digestion Archives - Acupuncture in the Park

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.

Clutter, Chinese Medicine, and Your Digestion

In our unending drive to consume and acquire more things, clutter is becoming more and more of a problem for many people. Clutter is unsightly, messy, and it feels chaotic. It can make you feel unsettled and even anxious when you walk into an area full of…stuff.

There are a couple of reasons people over-accumulate. One is to hold onto the past. If your basement is full of old record albums, campaign buttons, and ticket stubs from past concerts, your clutter profile is about remembering the good times you’ve had. A second reason for amassing lots of stuff is about the future. If your mess consists of old radio knobs, building materials, rusty screws, and half empty bags of grout, you’re holding on because you think you must might need this junk someday. Some people belong in both camps. Either way, your accumulating habit means that on some level, you’re forgetting to live in the present.

You may be wondering what clutter has to do with Chinese medicine, and the answer is that it has everything to do with your Chinese Spleen and the process of digestion. Your Spleen, paired with your Stomach, is the organ system of digestion according to Chinese medicine. They take in food, convert it into energy and nutrients, and your body excretes what’s not needed. This is a very physical explanation, but in Chinese medicine, organ systems also have energetic and symbolic components, too.

Daverick Leggett, in his (fabulous!) book, Recipes for Self-Healing, describes the relationship between your Spleen and the process of sifting, sorting, and letting go. He says:

Digestion begins with a desire to eat which leads to the intake of food. The food is then sorted into what is usable and sent to where it can be used or stored in the body. What cannot be used is excreted. The thinking process follows a similar path: the desire for knowledge leads to the intake of information which is then sifted and sorted. Whatever can be put to immediate use is applied and the rest is stored for later. Irrelevant or unusable information is rejected and forgotten.

Leggett is referring not only to the digestive process, but the digestion of ideas. A healthy mind is able to use helpful information and let go of what is not helpful. However, when you’re unable to do this, something akin to indigestion of the mind occur–you worry, dwell on the past, become anxious, and harbor anger.

In many aspects, this is the same process by which we accumulate clutter. It begins with a desire to own, which leads to acquiring material things. Ideally, what is useful is put to good use, and what is not is recycled or thrown away over time. However, when the inability to sift, sort, and let go somehow goes awry, you begin to build up clutter. Think of clutter as indigestion of your personal space.

So where to you start if clutter is bogging you down? One way to begin is by strengthening your Chinese Spleen through good digestion.

However, cleaning up your personal space would serve you well, too. It will alleviate the stress of living and working in a mess, and will symbolically begin the process of better digestion. Here are some simple tips to get the process rolling:

Start small. Begin with one corner of one room, a two foot perimeter around the couch, or the kitchen table. Once that area is clean, keep it that way and move onto the next spot as time allows.
Set aside 10 or 15 minutes each day for cleaning up clutter. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done without feeling overwhelmed.
Create storage systems. For those things that you really want to keep, find a place where they belong and put them there. This is more than picking something up and shoving it into a drawer. Put similar things in the same place. For example, put all your art supplies into a bin in the basement, all the books you intend to read into a basket, and all your office supplies into an organizer on your desk.
Give it away. Some of the stuff cluttering up your home can be used by someone else. Whether you give books to your friends or take a box of gently used clothing to Goodwill, you’ll be giving your stuff a new life and getting it out of your space.
Throw it away. Okay, nobody really wants those sparkly socks with the holes in each heel or the cute little whatsit with the top missing. Not even you. Throw that stuff out. Take a deep breath, let go, take that junk to the trash, and drag the bin to the curb.
Incoming! Find a spot for incoming papers. Mail and papers tend to be one of the worst sources of clutter. Set up an in box or a basket for all of your mail and papers until you have the time to go through and pay bills, recycle, etc.
Get some help. If you have a packrat personality, enlist the help of a trusted and gentle friend who can help you go through some of your stuff. Their job is to ask whether you really need to keep that pink boa you wore for Halloween in 1997.
Follow the two year rule. Get rid of anything you haven’t used in the past two years. If you haven’t touched in in two years, you don’t need it.

With a little time, some creativity, and commitment, you can make the clutter go away. By doing so, you’ll be creating phycial and emotional space for yourself that feels peaceful.

Your Emotions, Digestion, and Acupuncture

Have you ever heard people talk about having butterflies in their stomach, a gut feeling, a nervous stomach, or a visceral reaction? Of course you have. We use these terms because we intuitively know that our emotions are very closely tied to our digestion.

One of the most common conditions that we see in the clinic is something called a Liver and Spleen disharmony. This just means that strong emotions are interfering with the digestive process. If you’ve ever had a huge emotional upset that has ruined your appetite or given you an upset stomach, you know what I’m talking about. A Liver and Spleen disharmony is similar, but it usually works in slow motion.

Your Chinese Liver is an organ system that oversees the smooth flow of everything in your body, including digestion, bowels, circulation, menses, and emotions. Stress, anger, or an emotional upheaval can cause the Liver system to stagnate. When this happens, one of the first things it affects is your Chinese Spleen, which is your organ of digestion.

In the clinic this pattern is a player in many, if not most, conditions affecting our patients. It can manifest in conditions such as Irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, depression, insomnia, PMS, fatigue, and even obesity, to name just a few.

So what exactly is happening when you are stressed out, upset or worried? Your stomach is a muscle, and when you’re in the emotional wringer, that stomach muscle contracts, making it difficult for you to digest much of anything.

Why you have this reaction goes back to the fight or flight response you experience when you’re stressed or feel threatened. Your body responds by shutting down those functions that aren’t necessary to run or fight, including digestion. The idea is that in ancient times, feeling threatened was a short-lived affair—only as long as it took to chase off or kill the wild animal lingering in front of your cave.

Today, however, many of us are in a constant state of fight or flight due to the unrelenting stress of our daily lives—whether it’s a cranky boss, a sick kid, a late mortgage payment, or having too much to do. Constant emotional upheaval doesn’t give your body time to recover its equilibrium, and your digestion stays on the back burner, unable to do its job effectively.

What can you do to get your digestion back on track and working efficiently? The most important thing to know is that it’s a two-step process: getting your stress and emotions under control, while you pamper your digestive tract. Acupuncture can be extremely effective for this kind of imbalance. In fact, many of our patients who have recovered from this kind of pattern never dreamt that they could ever feel good again. Two things you can do for yourself:

-Calm down and chill out. This may seem to be the most obvious, but is often the hardest thing to do. Find time during your day to relax; whether you take a yoga class, meditate, go fishing, or take a stroll in the woods. Without decompressing, your emotions and digestion will not have an opportunity to recover.

-Pamper your digestion. This means sitting down and actually eating a meal—not something on the run in between meetings or kids’ sporting events. This also means eating good food, fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains and a little protein. Cooking most of your food makes it easier to digest—raw foods take more digestive effort to break down. The same goes for very cold foods; when you drink or eat something frozen, it uses up a lot of your digestive energy. Chewing your food and enjoying the dining process will help you digest your meal more effectively.

Feeling a Lump in Your Throat?

I have seen people in my clinic before complaining of a lump in their throat, but Alan’s* symptoms were the most severe I had every encountered. Alan was a 42 year old realtor and father of three. He came to me because he had the feeling of a lump in his throat, which was making it difficult for him to eat solid food. Every time he tried to eat, he was unable to get the food down past the lump. By the time he came to me, he was only able to drink liquids and was rapidly losing weight.

In my clinic, I see a number of people who are looking for relief from stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions. Many of my patients who are struggling with their emotional health also report feeling something like a lump caught in their throat.

These patients describe this lump as the feeling of something being caught at the bottom of their throat, and it won’t go away no matter what they do. The lump can be mild, and mentioned only when I ask, or it can be so severe, like Alan’s, that it will limit a patient’s diet. For some people, certain foods seem to aggravate the feeling, among them meat, onions, acidic foods, and alcohol.

So what is this lump and where does it come from? In most cases, this lump sensation is a spasm of one of the muscles of the esophagus. It can physically be caused by a throat infection such as strep, being overweight or esophageal reflux. Difficulty swallowing can be the sign of more serious conditions, and should be checked out by your doctor if it lasts for more than a week or two.

In Chinese medicine, this lump is called Plum Pit Qi because it feels like a plum pit is caught in your throat. The Chinese believe that Plum Pit Qi is the result of a situation that is figuratively too hard to swallow, so it gets caught in your throat. That’s why all of the patients I have seen with this condition also are struggling with some kind of life stress or mental health issue.

Plum Pit Qi is a diagnosis that encompasses a Liver and Spleen disharmony combined with phlegm. A disharmony between the Chinese Liver and Spleen, in general, means that your energy is stagnating (usually emotional energy) and beginning to mess up your digestion. In Chinese medicine, phlegm can be both visible (what you see when you blow your nose or cough) and invisible. Invisible phlegm can be the result of energy stagnating combined with poor fluid metabolism, and is the cause of many lumps and bumps in your body. Things like goiters, tumors, and cysts can be considered invisible phlegm.

In the clinic, Plum Pit Qi can be successfully and naturally treated. I like to combine acupuncture with Chinese herbs for this condition. The formula Ban Xia Hou Po Tang is formulated specifically for Plum Pit Qi, is safe, and works incredibly well. Self care for Plum Pit Qi includes tracking the foods that aggravate your symptoms, and working on resolving stress, anxiety, and the situations in your life that are too difficult to swallow.

For more information on Qi stagnation, specific action steps for a Liver and Spleen disharmony, resolving phlegm, and foods for your particular body constitution, check out Simple Steps: The Chinese Way to Better Health.

*Names and identifying details have been changed.

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