Feeding Yourself Also Means Feeding Your Emotions

Yin and Yang: When Food Becomes Medicine

By EMMA SUTTIE for The Epoch Times

Food has always been a powerful medicine. In a culture that often turns to big pharmaceutical companies to cure its ills, viewing what we eat each day as a resource to repair and restore health may seem like a radical shift. But the truth is that using food as medicine is as old as time itself.

Traditional healing practices have known this for millennia, and thankfully, we're starting to realize it too.

Understanding the healing properties of food can be overwhelming. There's a constant stream of information about the next miracle diet, discoveries about the health benefits of food, or how someone cured themselves of an "incurable" disease through their diet. The sheer volume of information makes it difficult to know where to begin. I always come back to Eastern medicine, a tradition that has used food as medicine for thousands of years. And thanks to its long history, it has had plenty of time for research and development. I temper this with the latest research and discoveries, but the nutritional therapy of Chinese medicine is still my foundation, and it works well.

The Thermic Nature of Food and People

The Eastern approach is quite unique. The most important aspect is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to healthy eating that works for everyone. Like the rest of the Eastern model, it is highly individualized. This focus on the individual is what makes it so powerful.

Multiple factors affect how nutritional therapy is applied to cure illness and improve health. Our constitution, the amount of Yin or Yang energy we have at any given time, the season, our emotional state, and what's happening in the body are all factors. Sounds simple, right? Well, even if it isn't, it's very effective. Let's see how it works.

Yin and Yang

To understand Eastern nutritional therapy, we must first discuss Yin and Yang, a concept central to traditional Chinese medical theory. Yin and Yang represent the duality that exists in all things. Yin represents dark, cold, slow, internal, and reflective energies, and Yang represents light, hot, fast, external, and active energies. According to this theory, everything is a dynamic interaction of these two opposing forces.

Yin and Yang are a way of viewing our bodies, what we eat, our emotions, the forces of nature, and, in fact, everything that exists. It is a lens through which we can see and attempt to understand ourselves and the way we interact with our world.

The Thermal Nature of Foods

We all possess Yin (cold/water) and Yang (hot/fire) energies to varying degrees. Some people are more Yin and others are more Yang. Yin and Yang are fluid and constantly changing depending on a multitude of factors, but we all have an intrinsic "nature" tending toward one or the other. In the context of diet, this is significant. Foods also have a thermal nature. Some foods are warming, others are cooling, and others are neutral.

For example, if someone is experiencing heat symptoms (redness, swelling, fever, headache on the top of the head, dryness, bitter taste in the mouth, red eyes, mania), then cooling foods would be prescribed as part of the treatment plan. Conversely, someone experiencing symptoms of cold (swelling, lethargy, heaviness, edema, loose stools, cold limbs, runny nose, pain) would benefit from eating warming foods.

Introducing foods based on their temperature is something I use with every patient, as dietary therapy is a fundamental part of Chinese medicine. It's one of the most effective and empowering ways for patients to improve their health and become aware of how their diet affects their body.

Here are some general rules that help explain the thermal nature of foods:

Plants that take longer to grow are more warming than foods that grow more quickly. Foods fertilized with chemicals—which make them grow more quickly—are considered more cooling by nature. This includes most commercial fruits and vegetables. Raw foods are more cooling than cooked foods. Many types of meat are warming, while seafood is generally considered more cooling. Blue, green, or purple foods are often cooler than similar red, orange, or yellow foods. Cooking food at a low temperature for a long time is considered more warming than food cooked for a short time at a high temperature. Processes like fermentation and germination make foods cooler in temperature.

Of all the ways we handle food, the most important is the cooking method. Different cooking methods can change the thermal temperature of our food. Cooking food (as opposed to eating it raw) means it is more easily broken down and assimilated. If the cooking time is short, few nutrients are lost, and the body more easily utilizes those that remain.

Heat Patterns

Internal imbalance of Yin (cold) and Yang (heat) is what causes illness in Chinese medicine. Excessive heat can be caused by eating too much warming food or too little cooling food. Heat can also be caused by excessive physical activity, high stress levels, persistent or intense anger (the liver is prone to heat and its emotion is anger), or exposure to extreme temperatures.

Some symptoms of heat in the body include a feeling of being hot; a bright red tongue with a thick yellow coating; a flushed face; red eyes; nosebleeds; canker sores; a bad taste in the mouth; high blood pressure; hemorrhage; seizures; delirium; rapid pulse; local inflammation, swelling, rashes, or sores; constipation (heat dries up fluids); dry, foul-smelling stools; scanty, dark yellow urine; blood in the stool or urine; a desire to drink cold liquids. and if the stool or urine is excreted forcefully or urgently or contains yellow or green mucus.

Cooling Foods

One of the best things we can do when we have excess heat in our bodies is to eat more cooling foods. Other things that help include rest and slowing down. Expressing emotions (especially anger and frustration) helps release heat, thus cooling the body. If emotions aren't expressed continuously, they cause heat to build up in the body, leading to problems. Meat is also considered very warming, so if we feel very overheated, we can try reducing our meat intake and adding more cold foods to our diet to restore balance.

A list of cooling foods includes apples, bananas, pears, watermelon, all citrus fruits, lettuce, cucumber, celery, bok choy, broccoli, summer squash, spinach, eggplant, soy milk, tofu, tempeh, alfalfa sprouts, barley, wheat, amaranth, kelp and seaweed, clams, crab, spirulina, peppermint, and cilantro.

Cold Patterns

Excessive coldness in the body can result from a lack of physical activity, exposure to a cold environment, or excessive consumption of cooling foods, such as raw foods (which are considered cold). Internal cold can also occur if one does not consume enough warming foods, especially during the colder months. Some signs and symptoms of cold in the body include sensations of cold; an aversion to cold; a desire to drink warm foods and liquids; copious, clear urine; stiffness; watery, loose diarrhea; fear (the kidney is associated with fear and is particularly sensitive to cold); fixed pain; pale complexion; and a runny nose.

Warming Foods

A list of warming foods includes mussels, shrimp, chicken, chicken liver, lamb, lamb kidney, beef, quinoa, spelt, black beans, almonds, coconut, peanuts, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, walnuts, kale, mustard greens, parsley, parsnips, and cherries.

Dietary therapy in Oriental medicine has many facets, so there are many things to consider when looking for healthy eating. It always begins with awareness and listening to what our body is telling us. Are we a "hot" person or do we exhibit "cold" symptoms?

With this new way of seeing things, what would our "nature" be? Are we more Yin or more Yang? This personal assessment is an excellent starting point. Initially, it's a good idea to consult a qualified practitioner to help guide us. However, with a little practice, we all have the ability to use the food we eat every day as a means to rebalance our bodies, overcome our illnesses, and be the healthiest humans possible.