TCM Food Cures

[Guest]

My aunt who has arthritis visits a TCM practitioner who advised food cures for her ailments. Can you explain more about the Chinese system of food cures, please?

[Melissa Carr]

"Food cures" are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to bring balance to a person's health. They are dietary treatments based on TCM principles and diagnosis, and some of the reasons for their effectiveness are yet to be understood through Western analysis. Others can be understood through nutritional analysis of the food; for example, foods such as garlic and onions are high in sulphur, which is needed to rebuild tissues and help calcium absorption. Consequently garlic is recommended to help arthritis pain.

TCM assesses the action of a food according to its flavour (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and bland) and its "temperature" or energy (cool, cold, neutral, warm, and hot). These aspects are determined according to what the food does in the body and not necessarily by our perception of it. For example, TCM classifies rice and beef as sweet and green tea as cooling, even when we drink it hot.

It is important to eat meals with a balance of food properties, although the balance point is different for everyone. A person who suffers from arthritis that is worsened by cold should eat warming foods such as ginger, soups, and cooked vegetables. Conversely, a person with arthritis that is characterized by red, swollen, and warm joints should eat cooling foods such as wheatgrass or barley-grass juices and more raw foods.
Remembering that there is no "magic cure" for every case, the following are some common simple remedies taken from the book "Chinese Healing Foods & Herbs: Natural Remedies from the Chinese Cupboard(Pelanduk Publications, 2000) by Dr. Fang Jing Pei.

Allergies:
•Process equal amounts of onions and carrots in a blender; mix in a small amount of honey to taste and drink 6 oz (150 ml) daily.

Arthritis:
•Crush 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and take with honey 3 times daily.
•Drink 8 oz (240 ml) fresh cherry juice twice daily.

Headache:
•Mix equal amounts of celery, carrot, and cucumber juices and take 8 oz (240 ml) twice daily.

High cholesterol:
•Steep 6 garlic cloves in cool water for 6 hours; add chives or cinnamon to taste and drink 24 oz (720 ml) daily.
•Pulverize fresh carrots and apples and drink 8 oz (240 ml) twice daily.

Insomnia:
•Boil 30 to 40 grams of lily flowers and drink the tea sweetened with honey.
•Mix 1 tsp (5 ml) honey and a dash of lemon juice in 1-cup (250 ml) boiling water and drink 45 minutes before bedtime.