By: nikky Howard
Submitted: 2010-06-17 03:57:05 | Word Count: 713
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once said: "Let food be your medication, and your drugs be your food." Food therapy is the inspiration of Chinese medicine.
For thousands of years, Chinese medication has focused on food cures.
One in every of the most important differences between Chinese medication and Western medicine regarding food therapy is that the former uses diet to stop and cure illness, whereas the latter seldom uses foods for symptomatic treatment of disease, alternative than using diet completely for treating obesity problems.
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Another major distinction is that Chinese medication takes into thought not simply the nutrients of foods, like carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals, however additionally the flavors, the energies, and also the movements of foods in relation to completely different body organs.
In Chinese medicine, foods have 5 flavors: bitter, pungent, salty, bitter, and sweet. Flavors in foods don't simply provide you the style: they need an impression on your internal organs.
Foods with bitter taste, such as bitter melon (Chinese vegetable), lettuce, and radish, affect your heart and tiny intestine. Such foods reduce your body heat and dry your body fluids. This explains why herbs used to treat fever and diarrhea continuously style bitter as a result of of their "drying" effect.
Foods, like chive, clove, coriander, ginger, parsley and peppermint, have a pungent flavor, which acts on your lungs and massive intestine. Foods with pungent flavor induce perspiration and promote energy circulation.
Foods with salty flavor, like salt, kelp, and seaweed, have an effect on your kidneys and bladder. Salty foods will soften hardness, and so they're ideal for treating symptoms involving the hardening of muscles.
Foods, that are bitter in taste, like mango, lemon, pear, and plum, have an effect on your liver and gall bladder. Such foods hinder movements, and are therefore ideal for treating diarrhea and controlling excessive sweating.
Foods with a sweet flavor are sugar, banana, beef, chestnut, and watermelon, and that they have an effect on your stomach and spleen. These foods weigh down acute symptoms and neutralize the toxic effects from alternative foods. In Western medication, sweet foods create you gain weight because they are often loaded with "empty calories." From the perspective of Chinese medication, sweet foods have an effect on your abdomen and spleen, weakening your digestive functions, and therefore creating you eat additional and gain more.
It ought to be noted that some foods have a lot of than one flavor, and this is often not uncommon. Beef is sweet, whereas pork is both salty and sweet.
In keeping with Chinese drugs, foods are thought-about for his or her energies because they generate heat or cold; that's to say, they offer sensation of warmth or cold to the human body. As an example, if you drink a glass of cold water, you body feels cold; but that sensation is only temporary, while the sensations from foods are more lasting.
The foods, whether or not they are hot or cold, have a a lot of lasting sensation on your body. Foods have 5 energies: hot, cold, heat, cool, and neutral. Tea, for example, provides cold energy, even if it is hot tea. Pepper provides hot energy, even if it's chilled. Chicken offers heat energy, and corn has neutral energy, that is, neither hot nor cold. Accordingly, if your arthritis pain is a lot of acute and severe in cold winter days, then you ought to take more foods that provide hot or heat energy to scale back the cold in your joints.
Furthermore, foods have four movements: the outward movement that induces perspiration and reduces pain; the inward movement that eases bowel movements and abdominal pain; the upward movement that relieves diarrhea; and therefore the downward movement that stops vomiting or asthma.
Chinese medicine is predicated finally and harmony, in which food therapy plays a pivotal role through its flavors, energies and movements. For thousands of years, the Chinese have used food science for food cures.
Author Resource:-
Nikky has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in Home Medicine, you can also check out his latest website about:
