I'm often asked about "detoxing" by patients. Somehow this idea has more than crept into our western society that we should cleanse or detox our body periodically by way of purging, fasting, clean eating, or various means which make you sweat, poo or wee the so-called "toxins" out of your body.
Chinese medicine has an entirely different take on this idea. Rather than detox your body we shouldn't be eating so much crap in the first place. TCM essentially says it's unhealthy to change the diet so severely, as required by the detox diets, and also why would you ingest so much "toxins" in the first place?
Diet and digestion is so different in TCM than the typical western way, it's a full lesson to undersand it properly. My podcast explains about the TCM diet and books i can recommend on the topic are listed below.
Now that you have the basic understanding of digestion according to TCM, it becomes clear that every process requires energy - and energy is what we want to conserve rather than waste. Every excretion which looses heat is essentially loosing Yang Qi. (sweating, bowel movements, urinating)
The best way to avoid needing to detox is to eat clean, cooked and self-prepared foods rather than eating out, buying pre-cooked meals and foods or eating snacky bars and
For most healthy people in summer time a few pieces of fruit (max 2) a day is fine. For people with cold in their body or sensitive digestion and weak Spleen energy, best to avoid any cold and raw until the Spleen energy has recovered and digestion is stronger.
A discussion on Dampness is probably necessary for a true understanding on what happens to the Spleen and Stomach when you eat crap foods all the time. This will have to be another blog post!
Christmas is pretty much a time of excessive eating drinking and consuming irregular meals, many of which are heavier foods. For many people in the corporate world, this festive season is a bit like a kids birthday party the whole month.
Lots of celebrations, busy times accompanied by stress of all the preparations and presents that must be found, the bills and the winding up of the year for many people accompanied by the poor diet habits makes December a receipe for weight gain and "toxicity".
What can be done then? Here are my tips for surviving the festive season from a Chinese medicine perspective:
1) Make time for exercise - Even though we are really busy from now to Christmas, make time for your body to get active. Sweating is a natural way to push out the toxins and in the Summer season this is the right thing to do acorsign to Chinese medicine. If your part of the world is in winter now (my readers in UK or USA and Europe) then exercise with sweating is not warranted. Just do stretching, keep your body active with moving about but now is not the season for pumping weights at the gym!
2) Eat Soup on the non-party days Even if you have 4 party days out a week, there are still 3 days at home you can eat regular meals, have AFD's and treat your body nicely. What I do is make a big pot of vege soup and freeze it in disposable cups in portion sizes. Sure eating fresh is better than frozen but who has time to make soup every day? If you do then go for it!
3) Eat Dampness draining foods - BARLEY, MUNG BEANS and ADZUKI BEANS
these are the top 3 foods which can eliminate dampness from the body. Barley is really easy to incorporate as you don't have to soak it you can just cook it like rice. Add barley into soups or use it as a porridge or like you would rice with your favourite meats or veges.
Tip for barley - if you find it has a laxative effect you can roast the whole barley until aromatic before cooking. The roasting process makes it more alkaline.
Roasted barley is also used in Japanese and Chinese "digestive" teas as it aids digestion - settles the stomach.
Hopefully these 3 tips will help you have a better festive season experience this year.
RECOMMENDED TEXTS ON TCM DIET THERAPY
Bob Flaws - The Tao of Healthy Eating - Blue Poppy Press (Easy to read and understand for lay people. My number one book I recommend to my students in TCM Diet Therapy)
Paul Pitchford - Healing with Whole foods - North Atlantic Books (Although this text dosen't follow strictly TCM, Pitchford slants towards macrobiotics in many instances, it does have some fantastic recipes)
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