Chinese food therapy Archives - Acupuncture in the Park

What to Eat to Stay Cool This Summer

At one time or another most of us struggle to figure out what to eat. You know what’s healthy, but you’re too busy to cook. That sugary treat you’re eyeing isn’t the best choice, but you crave sweets. Or with a lot of confusing news about diet and nutrition, the foods you thought were healthy are no longer considered to be, or vice versa.

The conflict that we face around food is because we all understand that eating well can enhance our health. In Chinese medicine, food is seen as medicine that you get to eat three times a day. In fact, ancient Chinese scholars suggested that a practitioner should first treat an illness with food therapy, and only if that doesn’t work should they turn to acupuncture and herbs for a cure.

Chinese Food Therapy

Food therapy is an important healing tool in Chinese medicine, for good reason—it’s effective, inexpensive, and can be practiced at home. The power of food to heal is very real, and while not as potent as Chinese herbs, foods exert very real effects on your body. In fact, there are a number of foods that are also considered to be herbs.

There are several principles associated with food therapy, including the idea that we each have our own unique needs when it comes to diet. Also, choosing foods that are easy to digest, appropriate to the season, and that address your specific health issues are important. This means that there’s no single diet that’s right for everyone; what’s good for your best friend isn’t necessarily what’s good for you.

Using the guidelines of food therapy, foods are chosen for their specific actions. They can boost your energy, support your digestion, dry phlegm, cool inflammation, or help you fight off a cold. In addition, foods are chosen for their inherent temperature. This is not about how it feels in your mouth or whether it gives you a frozen headache or burns your tongue. Instead, the energetic temperature of a food is about the overall effect it has on your body after you’ve eaten it. Foods are classified as hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold. While the effect of a food can be subtle, some foods are obviously hot, such as ginger or chilies, which can make you feel hot and even sweat, and mint is a noticeably cooling, even when drunk as a tea.

What to Eat for the Heat

Which brings us to summer. Food therapy can be used to cool you off during the hottest days of the year, and can even help you avoid dehydration and heat stroke. The Chinese have a condition called Summerheat, which is a pathogen that occurs only in the hot, and usually humid weather of summer. It’s responsible for that queasy, tired feeling you get when you’ve overdone it in the heat.

So what should you eat to stay cool? The first place to start is with foods that are in season locally, as they tend to be cooling in nature. Some of the best choices are melons (especially watermelon), cucumbers, and tomatoes, which can help cool you off and are full of water to avoid dehydration. Other cooling foods include fruits, such as berries, apples, and pears, as well as spinach, summer squash, lettuce and most greens, cabbage, bok choy, celery, and mint. A couple of foods that are very cooling but may not be local include mung beans and sprouts, citrus fruits, and bananas.

How you cook a food also impacts its temperature. A good rule of thumb is that the longer you cook a food, the warmer it becomes. So during the winter, soups, stews, and foods that have been roasted are good for warming you up. For the summer however, raw or lightly cooked foods are the most cooling, which is good news, because many of the delicious local seasonal foods are best eaten raw!

Through the lens of Chinese food therapy, it’s no accident that watermelon is a welcome treat on the hottest days of the year. It’s cold in nature, packed with water, tastes delicious, and wards off Summerheat. It’s what to eat to stay cool.

When Food is Medicine

I was an incredibly picky eater as a kid. Dinnertime was a stressful battle between me, my parents, and the green stuff on my plate—most of which came from a can or the freezer and was cooked to within an inch of its life. It wasn’t until I discovered spinach salad with creamy ranch dressing that my life turned around. It was a breakthrough that allowed me to add foods like red bell peppers and strawberries and arugula and kale to my diet—and like them.

I’m thankful that my pickiness is in the past, because as a practitioner of Chinese medicine, food plays a huge role in the healing process. The Chinese believe that food is medicine that you get to eat three times a day. In addition, if you are sick, it is believed that you should first try to heal yourself by eating the right foods, and only if that fails, should you turn to acupuncture and herbs.

Chinese food therapy is considered a healing modality unto itself. Used alongside acupuncture, herbal therapy, and Asian bodywork, food therapy is based on a number of principles that align with Chinese medicine. In fact, the properties of foods, while not as strong, are similar to the properties of herbs. Here are some things to know about healing with food in Chinese medicine.

-Foods have an inherent temperature. This is not about your food being served piping hot, but rather about whether it warms you up or cools you off after you have eaten it. Foods can be hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold. For example, ginger, scallions, or cinnamon are considered to be warming foods. In contrast, mint, mung bean sprouts, and melons will cool you off.

-How you cook your food affects its thermal qualities. In general, the longer you cook a food, the more warming it is to your body. For example, potatoes that have been roasted in the oven for 45 minutes are energetically warmer than those that have been boiled for ten. Raw foods are considered to be the most cooling, which is why people tend to eat lots of fresh, raw vegetables in the summer and prefer warmer, roasted foods in the colder months.

-In general, how long a food has taken to grow affects its temperature. So a squash that has taken most of the summer and fall to ripen is more warming than tomatoes or cucumbers that are ready to eat during the height of the summer.

-Foods also have inherent actions on your body. Some foods are good for building up your energy or strengthening your blood, other foods are used if you’re retaining water, and others are used to enhance your digestion. For instance, if you are retaining water, adding celery would be a good choice. However if you have been sick and have a dry raspy cough, you would be better off eating apples and pears for their ability to moisten your lungs without building up phlegm.

-Digestion is a huge component of Chinese food therapy. Simply put, you need good digestion to get the most energy and nutrients from your food. If you are having any kind of symptoms, from heartburn to gas, bloating, stomachaches, or bowel problems, then your digestion needs a little help. In the world of food therapy, good digestion is the foundation for everything else that follows.

-When it comes to what’s best to eat, all people are not created equal. Each of us have different health needs and derive different benefits from foods. This has been backed up recently by Western researchers, who have found that eating the same food affected insulin levels differently in study subjects. In addition, the stated calories for a food is just a guess, based on your digestion and metabolism. Practitioners of Chinese medicine have long known that each of us have unique dietary needs, and thankfully Western medicine is finally catching up.

It’s been a long road from my formerly picky self to searching out the best leeks, sweet onions, or Swiss chard. It has involved acquiring a taste for new foods, being open to cooking differently, and understanding the impact what I eat has on my health.

Chinese Medicine and Sweets: Nine Things You Need to Know

It’s a struggle getting through the holidays and eating well. If you’re like me, you have been gifted with plates of frosted cookies, candy canes, and all manner of chocolate treats. This celebrating with sweet treats hasn’t changed much since I was a child, in which every holiday was be celebrated with a love-fest of jelly beans, chocolate kisses, candy canes, and baked goods.

As much candy as we ate as a kids, most of us eat far more sugar today than we did as children, both in the form of sweets and unknowingly in sugars hidden in foods that have no business sporting sugar at all. Knowing that sugar isn’t particularly good for our health or waistlines, most people make good intentioned attempts to limit the amount of sugar that they eat on a daily basis. However, according to Chinese food therapy, the nature of sweets is far more nuanced than simply being labeled as good or bad. Here are some things to know about the sweet stuff according to Chinese medicine:

1) Each organ system has a flavor associated with it, in which a little bit of that flavor strengthens the system, but too much overwhelms it. In Chinese medicine, the flavor of sweetness affects your Stomach and Spleen; your body’s system of digestion.

2) It’s natural to crave something a little sweet after a meal, because the sweet flavor acts as a digestive aid. So a piece of fruit or a small square of chocolate helps you relax and digest your food. A problem arises when you try to satisfy that mildly sweet craving with a piece of triple chocolate peanut butter cheesecake with a side of ice cream. It completely overwhelms your digestive process.

3) When your digestion is overwhelmed with sweets, the most common result is something called dampness, which is the digestive process getting bogged down and not metabolizing fluids very well. This is another case of a little is good, but too much…not so good. Your body needs to be moist, but when your digestive process gets boggy, it becomes too damp and the resulting moisture settles in puddles. Problems like yeast infections, athlete’s foot, bladder infections, water retention, oral thrush, and even excess body fat are considered your body’s damp puddles.

4) The sweeter a food is and the more you eat of it, the more dampening it is to your body.

5) There’s more bad news. If that dampness sticks around over time, it also becomes hot. In Western medicine, that translates into inflammation. Conditions such as gout, arthritis, infections, shingles, IBS, and sinus problems are in most cases considered to be damp plus heat in Chinese medicine.

6) When you have crazy, out-of-control cravings for sweets, it is a sign that your digestion is struggling. Unfortunately, giving in to those kinds of cravings only make the problem worse.

7) Now some good news. Foods that are slightly sweet are actually nourishing because eating those foods and digesting them well replenishes your body’s energy, blood, and nutrients. But you only need a little sweet, and the right kind.

8) The right kind of sweet flavored foods are those considered to be full sweet. They are warming and nourishing, and include complex carbohydrates, proteins, rice, sweet potatoes, and root vegetables. (Think of yams or carrots…sweet, but not overwhelming.) Empty sweets are the ones to avoid or eat only in small amounts. They tend to be cooling and dispersing (moving), and include simple sugars, refined carbohydrates, juices, honey, raw sugar, artificial sweeteners, and fruits. With the exception of fruits, they tend to offer up empty calories, are not very nourishing, and engender dampness.

9) Unfortunately, the kinds of things that you crave when your digestion is funky or your energy is low are the empty sweets–cake, cookies, candy, doughnuts, and the like. However, it’s the full-sweet foods that your body really needs to satisfy those cravings, and make them go away for good.

While I don’t eat the kinds of sweets that I did as a kid, every once in a while, I will have something that is very empty sweet. It reminds me of the doughnuts, chocolate chip cookies, and thickly frosted cakes that I ate growing up. The bloated, tired feeling I get afterward also reminds me why I don’t eat them more often.

Chinese Food Therapy at the Farmers Market

I love going to the farmers market! I’ve been to some fabulous farmers markets all over the world including Melbourne, Australia; Florence, Italy; and one in an ancient city center outside of Rouen, France. Here in the United States, I’ve managed to hit some outstanding markets, from Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, to Boulder’s upscale market, and Santa Fe’s market for lovers of all things chili.

While I enjoy checking out farmers markets when I travel, I have to admit that the Twin Cities has its share of great markets. Whether you hit the big one in Minneapolis, the Mill City farmers market, or a small market in your community, the bounty found at these gatherings offer some of the best produce grown in the area.

Why write about farmers markets in a blog about Chinese medicine? The answer is simple: Farmers markets promote good health in ways that align with Chinese medicine. Here are some examples:

-When you shop at a farmers market, you are eating produce that’s in season. That’s a good thing according to Chinese food therapy, because each season’s foods impact your health in different ways. For example, the early shoots and greens of spring are good for the health of your liver—almost like a spring tonic. During the summer, the produce in season is cooling and moistening to help you hydrate and deal with the heat. And in the fall, the heavier squashes, root vegetables, and legumes are important nutritionally as you prepare to hunker down for the winter months.

-Produce at the farmers market is local. That means it’s more flavorful because there is a shorter time between harvest and your table.

-Your produce is cleaner in general. In Chinese medicine, one cause of illness is eating food that is “wrecked”. In ancient times that meant food that has spoiled due to a lack of refrigeration. Today, wrecked food is that which has been contaminated through the many steps from harvesting, washing, shipping, and distributing. Wrecked food is also that which has been laced with chemicals. Shopping at the farmers market means that you can keep the chemicals off your plate; much of the produce is grown organically, and frequently you can ask the farmer in person how it was grown.

-In Chinese food therapy, one recommendation is to eat a wide variety of foods. While we live in a mono-crop culture in which huge swaths of land are committed to a single crop (usually corn); at the farmers market, you can find a huge variety of different kinds of produce.

-Finally, much of Chinese medicine is based on metaphors from nature. Our health is tied to the health of the planet and even that of our local farmers’ fields. When we get sick, our symptoms in Chinese medicine are described as bad weather—we can have heat, wind, cold, damp, dryness, and even summer heat. By shopping at the farmers market, you are placing yourself in touch with the goodness of nature, and by patronizing local farmers; you are helping to maintain farmland and green space in your community.

Ready to hit the farmers market, but not sure where to go? Start with here for a list farmers markets in the Twin Cities area and a rundown of what’s open today.

Bought a bunch of green things and don’t know exactly what to do with them? Try a cookbook geared toward fresh produce. I just bought the Gardeners Community Cookbook, but also like Moosewood New Classics. Either one will give you lots of ideas for delicious meals!

Eight Things to Know About Chinese Dietary Therapy

What should I eat? It’s amazing how such a simple question can throw many people into fits of anxiety. That’s because we live in a time of abundant food choices coupled with the desire to be as healthy as possible, which makes it difficult to know what to make for dinner. Adding to the confusion is the constant bombardment of messages about good foods and bad foods. Remember when all fats were considered bad for you? Now carbs are considered the bad guy to be avoided at all costs. More protein, less oil, eat this, not that. The chaos surrounding food messages is enough to make the mellowest among us a little crazy about what to eat.

So here’s a suggestion: Think about Chinese Dietary Therapy. There are some things you may not know about this fairly simple way to figure out what to eat, so here’s the rundown:

1) There is no one perfect diet–only what’s perfect for you. In Chinese medicine, each person has a unique set of needs, and therefore has a unique set of dietary needs. You can forget about cutting out gluten or grapefruits or whatever is the villain food today and eat what’s best for you.

2) Your Qi, or energy, is made from the foods you eat (and the air you breathe), so getting it right is important. If you’re not eating well, symptoms will eventually show up–from fatigue and poor digestion to frequent illnesses and just plain feeling blah.

3) How well you digest your food is as important–maybe more so–than the foods you choose to eat. If your digestion is funky, the most fabulous foods in the world won’t do you much good.

4) The foods you eat have inherent actions on your body. Foods act a little bit like Chinese herbs do, but the effects of foods aren’t quite as strong. For example, there are foods to eat if you’re retaining water, other foods to choose if you want to build up your Qi, and still others that are good for generating moisture. It’s all in choosing the right ones for what you need.

5) Foods also have an inherent temperature, called post-digestive temperature. It means that depending on what you choose to eat, it can leave your body feeling warmer or cooler, based on the temperature of the food. For example, mint, melons, and mung beans are considered cooling foods. Ginger, garlic, lamb, trout, and spicy foods are warm in nature. So if you’re cold all the time, choose warming foods to help you warm up.

6) How long you cook a food also affects post-digestive temperature. In general, the longer you cook something, the warmer it becomes. So potatoes that have been boiled for seven or eight minutes would be considered cooler than those that were roasted in the oven for the better part of an hour.

7) The process of converting your foods into energy and nutrients involves something called digestive fire, and implies that a certain amount of warmth is necessary for the digestive process. It takes energy to maintain your digestive fire, so essentially it takes energy to make energy.

8) Very cold foods and lots of raw fruits and vegetables slow down your digestive fire. It takes a lot of energy to warm those foods enough to break them down into more energy and nutrients (especially the cellulose in raw veggies). So if your digestion is less than stellar, a first step might be to gravitate more toward cooked foods, like soups, stews, and stir fried dishes. Think about it this way: cooking your foods is a little like predigesting them.

If you’re thinking that Chinese Dietary Therapy might help you, find a licensed acupuncturist and practitioner of Chinese medicine. They can assess your needs and prescribe food choices that make sense–the right ones for you.

Eight Things I Wish My Patients Knew About Food

As an acupuncturist, I am asked frequently by my patients about what to eat. Many just want to eat as healthfully as possible, some want to lose weight, and others just want to get a handle on their sugar cravings. I believe that how you think about food mirrors how you look at life, and eating is meant to nourish your body, mind, and soul. What you choose to eat is about more than calories or carbs or even nutritional content. So, while every person is different in their dietary needs, here are a few things that I want my patients to know about food:

1) Eat real foods. That’s the stuff that comes out of the ground, the ocean, or from the farm. Not what’s been chemically engineered to sit on the grocery store shelf for years, products that have unrecognizable ingredients, or foods that have health claims splattered all over the packaging.

2) There are no good or bad real foods, just foods that are better for you than others, and moderation is crucial. This is even true for sugar. A very small amount of something sweet after a meal acts as a digestive aid. (Think about a piece of fruit or a small piece of dark chocolate—not a boat-sized slice of triple espresso fudge cheesecake.)

3) What’s right for you is different than what’s right for someone else. This is what Chinese dietary therapy is all about. Each food has certain properties and inherent temperature, and every food affects your body in different ways. Determining what you need and what foods do that the best is at the heart of Chinese food therapy.

4) You need to support digestive fire. It takes a certain amount of heat, or digestive fire, to properly convert food into nutrients. The better you support that fire, the more efficiently you’ll digest your food, and the better you’ll feel. Cold and raw foods eaten regularly take more energy, or fire, to digest, so if you’re struggling with your digestion or fatigue it’s best to avoid them. Instead, try to get more soups, stews, and stir fried foods into your diet. Your digestion will thank you.

5) You need to…um, eat. I regularly see patients that get up in the morning and don’t eat. They may skip lunch, and finally grab something late in the day. Regularly skipping meals can really mess up your blood sugar levels, causing wide swings in insulin, and can contribute to weight gain. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but it’s true–when you finally do eat, you’re starving, tend to overeat, and your body wants to store those calories as fat for tomorrow’s famine.

6) When you are eating the right amounts of the right foods at the right times, you are in balance, you will feel good, and your weight will be stable. Too much of any one food puts you out of balance, because it’s impossible to get all the nutrients you need from a handful of the same foods day in and day out.

7) When you’re stuck trying to figure out what to eat, think about what you get at a Chinese restaurant–lots of cooked veggies, a little protein, and a little grain. (Okay, I admit, the white rice should be brown.) In a Chinese restaurant, most people share a couple of dishes, which gives you a variety of foods. And finally, the meal is served with a little warm tea which helps to warm up your digestive fire.

8) Finally, as I said above, what you eat is supposed to nourish not only your body, but your mind and soul. Quit agonizing about your diet and eat real food that tastes good, and enjoy it in a relaxing atmosphere with people you love.

Why You Crave Sweets

You’ve just finished a great meal, and you’re really full. But you push your plate back and your next thought is, “What’s for dessert?” No matter how stuffed you are after a meal, there always seems to be a little room for something sweet. What’s with that?

According to Chinese medicine, there’s a logical explanation for your sweet tooth, and it has to do with the workings of the Spleen organ system. In Chinese theory, each organ has a physical place in the body, but it also has an energetic component, and the functions of an organ can be physical, emotional, or symbolic. Each of the Chinese organs are also related to a specific element (fire, water, etc.), season, color, emotion and taste.

So back to the Chinese Spleen. Your Spleen is considered the organ system that governs digestion. It’s responsible for taking food in, digesting it, and then turning it into energy, blood, and nutrients. The taste related to the Spleen is sweet. This means that a little bit of sweet food is nourishing to your Spleen (i.e. good for your digestion). However, too much sweet food can be damaging.

What does that mean? In ancient China, where these theories originated, foods that were considered sweet included fruits, dates, root vegetables, and some grains. Today, sweet foods include flourless chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, and Snickers Bars. Back in the day, the Chinese would have a mildly sweet food after a meal to help with digestion. Today, we crave sweets because we’ve been eating sweets and all kinds of other foods that are processed, modified, injected with hormones, and hard to digest in general.

We crave and eat sweets as a form of self-medication. When our digestion is out of whack, we crave sweets as a way to put things right. However, the sweets we eat are so sweet, it just makes things worse.

This is not to say that anyone with a sweet tooth is unhealthy, and brings us back to the dessert issue. We have a mild craving for something sweet after a meal as a way to aid the digestive process.

But what if you crave sweets 24/7? That’s your body’s way of telling you to get your diet cleaned up and your digestion in order. Start by limiting the amount of sweets you eat (I know, hard–but doable). You can also help things along by limiting processed foods, eating mostly fruits and cooked vegetables, whole grains, and a little protein. Over time your incessant sweet cravings will diminish — and you’ll feel healthier, too.

The Chinese Restaurant Way to Good Health

Many people are familiar with acupuncture, however many may not know that there are a number of other methods of treatment that come under the umbrella of Chinese medicine. One of the most commonly used is food therapy—essentially using food to heal.

I frequently talk with my patients about their food choices. Occasionally, a patient will ask, “Exactly what should I be eating?”, and my answer is to eat lots of veggies, a little protein, and whole grains. However, lately my answer has been to eat like you’re in a Chinese restaurant.

Clearly, the deep fried sesame shrimp from your local Chinese restaurant is the healthiest. However, there are many traditions that are still in place in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant that are in fact pretty healthy.

A typical stir fry at your local Jade Garden will include a variety of vegetables with smaller amounts of protein, served over…um, white rice. White rice is not a whole grain, and has been eaten in China only for a couple of hundred years. It was considered to be finer than brown rice, and was served to the emperor and the wealthiest Chinese. In the countryside, the healthier brown rice was still common fare among the regular folks like you and me. Many Chinese restaurants now offer you a choice between white or steamed brown rice, and for the purpose of what I like to call the Chinese Restaurant Diet, choose the brown rice.

Other traditions that make the Chinese Restaurant Diet a healthy way to eat include:

The food is fresh! Some authentic Chinese restaurants have aquariums in which your dinner is still swimming until the moment you order. And all those vegetables you see in your stir fry—broccoli, carrots, onions, scallions, cabbage, peppers, mushrooms, etc.—they didn’t come out of a can or the freezer section of the grocery store. They’re fresh, and most likely came from the farmers’ market that very morning.
You usually don’t get iced drinks, unless you ask for them. In Chinese medicine, ice cold drinks can bring your digestive process to a halt. It takes a lot of your body’s energy to warm your stomach back up after downing a glass of ice cold anything. That’s why you’re more likely to find room temperature water or tea with your meal.
In a similar vein, you’re unlikely to get much raw in a Chinese restaurant, also for a good reason. Food that is cooked, even slightly, is easier to digest than a plate full of raw food. Hence, the stir fry—cooked slightly, but still crunchy vegetables.
Your meal in a Chinese restaurant is frequently served family style, in which everyone shares. This is a good thing in that you will get a wide variety of foods, which translates into a wide variety of nutrients.
Dessert is minimal. You get a fortune cookie—no chocolate turtle walnut berry cheesecake for you. A little sweetness helps you digest your food—a lot of rich sugary food is a just a gut bomb.
What you won’t get is also important. You’re unlikely to find any kind of dairy products in a Chinese restaurant. The Chinese believe that milk is for babies and baby animals. In addition, something like three quarters of the world’s people are lactose intolerant, and in Chinese medicine, lots of dairy just creates phlegm. In fact, when I have a patient who has problems with phlegmmy lungs or sinuses, the first thing I tell them is to dial back on the dairy. (Don’t get me wrong, a little dairy is probably fine, but huge amounts of milk and cheese can create problems.)
Also, good luck trying to order a filet mignon at your local Chinese restaurant. You might get a filet of whatever fish is available, though, served up on a bed of vegetables.

If you steer clear of the deep fried food and the white rice, the Chinese Restaurant way of eating can be pretty healthy, and you can put it into practice at home—you don’t need to eat out at the Panda Buffet every night.

Ten Foods Used in Chinese Herbal Medicine

When we think about Chinese medicine, most of us immediately think of acupuncture, however, the use of herbs in healing is a cornerstone of Chinese medicine, too. The theory behind herbal medicine is that each herb exerts several different effects on the body through its inherent temperature, actions, and the organ(s) that it affects.

Like herbs, foods also have healing properties. However, some foods have stronger actions on the body and are in fact considered herbs as well as foods. Among them:

Ginger is best known for its ability to settle an upset stomach. Also considered a very warm herb, ginger can be combined with scallions in broth to fight off the early stages of a cold.

Walnuts have been getting the thumbs up lately as a good source of Omega 3 fatty acids. However, walnuts are also used in Chinese herbal formulas and in food therapy to moisten the intestines and relieve constipation. Walnuts are also considered a good tonic for the Chinese Kidney – think longevity.

Watermelon is a food you often crave on a hot, humid day, and for good reason. Watermelon is cooling and moistening, and is used in Chinese medicine for a condition called Summerheat, which is that blah nauseous feeling you get when it’s really hot and sticky out.

Mung beans are also good for Summerheat. Boil the mung beans until they are soft and drink the water they were cooked in. If that sounds gross, just add a little broth, seasoning and some vegetables, and make it into a soup.

Cinnamon is warm and gets your energy moving. It’s good if you have a cold with lots of aches and pains.

Scallions are also warming and dispersing (moving). They are most commonly used in the early stages of a cold boiled with ginger. Drink the broth and go to bed – these herbs are used to cause a mild sweat, which can diffuse a cold before it gets too severe.

Hawthorne fruit can be found in Asian markets, as a supplement, or as a sour candy called Hawflakes. Hawthorne is good for something called food stagnation in Chinese medicine, which is similar to indigestionGarlic is known to kill parasites. It’s used as a flu preventative in Chinese medicine, as well as for food toxicity (food poisoning), with symptoms such as diarrhea and dysentery.

Chinese dates are great to tonify the Chinese Spleen. Signs of a Spleen weakness include shortness of breath, fatigue, poor appetite, lack of energy. Chinese dates can also be found in Asian markets and some health food stores. They can be eaten alone or added to salads and other dishes.

In the last couple of years, Goji berries have gotten a lot of attention as a food for health and longevity. Also known as Chinese Wolfberries, Goji berries are red, sweet and sour, and can be eaten or added to foods like raisins. In Chinese herbal medicine Goji berries are used for eye problems like blurred vision and diminished eyesight due to aging. Eating Goji berries for longevity wouldn’t be wrong, as they also benefit the Chinese Kidneys, which are associated with aging.

Chinese Food Therapy

What to Eat for the Heat

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