A few weeks ago I shared some basic principles around managing stress and anxiety through healthy eating. In that article I mentioned that it is difficult to give advice about diet because it is so individual. What can help one person could be detrimental to another. To explain this further I’ll give a brief introduction to food energetics as we understand them in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
In TCM, foods can heating or cooling, totally separate to the temperature that the food is on our tongue. An example of this from our herbs and spice selection, is that chilli is a hot food and mint is a cool food. You can see how this makes sense in how we add chilli to spice a meal up and add heat to it, quite apart from temperature. Mint added to summer drinks eg. mint lemonade or a mojito give a cooling effect, even after the ice has melted.
The manner in which we prepare and/or cook a food can also affect how heating or cooling. Raw food such as salad is generally cooling while stewing would be warming and grilling adds yet more heat.
Why is heating or cooling important?
We all tend to have imbalances in ourselves to a greater or lesser degree. In TCM these imbalances are called patterns of disharmony. If your pattern of disharmony includes something that indicates that you have too much internal heat (which can also be a deficiency in cooling) e.g. hot flushes, then adding further heat through your food, could make your symptoms worse.
Food energetics is about much more than just heat and cold though. In TCM we look at certain Organs of the body as being a set of functions that support our physical and mental health. Different foods can support or inhibit different Organs, thereby allowing us to attain better balance in our overall health.
If you’d like to go deeper than just an introduction to food energetics and start to understand which foods can specifically improve your health and which you may be better to avoid, then please get in touch (email me or text me on 07865 593972) to book a telehealth appointment.
Stay safe, stay well, stay home.
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