“Treating Sickness with both Medicine and Food”

- Neijing, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine

Dietotherapy / Food Therapy 

In the early days, when Chinese discovered farming and agriculture, they discovered foods have more to offer than just for filling hunger. They found that each food has its own unique medicinal properties and health benefits to human body. Over the years, by continuous testing foods on people of various conditions, Chinese were able to find out the unique properties of each food. This functional food knowledge has been passing down generation after generation. It was during the Chau dynasty (16 BC) that food therapy was established as a specialist field. The state even had a nutritional specialist serving the emperor in the imperial court. It was during the Tang dynasty (608-906 AD) that food therapy became popular and the classic books on the subject were published.

Chinese medicinal herbs were also discovered and studied the same way as food throughout Chinese history. Today, most foods and medicinal herbs have been clearly defined and documented listing their nature, characteristic, therapeutic effects, contradictions and instruction for proper application. All these information have been helping doctors as well as ordinary people to administer health by using food as medicine and medicine as food. This approach of using foods and herbs for their medicinal and functional properties to treat specific health problems and to achieve expected health benefits is Chinese Food Therapy. It is not just a healthy nutritional practice but rather a specialist treatment using prescription food to achieve desirable outcome. The knowledge is based on accumulated experience from thousands years of real life clinical trials on billions of people. The recipes that are in use today are tried-and-true and can achieve permanent cure that are not possible with drug. 

Chinese medicine believes finding problems early and treating them with dispersing food and drugs can stop them from progressing further. Food therapy has always been the first line of defence used by average people to ward off diseases. It is because healthcare has always been a personal liability so people are highly motivated to stay healthy. Only when food alone cannot help then people will turn to TCM doctors for help.

TCM doctors administer treatment by firstly prescribing medicinal remedies to control symptoms of problems. Most medicinal herbs used at this stage are strong and extreme in nature and are for controlling and suppressing symptoms only. They have to stop once symptoms are gone. Doctors will then give advice on therapeutic recipes using foods and food herbs to continue the treatment. It is only food that can provide the essential nutrients and building blocks for the body to repair, rebuild and rejuvenate.

Most therapeutic food dishes are eaten as meals or with meals and are to be repeated for days or weeks until the body has fully recovered. Afterwards, repeated use at regular intervals is recommended for maintenance purposes.

The application principles of Chinese Food Therapy:  

1.  Yin and Yang Theory 

TCM defines the nature of foods, herbs, our body and even sickness by the same five categories: hot, warm, neutral, cool and cold. Hot and warm are yang constitutions, cool and cold are yin constitutions and neutral sits right in the middle. The yin and yang theory explains how energy in our body has to be balanced in order to be healthy. 

Yang                                                Yin

Hot < Warm         < Neutral >         Cool > Cold

Each kind of food has its own constitution and so is each individual person. It is important to know our body’s constitution first in order to know which food to pick to keep our body in balance. For people who are with yin or yang constitution, using foods of same nature will intensify the imbalance while using foods of opposing nature will help the body to move back to the middle to achieve balance. That is why people of cold constitution can eat more hot foods without getting sick but eating too much cold food will bring the body too much over to the yin extreme and create havoc to their health. Our body has the natural defence mechanism in place to reject foods which do not fit by showing allergic reaction.    

Body's constitution can be roughly determined by the following characteristics:

• If you are always hot and have warm hands and feet even in winter, always energetic and almost restless, underweight by at least 20 pounds, and have a high sex drive, you belong to the hot type.
• If you prefer summer to winter, are normally not tired, fairly active and enjoy sex more than food, you are the warm type.
• If you are always cold, with cold hands and feet even in summer, overweight by at least 20 pounds, normally tired, easy going and quite patient and have a low sex drive, you are the cold type.
• If you prefer winter to summer, just slightly overweight, normally lazy and fairly relaxed, and enjoy food more than sex, you belong to the cool type.
• For people who have the neutral constitution, they have a combination of cool and warm symptoms.

When people are sick, the nature of sickness will dominate the body. Foods and herbs of opposing nature are necessary to bring the body back into balance. Usually, by observing the patient, it is quite easy to find out the nature of his or her sickness. If the patient feels better under warmer surroundings and enjoys warmer foods and drinks, the person most likely is suffering from yin sickness. Yang food such as ginger usually can help. If the person is having a fever, a cooler environment and cold drinks gives him or her more comfort, the sickness is most probably of the yang type. In such case, yin food will help the body to fight the sickness and restore balance.

During sickness, our body needs extra energy to fight the sickness. A healthy spleen or stomach system can facilitate easy digestion, absorption and transportation of nutrients. It is necessary to avoid cold foods and drinks, raw foods, hard to digest foods, oily and deep-fried foods to lessen the burden on the digestive system. Warm and easy to digest foods such as soup or rice porridge are more suitable to help in the recovery.

2.  Taste and Action of Food  

Foods are classified into five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and pungent. Each taste acts on or has direct influence on its corresponding organ. When one taste is being consumed in moderation, it benefits the organ. But when over-indulgence of any one taste persists, it will damage the related organ and create imbalance among the others.

Taste	Sweet	Sour	Bitter	Salty	Pungent
Act on Organ System	Spleen/ Stomach	Liver/ Gall bladder	Heart/ Small Intestine	Kidney/ Bladder	Lungs/ Large Intestine

Sweet taste acts on the spleen and stomach helping digestion and neutralizing the toxic effects of foods consumed. Sour taste acts on the liver and gall bladder and controls diarrhoea and excessive perspiration. Bitter taste acts on the heart and small intestine. It reduces body heat and excessive fluids, and induces diarrhoea. Salty taste acts on the kidneys and bladder and soften hardness of muscles and glands. Pungent acts on the lungs and large intestine and induces perspiration and promotes energy circulation.

Our five vital organ systems have the natural ability to control and support each other. Proper cooperation will only exist when there is no organ that is stronger or weaker than the others and in good balance with each other. Tastes of food have direct impact on keeping this delicate balance in check.

Action of food is like the energy flow created by food. Proper energy flow around our body is most important in keeping blood, fluid and waste moving and circulating normally.

Food can be moving outward which promote the flow of energy from the center of the body to the surface. It induces perspiration which can expel toxic wastes and release heat. When the body is suffering from wind-heat attack resulting in fever, it is important to move heat outward. Inward-moving food promotes the opposite effects. When people are having profuse perspiration, night sweat, premature ejaculation and frequent urination, etc., inward-moving food is necessary to contain the excessive outward movement of energy which will drain and weaken the whole body. Upward-moving food controls diarrhoea, prolapsed anus or uterus and falling stomach. Downward-moving food controls vomiting, food-rejection, constipation and energy obstruction.

The taste and action of food are important selection criteria for finding the right foods to promote and support health, especially in times of acute sickness.   

3.  Seasonal Influence 

In Chinese medicine, all illnesses can be prevented if we constantly observe and maintain the balance of qi (vital energy) in our body. There are external influences from the weather and internal influences from our foods, mind and emotion which can affect the balance of our qi energy. TCM believes “if there is blockage of qi, there is sickness; if there is no blockage of qi, there is no sickness”. It is because when qi is blocked, our protecting-qi cannot fight against invasion therefore allowing sickness to come in. Eating wisely to counter the adverse effects of the seasons is essential in preventive care.

In spring, it is the season dominated by wind. The pores of our skin dilate due to the warmer temperatures after the cold winter. It is easier for "wind-evil" to enter the body causing coughing, a stuffy or runny nose, headaches, dizziness and sneezing. It is important to eat food that can eliminate excessive wind in the body during spring.

In summer, fire (heat) dominates. For people suffering from heat syndrome, they show symptoms such as excess body heat, profuse sweating, parched mouth and throat, constipation and heart palpitations. Eating spicy hot and deep-fried foods which are extremely hot in nature can make the condition worse by further drying up internal body fluid, causing stagnation and drying up mouth and skin. To correct this imbalance, cooling foods such as watermelon, citrus fruits or white turnips are most effective.

In late summer, when summer heat combines with dampness, it can cause abdominal pains, vomiting and intestinal spasms. Drying foods such as broad beans and little red beans which are diuretic in nature can help the body to release excessive dampness. Cooling yin foods will help, while overly hot yang foods should be avoided. Iced drinks are cold in temperature, but not cold in nature. They can damage the spleen and stomach causing indigestion and sluggishness which can slow down our immune system and metabolic functions. 

In autumn, dryness dominates and can easily injure the lungs, causing heavy coughing, blood in the sputum, dry nose and throat and pains in the chest. "Inner-dryness" can be a result of profuse sweating, vomiting, bleeding or diarrhea. The symptoms are dry and wrinkled skin, dry hair and scalp, dry mouth and cracked lips, and dry stomach with hard and dry stools. Insufficient body fluid is harmful. We should eat more nourishing yin food to promote body fluid and to soothe the lungs.

In winter, cold is a "yin-evil", which dominates and can injure the body's yang energy. If coldness enters the body through the skin, it produces symptoms of fever, cold, headaches and body pain. If coldness reaches the meridians, it produces muscle cramps and pains in the bones and joints. If coldness enters as far as the internal organs, cold excess causes nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pains, coldness in limbs and causes chronic illness which are most difficult to treat. To prevent coldness attacks, plenty of warming yang foods and slightly fatty foods should be included in the diet. And in extreme coldness, a few warming yang herbs should be eaten regularly to keep the internal systems warm to protect the body.

The external evils or the six excesses — wind, cold, summer heat, dampness, dryness and fire — affect everyone differently. They attack people when and where they are weakest. Healthy people with strong immune system are least affected. Eating preventively using therapeutic foods can help people with weaker constitution to lower the chance of catching seasonal sickness.

4.  Personalization  

To stay healthy, we should eat according to our age and physical needs. Over-eating or under-eating are both harmful to our health.

Young children whose bodies are still growing bones and muscles need a diet rich in protein and calcium. They are highly active and should eat regularly to maintain their energy levels. Teens need a good quantity, well-balanced diet with lots of calories and nutrients as they are developing towards maturity. Older people with weakened digestive system and are physically inactive should eat less and easy to digest foods. Professional people, such as athletics or construction workers, should eat more, especially complex carbohydrates to maintain energy level over a long period of time. People with profession that uses their brain a lot should eat more protein-rich foods to nourish their brain.

A diet which doesn’t provide the necessary nutrition to support a person’s needs or is in excess are both harmful and bad for health.

5.  Organotherapy

The concept of using animal's organ to treat the same in human is common in Chinese Food Therapy. Human and most four legged animals have similar organ structure and biological functions. The benefits of animal’s parts and organs to human have been proven by modern science and many drugs are using animal’s parts as the key ingredients. Pig and cow’s pancreas are used to make insulin to treat diabetes and the same for thyroids to treat hypothyroidism. But Chinese Food Therapy is people’s medicine. It uses the real thing so that patients can administer the treatment themselves. It is not only because food is tastier, it is cheaper, easier to get and more effective with no side effects.

Pig’s organs are the preferred choice in Chinese Food Therapy because pig is neutral in nature and is suitable for most people. Western medicine also found that pig has the closest genes to human and has been using pig organs for human transplant. Besides organs, other animal parts are commonly used in medicinal recipes. For examples, chickens have strong legs and chicken feet are used to treat people with weak legs and lack of energy. Fish has excellent brain power for navigation and balancing so fish heads have been used to improve memory and to cure headaches and dizziness.

Chinese Food Therapy has been in use by average households for thousands of years. Many tried-and-true recipes have been passed on generation after generation and are treated as specialty foods or delicacies in Chinese cuisine. In searching for suitable recipes, it is necessary to know more about the symptoms and nature of problems to be addressed first and then use this information to find matching ones. Therapeutic recipes usually use a combination of foods and superior/food herbs as the key ingredients. Most herbs contain specific nutrients and functional properties which are not commonly found in food alone. Adding herbs to foods of similar nature can increase the potency and effectiveness. Adding herbs of different nature to food can moderate the nature and effects. That is why Chinese Food Therapy can be very effective in treating nutritional deficiency and imbalance.