You’d be well advised to seek ancient Chinese healing modalities if you are searching for more natural supplements and healing methods to attain wellbeing and good health.

Chinese nutritional therapy in Reading or Chinese dietary therapy weaves nutrition and the principles of Chinese medical tradition together.

Long recognized by the Chinese as a healing therapy, food has been used to treat both acute and chronic imbalances that can help people live healthy, strong, and long lives. The different types of foods have been evaluated and classified based on their inherent energetic, seasonal, and taste characteristics. Documentation about food therapy is believed to have started as far back 2000 BC, although its actual documentation was discovered during 500 BC.

Chinese food therapy, simply put, entails the usage of specific foods to assist in the healing of certain health conditions or to aid in the maintenance of healthy bodily functions. Food therapy experts follow the principle of yin and yang in food. The body’s heat is decreased or the metabolism of the body is lowered when eating yin foods; on the other hand, yang foods are known to boost metabolism and add to the heat of the body.

According to the Chinese, foods can be grouped into four categories: meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Dairy products have no classification in Chinese nutritional therapy. They are deemed to be unfit for consumption for humans. Eating a balanced diet on a daily basis will consist of the following combinations of food: 10 -15 % meats, 30 -40% vegetables, and 40% grains. The rest of the food is made up of fruits and nuts.

Foods, in Chinese nutritional therapy, are classified even further according to taste. There are five types of taste: sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and pungent. Each of these tastes is known to directly affect a specific body organ.

• The sour flavor enters and affects the gallbladder and liver.
• The sweet flavor enters the abdomen and spleen.
• The bitter flavor enters the small intestine and heart.
• The salty flavor enters the bladder and kidney.
• The pungent flavor enters the large intestine and lungs.

When foods are eaten moderately, they positively affect the organ, but if they’re over consumed, they negatively affect the organ they are associated with.

The sweet and pungent flavors are deemed to be warming and are yang flavors. They course energy outward and upward within the body. All the other three flavors–sour, salty, and bitter–are cooling and yin-related. They move energy inward and lower within the body.

Therefore, when you use the abovementioned information, you can, for example, use cooling foods to balance out overheated conditions. For individuals who feel very cold, warming foods are ideal. You can use foods that are building if you are lacking or deficient in something.

The practitioners and adherents of Chinese nutritional therapy believe in the axiom “you are what you eat.”

A cure for a cough can be a basic example of how Chinese nutritional therapy works. A Cantonese remedy for a cough involves the eating of dried duck gizzards, watercress, and apricot kernels. The components are cooked slowly for several hours, and for flavor, a bit of pork can be added (chicken or beef can’t be used because they can counteract the healing qualities of the watercress). The watercress eliminates the inordinate levels of yang in the body, while the apricots target the lungs and duck gizzards help balance the yin yang of the food concoction.

To cure cough caused by hot lungs, pears can be a proper food remedy. They are slightly sour and quite sweet and have a cooling disposition as well as a unique connection to the lungs. They’re able to clear excess mucus and heat, while dispelling and moistening the lungs. However, for people with a feeble digestive system, this food may not be good for their condition.

Chinese nutritional therapy transcends the basic idea of carbohydrates and proteins in the Western concept of food. Chinese nutritional therapy can be as complex or simple as we make it. It relies a lot on common sense and as with any type of therapy, should be used with a bit of caution. Acupuncturists usually recommend food to their patients based on the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnosis of the patient since it is inherent in Chinese medicine to treat the person as a whole and not merely the symptoms that are currently manifesting.

You should allocate a little bit of time to learn the wisdom of Chinese medicine—you’d be surprised how much it can benefit your health.