things like gua sha and twina, and of course acupuncture, which is the most well known therapy in Chinese medicine, but A knowledge of food energetics can deeply supplement your ability to help your patients.

This next section, we’re going to talk a little bit more about how to work successfully with food with certain conditions or procedures that your patients are going to have to go through. Because the stronger our digestion is, the better we are able to tolerate, The food we eat, we’re better, we are better processors of the food.

If we have to have a procedure, for example, a surgery, our immune system is going to be stronger because our digestion is our earth element. It’s the core. Everything surrounds the digestion. So trying to make our patients have good digestion or improve their digestion is going to help everything, including their skin.

And remember, if they’re going to have something like a procedure, they’re likely to start worrying about it or ruminating about it. And we have to help them with that also, because As we know, worry actually makes the digestive pulses go backward and then back toward the kidney, what I call attacking the kidney.

So something like worry and ruminating, we really do need to help our patients with that. So for example, before a surgery, I recently had a patient have surgery for breast cancer, so I always tell my patients you need to come in before your procedure and then after your procedure. Before your procedure, this is what we need to do.

Build up your system, your digestion, build up your immune system, because surgery is really it’s, Even though the person may need it, it’s a quote unquote good thing because they’re having something like a cancer removed. It’s still going to potentially create some negative impact on the body. For example, stagnated chi.

So we want to get their immune system working. We want to help them with some ideas. Don’t mix food and work. In other words, pay attention to eating. Chew well. That’s how you get nutrients out of your food. Stop before you’re full. Let’s cut down on cold foods. No diet, no soda or diet soda I have down there.

It just has too much sugar and chemicals in it. So helping them work with their digestion before their procedure looking at, Are they cold? Do you need to add warm foods to their diet? Do you need to warm them up before their procedure? If they’re yin deficient, now, here’s this woman was She’s in her 60s, so probably yin deficient.

If they’re going through, they’re elderly, going through perimenopause, or they have issues with yang rising like headaches, then you need to add yin strengthening foods to their diet. Like I love sea plants for that. And so keeping them looking at what’s going on, getting their digestion stronger before their procedure.

Chi deficient patient, you’re going to, number one, recommend fresh air and exercise. Those are actually good recipes for your chi deficient patient. Obviously, they might need to start slowly, but that’s okay. Fresh air and exercise are good for them. They can make an oat porridge. You can recommend qigong to them.

You’re blood deficient patient. Now they’re going to be blood deficient after surgery. So this is why they need to come in before and after surgery. So we might have some post op recommendations for them too because they need to build blood again. So foods that are chlorophyll rich Of course, meat has blood in it for your vegetarian.

They can use things eat foods like beans. And then blood is particularly weakened by sugar. So trying to get people to cut down on the amount of sugar in their diet, plus we know too much sugar negatively affects the spleen, right? It’ll start to create dampness. The spleen is, Its flavor is sweet, but it doesn’t like too much sweet.

And then looking for people who have phlegm, right? Now they might have acne, right? Acne is absolutely can be a damp issue. It can be a heat issue. That’s why we not only need to treat it topically, but we also need to treat it internally. So you might have them reduce things like dairy products if you know that they have too much damp in their bodies.

Foods that can resolve dampness are adzuki beans, barley, celery, radishes, seaweed, and garlic. And remember, some of these foods have more than one property. Most of them do. Looking at that helps. If a patient’s going to surgery, they’ve had surgery, they’re going to have chemotherapy, they’ve had chemotherapy, food is a great way to help treat them.

Boost their immune system for chemotherapy, you always need, also need to make sure that you’re helping reduce the toxic heat that’s affecting the kidneys. And then, boost their immune system, get their, reduce mucus, if they’ve had chemo chemotherapy. Analgesia, which they have for surgery.

You want to help the liver process all that. So there’s a lot to do post surgery. Boost their immune system with cruciferous vegetables. Garlic has antibiotic activities and inhibits viruses. So that might be helpful for them after their surgery. Deep water fish are rich sources of omega 3 fatty acids.

And seaweeds, of course, for overall. Immunity boosting. Almonds have a lot of amino acids and essential fatty acids. Ginseng and chicken is a great combination for people recovering from surgery, childbirth, or prolonged illness. And then improving the digestion, you can use things like ginseng licorice tea.

And ginger is, of course, great for the digestion. Oats strengthen digestion and build qi. Omega 3 fatty acids are important for immune function, brain development, and treating malnutrition. And then also another source of omega 3s is alpha linolenic acid. And this is in vegetable oils, flax seed, pumpkin seed.

A lot of things we can do for our patients. after and before surgery. Have them add dark green vegetables. The western diet really doesn’t include enough omega 3s, so anything we can do to help people get those into their bodies is important. As I said, sugar, they need to cut down on that. Especially processed sugar.

Natural sugar takes longer to digest in the body, just like whole grains, but we need to have them reduce their sugar because it can actually damage the digestion and the immune system. Also, too much processed sugar contributes to herpes outbreaks, PMS, nervousness, and irritability. So the best source of sweetness for our patients are foods like sweet potatoes, natural sweeteners, instead of allowing them or giving them good advice on why not to eat too much processed sugar.

And then the post surgery diet can include a lot of things I’ve said, grains, vegetables, seaweeds supplementation with fish for essential fatty acids and then a little more So we can get the toxins out of their body. And finally, to treat arthritic or rheumatic conditions, avoid excess meat or protein, alcohol, tobacco, coffee.

Again, refined sugar, all of those can lead to having a little more pain. And Some say nightshade vegetables can increase pain, and then I have down eat fresh goat milk because it’s a more digestible fat and has a broader mineralization, but barley and wheatgrass, anything that’s anti inflammatory and detoxes, for example, I have that.

arthritis and rheumatic conditions can be treated well with the post op diet that I just mentioned. So there you have advice about using food as medicine. It is one of the basic standard traditional Chinese medicine therapies that we can help our patients with. And again, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for allowing me to share this information with you.

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