Nature of Food in Chinese Medicine

Have you ever thought of the function of your very common diary food such as milk could be of some medical nature??? yet while sometimes it could mean nutrition other times it may factually make one less health under certain current disease???How about the concept that milk may add up "heat" to some disease "hot" in nature ... like oil on the fire ??? with such question, I tired and found it worked... for thousand years...

This is to introduce Chinese medicine concept on the nature of food and herb medicine, to help people increasing their knowledge of their daily diet.



Core of Chinese medicine theory, is the balance of Yin and Yang. And every food and herb has its nature. Food in Yang nature including fried foods as more fire are added during the process of cooking, along with materially Yang natured foods, all to add up more Yang energy to body. While the Yin food, including water boiled or braised food during the process and cool the body down with Yin energy. So as a common sense of such initial understanding, in Winter , generally people are able to eat more food of Yang energy (called hot food in Chinese medicine concept) and in summer, people feel healthier with Yin diet( cool or cold food with Chinese medicine concept).

As a word , "Yin" and "Yang", are neutral as "hot" "neutral" cool" or cold" . And the health is in the balance , and any extremity means disease. And the Chinese medicine theory is to utilise herbs of the opposite nature to balance disease caused by one nature, in order to achieve health. And it's in everyday diet.



So for the people who has already got certain disease, the immediate thing they can do is to choose the right diet that helps.



Following list classify our daily especially in western menu, food belong to different nature.So people are able to consciously using them to balance and minimise the effect of disease .



Hot food ( Yang energy)
Meat : Lamb , seafood, beef,

Vegi : Chili, Garlic, Onion, chive

Fruits: Lychee, mandarin, date, chestnut, durian, cherry

Drinks: wine , chocolate, black/grey tea , milk

cooking methods : fries

Spice: chili, pepper, curry


Cool and cold food

Meat : plain water river fish and shellfish , duck

Vegi : most of green leaves ,bean products, bamboo shoot, sprout , tomato, cucumber , cold :balsam pear, celery, radish

Fruits : orange , kiwifruit,banana, pear, persimmon, melon, watermelon, fig, apple

Drinks: green tea, plain water

spice: salt, soy sauce , mint

Method of cooking: Boil , braise , steam,

currently this list is still to be increased , but as immediate handling, people should choose correct catalog opposite to the nature of their disease and avoid or even ban the food of the same nature. This help to minimise the effect of disease effectively , and help to increase human ability of immunity. And water is generally helpful to dissolve harmful substance and help to release them out of body quicker. Rest is necessary when tired, as your body telling you it's time for your immunity army fighting . To extreme Yang diseases or venom, you should choose food in cool or cold nature , especially the cold ones to be more effective, special catagory are vegies with bitter taste, they are stronger. However, as previously stated, key is in balance, so in normal situation, over consuming food in cold nature may lead to some sympton or disease such as diarrhea.

Besides, I dont think increase blood circulation should be introduced as a mthod of treatment in situation of venom present, as then the increased circulation would send more venom to the whole body.

But I do suggest choose the right drink as probably very effective way- increase water consumption with medical purpose... including - green tea catogory, and you may found lot in china town market for the special purpose to "cool down" and dissolve poisonous substances inside body, and also soup with carefully chosen functional food in specific medical nature.