Food as Medicine

"Modern medicine seems to ignore the obvious: foods can stimulate body processes and potentially trigger (or relieve) countless pathologic events..." - A Patients's Guide to Chinese Medicine

 

Healing With Natural Foods

"Modern medicine seems to ignore the obvious: foods can stimulate body processes and potentially trigger (or relieve) countless pathologic events." A Patients's Guide to Chinese Medicine

Dietary imbalances or extremes will negatively affect the organs and the qi. An excessively stimulating diet for example, will stimulate body processes, triggering infinite variations of inflammation, fever, hyperactivity, or hormonal abnormalities.

Such patterns appear as fevers, sweats, insomnia, hyperthyroid, inflammatory skin conditions, among others. These conditions will be worsened by over-consumption of foods considered "hot", stimulating, or yang in nature. Overstimulated people may benefit from foods that are considered "cool", "calming", or "yin".

Conversely, those who have cold or "yang deficient" conditions such as low blood pressure, hypersomnia, sciatica, hypothyroid, Hashimoto's complex, may do better with a more stimulating (yang) diet.

Cooking can affect the stimulation properties of food. Boiling and steaming food will result in cooler (yin) foods while frying and barbecuing foods results in more stimulating (yang) foods. 

Keep in mind, when altering your diet, make moderation the rule. Changes are most sustainable when they are introduced gradually. 

STIMULATING Foods	NEUTRAL Foods	CALMING Foods
Apricots* Artichoke Basil Beef* Black tea Butter Butterfish Carp* Cayenne Celery* Cherries Chestnuts Chicken Chili Cinnamon Chives Coconut Coconut milk Cod Coffee Coriander Dates Egg yolk Fennel Garlic Ginger Goose* Grapes* Green onion Ham Lamb Malt Mussels Mustard Mustard Greens Nectarine Oats Olives Onions Oolong tea Parsley Peach Pepper Pineapple* Pine nut Plums* Safflower Shrimp Soy oil Sugar, brown Sweet potato Turkey Turmeric Vinegar Walnuts Wine	Almonds Apples** Artichoke, Jerusalem Beans, Kidney** Bean sprouts Beets Black mushrooms Blueberries Cabbage Carrots Catfish Cauliflower Carob Cheese Clams** Coconut Oil Corn Currant Eel Figs Guava Grits Honey Huckleberries Mackerel Maple Syrup Milk Nutmeg Okra Olive Oil Papaya Peanuts Pecans Perch Pinto Beans Pork Potatoes Pumpkin Seeds Quail Raisin* Rice Sardines Sesame seeds Shark Shiitake Mushroom Sugar, white Strawberries String bean Sturgeon Tapioca Taro Turnip Vanilla Whitefish Winter squash Yam Yogurt	Abalone Agar Banana Barley Beer Beans** Bean curd** Bran Buckwheat Cottage cheese Crab Cucumber Duck** Eggplant Egg, white Frog's Legs Gluten Kelp Lettuce Lotus Root Malt Mango Marrow Melon Millet Mulberries Mung Beans Mushrooms Octopus Oysters Pears Peas Persimmons Pumpkin Rabbit Rock salt Rhubarb Seaweed Sesame oil* Snails Spirulina Sugar, cane Summer squash Sunflower seeds Tangerine Tea, green Tofu Tomato Water Chestnut Watercress Watermelon Wheat Wheatberries Wheat germ White fungus

*Classified in some texts as stimulating and in others as neutral.

*Classified in some texts as calming and in others as neutral.



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