The father of medicine,Hippocrates, stated once: “Let food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.” One of the bases of Chinese Medicine is food therapy.

Chinese medicine has,for thousands of years, focused on food cures.

With regard to food therapy, one of the major differences between Western medicine and Chinese medicine is that the former seldom uses foods for symptomatic treatment of disease, other than using diet exclusively for treating obesity problems,while the latter uses diet to prevent and cure illness.

One other huge difference between them is that in Chinese medicine, not only is the nutrients of foods, such as minerals, vitamins, proteins, and carbohydrates taken into consideration, the energies, flavors, and the movements of foods in association with specific body organs are also deemed important.

The foods,in Chinese medicine, are known to possess five flavors: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter. Taste is not only what flavors in foods can give you: flavors also can affect your internal organs.

Bitter tasting foods such as radish, lettuce and bitter melon (Chinese vegetable) can impact your small intestine and heart. These types of foods can dry your body fluids and decrease body heat. This is the reason why herbs for treating diarrhea and fever often have a bitter taste due to their “drying” effect.

Foods with a pungent flavor like peppermint, parsley, ginger, coriander, clove, and chive tend to have an effect on your large intestine and lungs. Pungent flavor foods promote energy circulation and induce sweating.

Salty tasting foods such as seaweed, kelp, and salt can impact your bladder and kidneys. These types of foods can soften hardness, and thus are excellent for resolving symptoms involving muscle hardening.

Sour tasting foods such as plum, pear, lemon, and mango affect your gall bladder and liver. These foods block movements, and thus are good for controlling excessive perspiration and treating diarrhea.

Watermelon, chestnut, beef, banana, sugar and other sweet flavor foods tend to impact your spleen and abdomen. These foods have the ability to neutralize toxins from other foods and slow down acute symptoms. Sweet foods, according Western medicine,lets you gain weight due to them being usually loaded with “empty calories.” From a Chinese medicine standpoint, sweet foods impact your spleen and your abdomen, impairing your digestive functions, which makes you eat more and thus, increase weight more.

It is important to note that certain foods possess more than one flavor, and this is not rare. Pork is both sweet and salty and while beef is just sweet.

Foods, in Chinese medicine, are also noted for their energies because they generate cold or heat; this means that they can provide a sensation of cold or heat to the body. If you drink a glass of cold water, for example, your body will feel cold; but that lasts only temporary; the sensations from foods,on the other hand, lasts much longer.

Regardless if they’re cold or hot, foods have a more lasting sensation on the body. They have five energies: neutral, cool, warm, cold, and hot. For example even if it’s chilled, pepper can provide hot energy. Tea provides gives cold energy, even if it is hot. Corn has neutral energy (neither hot nor cold), and chicken provides warm energy. Consequently, if your arthritis pain in cold winter days is more severe and acute, then you need to eat more foods that give warm or hot energy to lessen the cold in your joints.

In addition to these properties, foods have four movements: the downward movement that halts asthma or vomiting; the upward movement that alleviates diarrhea; the inward movement that relieves stomach pain and bowel movements; and the outward movement that eases pain and induces sweating.

Chinese medicine is grounded on harmony and balance, in which food therapy plays a huge role through its movements, energies, and flavors. The Chinese, for thousands of years, have utilized food science for food cures.

Goldfarb Chiropractic and Acupuncture Center
1339 Pleasant Valley Way
West Orange, NJ 07052
Phone: 973-325-8884
www.acupuncturewestorange.com