Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) advocates a healthy and balanced diet. As a matter of fact, according to traditional Chinese medicine, food plays more than just a nutritional role in the body. When selected according to its relation in the five elements theory, food can have a medicinal effect on the body.
Therefore, when treating traditional Chinese medicine, it is advisable to avoid the following foods, as they may harm the body and inhibit the effectiveness of the Chinese herbs administered during treatment.
This advice is not applicable in all cases because it depends on the syndrome you are being treated for, whether you have a cold or heat syndrome, and whether you have too much yang or not enough yin, or vice versa.
Foods to avoid with traditional Chinese medicine
Cow’s milk
Chilli peppers
Turnips
Excessive caffeine, alcohol, and sugar
Raw, cold, processed, fatty, fried foods.
Cow’s milk
Cow’s milk should be avoided when taking Chinese medicines that supplement yang.
It is recommended not to consume milk when the traditional Chinese medicine treatment is aimed at supplementing yang and warmth in your body. The reason is milk is neutral, and sweat dampens it.
While milk can help nourish weakness, aid digestion, and tonify yin, it is not suited for people with cold-type flu and phlegm in their throats or bronchia. Yin represents the energy that is responsible for moistening and cooling bodily functions.
So, if you take a warming yang treatment to reduce dampness or strengthen soups, you should avoid drinking milk. This is because the warming medicinal yang effect of the medicines will be reduced and their effectiveness impaired.
Chilli peppers
Chilli peppers should be avoided when taking Chinese medicines that have the purpose of cooling.
Chilli peppers are a popular addition to dishes in damp or cold climates. The reason is chilli peppers are hot in nature and spicy in flavour.
While they warm and strengthen the stomach, helping eliminate coldness and internal dampness, they can reduce the effectiveness of herbs taken for cooling.
Turnips
Turnips should be avoided when taking Chinese medicines that have the purpose of supplementing qi.
Turnips are bitter in nature and cool in flavour, which helps reduce inner heat.
While turnips cool, they also aid bowel movement and urination.
Turnips can aid in the reduction of hot qi energy and can promote the elimination of heat-related phlegm.
However, suppose you are taking any Chinese herbs or concoctions to strengthen qi, such as “four gentlemen” soup containing ginseng, white atractylodis, poria cocos, and liquorice. In that case, you should restrain from eating turnips, as they may counter the effects of the qi supplementing concoction.
Eating turnips while taking qi strengthening medication is like mixing hot and cold or opposing movement with restraint. Therefore, it is advised to avoid turnips when diagnosed with qi stagnation.
Excessive caffeine, alcohol, and sugar
Coffee and other stimulating substances should be avoided during a treatment aimed at supplementing yin, as they deplete yin essence. (Image:acekreaions, Pixabay, CC0 1.0)
Caffeine, alcohol, and sugar are stimulating foods and deplete yin essence. Yin essence is the material basis needed by the body to function physically. Therefore, if you are being treated for yin deficiency, you should avoid excessive consumption of these foods, as they might inhibit the effects of the yang tonifying herbs and foods.
Raw, cold, processed, fatty, fried foods.
Hamburgers and raw, fatty, and processed foods should be restrained when taking Chinese herbs that nourish the spleen, as these foods will burden the stomach and adversely affect the spleen’s recovery.
Some illnesses are caused by the accumulation of dampness and phlegm in the body. Often, an excess of dampness and phlegm is caused in response to a particular illness or comes from the overuse of medication that promotes dampness, like certain antibiotics.
Often, foods that eliminate the dampness or the phlegm with heat are prescribed.
In this case, raw, cold, processed, fatty, and fried foods should be avoided, as they create excess dampness and burden the stomach and the spleen.
When a patient is diagnosed with damp phlegm, it is essential to nourish the spleen, supplement yang, and promote qi, so the dampness and the phlegm can be expelled.
The five flavours
In traditional Chinese medicine, food is more than just the sum of its nutritional components. Over a long time, Chinese medical practitioners have found that food also has energetic effects, which can be systematically traced back to the type of qi the flavour relates to in the structural system of the five elements.
The five flavours are sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. Each flavour also relates to one of the five kinds of qi:
More aspects make up the structural system of traditional Chinese medicine’s Five Element Theory. For example, the flavours of food in traditional Chinese medicine are also assigned to the four natures: cool, cold, warm, and hot.
In this regard, even the way food is prepared can make it more or less suitable to an individual’s bodily constitution.
The five flavours and the way food is prepared can impact the effectiveness of the administered herbs and medicines during a TCM treatment.
Taking note of these few simple principles can significantly promote the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine during the period of treatment.
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