Staying active as a teenager and young adult is never an issue, but as we age, it can be a challenge to keep moving, especially if you suffer from a health condition or injury. However, it’s important to keep yourself moving as it can lead to a host of physical and mental health benefits. Follow these three tips to stay active no matter what your age or fitness level. continue reading
Patients often ask me what they should eat for breakfast. Most Americans are conditioned to either skip breakfast, have something simple and unhealthy like a bagel or toast, or something “healthy” like yogurt or smoothies. While the latter might check off as such within the context of a scientific laboratory, obviously Eastern Medicines hold that uncooked foods are more difficult to digest, thereby ultimately providing us with less nutrients, in spite of having maybe started with more on the grocery shelf.
While going through Chinese Medical school my own microbiome was a minor disaster, and one of my teachers who was treating me at the time requested I eat sweet potatoes (with my eggs) for breakfast.
“You want me to eat Thanksgiving for breakfast?” I asked. He laughed and asked if I’d ever had eggs with hash browns or french fries. Of course I had, countless times.
He rhetorically asked me what the difference was —if I chopped sweet potatoes in the same way as hash browns, even adding onions to my liking. For years to follow sweet potatoes became my daily breakfast. And many of my health issues gradually improved during that time.
I became perpetually more educated in health and self-care, also about food itself. I learned that sweet potatoes are not in season for the majority of the year, which means during those periods they are, a) not as much what my body needs, and b) likely lacking in their maximum nutrients. From yams it was an easy transition to exploring other vegetables as side dishes with breakfast, which I realized was a good way to get in some daily recommended portions of greens from the start.
For many years now my breakfast has been eggs with a cooked, in-season vegetable, and would struggle to imagine starting the day any other way. In the Winter we eat a variety of root vegetables—whether roasted potatoes, carrots, radishes, or turnips—in Summer it’s more leafy greens. As for the ongoing, raging egg debate, now reignited by many functional medicine docs, all I can say is I’ve eaten eggs every single day for decades. I don’t doubt some peoples’ allergies to them, in which case they should surely avoid until that allergy is rectified. For the rest of us eggs provide invaluable nutrients in a very light, easily metabolized way. In Chinese Medicine they are said to nourish the blood, so much so that the yolk is even an ingredient in the herbal formula, “Huang Lian E Jiao Tang,” which is used to clear inflammatory heat that exists as a result of healthy systemic fluid deficiency. This “blood” benefit is probably why eggs are so highly recommended by many holistic fertility doctors.
EGGS AND “ZUCCH” (as my daughter calls it)
In contrast to the requisite ruling out of red flags by most nurses in conventional medical settings, the reason Chinese Medical practitioners ask about almost every system in your body is because we are diagnosing based on complete patterns—not just symptoms.
For example, if someone comes in for acid reflux, we cannot know their prescriptions until we know how often they urinate or poop, what each one is like, whether they experience headaches or dizziness, which part of the head they get their headaches in, how is their appetite, how thirsty they are during the day versus in the evening, etc. etc. This is because we are one of the only true forms of holistic medicine.
So, what is normal?
A normal amount of urination is approximately 6 times a day (yes, this includes waking at night). Much less than that and you are likely either retaining, or not drinking enough water in the first place. More than 6 indicates either a weakness in the urogenital microbiome, or excessive inflammation in the urogenital microbiome, which over time can lead to local weakness by putting strain on it. The remainder of the intake questions will determine which of the two is the case.
People should sweat, but not excessively so. Chinese Medicine is critical of HIIT or marathon training, hot yoga, and sauna therapy in most cases. While these might all feel great in the short-term and/or be proven to offer certain isolated benefits in the short-term, we believe they ultimately deplete the body’s healthy metabolic fluids. On the other hand, never sweating (exercising) at all is obviously just as harmful.
While some people barely break a sweat even when they exercise, others are drenched by the time they finish their morning commute, especially triggered by certain climates or seasons. The former can either indicate body fluid depletion or a malfunction of the immunological “qi.” The latter can either indicate inflammation, fluid retention, or also a malfunction of the immunological “qi.” This is where diagnoses and prescriptions get tricky.
Many western doctors have now begun to recognize the health benefits of the Chinese herb, astragalus, which on one hand is great. On the other hand, their recognition by way of empirical studies poses the challenge of having no comprehension of Chinese Medicine. If you give astragalus to the former example of a “cold-body person” with a simple immunological malfunction they will feel amazing and sing your praises. If you give it to someone with both immunological malfunction AND fluid deficiency it will do almost nothing. Worse, if you give it to a “hot-body person” with inflammation and fluid retention they will feel much worse.
Finally, it is normal to be thirsty, for 6-9 cups of water per day. A lack of thirst tells us there is fluid retention in the microbiome, signaling to the brain that it’s got plenty of liquid down here—no need to hydrate! This is dangerous, and better to fake it ‘til you make it in acquiring thirst. On the other pole are those who are ravenously or insatiably thirsty, which informs us of inflammatory heat in either their respiratory microbiome, gastrointestinal microbiome, or both, drying out their fluids. As always, the most complicated patterns are those who are generally unthirsty followed by sudden bouts of desperate thirst. This is a combination pattern that requires more thought, trial, and error.
I hope this was interesting and informative. One of western medicine’s shortcomings is its reliance on tests and labs to determine whether we are healthy or normal. While these are undeniably valuable, they tell only part of the story, which is why so many diseases get caught too late. Chinese Medicine is more brilliant in its neurotic recognition of pathologies in any abnormality, any imbalance, as something to rectify before it spirals into disease.
Well, if Covid and seasonal allergies had a lovechild its name would apparently be the upper respiratory pathogens of Winter, 2023. I experienced both personally and professionally, not only the severity of these viruses’ symptoms, but maybe even more troubling was how stubborn they were to resolve. Coughs that would linger for weeks on end, allergies turned to sinus infections, and one friend had the shingles virus transform into a vicious cough, which in my humble opinion occurred because he didn’t properly treat the former with Chinese Medicine.
I am grateful we seem to be passing simultaneously, likely not coincidentally, out of this post-pandemic ripple effect along with the cold weather. Besides dilating the blood vessels of our respiratory microbiomes, thereby giving pathogens wider exit pathways, the warm air should eventually aid in transforming latent mucus and boosting our metabolic energies enough to in turn boost our immunological energies, or “wei qi.”
I plead ignorance, in the past few years more than ever, to most current events, trends on social media, philosophical platitudes, and pop culture; and I often question whether that makes me an “ignorant person”—especially since we will all eventually die still relatively ignorant about most things and peoples. Besides my family, I devote most of my time and mental energy to Chinese Medicine. Whatever is left over at the end of each day are mere scraps, an hour or two at most, and I choose to shut my mind off with friends and/or sports. Maybe in another chapter of my life I’ll read more articles and keep up with external themes and events.
Before blowing my own nose about 50 times a day one week back in January, my lungs exacerbated by the need to rid themselves of phlegm, I had never heard of “the man cold.” Apparently, amongst the infinite social media cliches is one that guys are overly dramatic or whiney about their common colds, obviously underscoring “girl power,” which is a great thing, but also the idea that men are weak(er), which might not be great, or accurate.
Recall the first wave of Covid, we were quickly informed that men, along with the elderly and obese, were most susceptible to severe infections. Why? Well, from a Chinese Medical perspective men have more heat and/or yang qi in the body’s upper region. On one hand it is why we are fortunate enough to have generally more energy. It is consistent with our generally superior upper body strength; though it is also why the inflammatory cytokine response is more intense in the context of upper respiratory viruses.
If you require this be translated in conventional medical terms—and most westerners do—as a result of our increased testosterone and androgens, men possess higher numbers of T cells and Natural Killer cells than women, whereas women have greater B cells, neutrophils and phagocytic activity, which makes them more adept at clearing viruses, as well as the toxins from vaccines. Women also have a greater susceptibility to dysregulation of innate lymphoid cells, which makes them generally more prone to autoimmune disease. (source: https://www.nature.com/articles/nri.2016.90.pdf)
Returning to the brilliant simplicity of Chinese Medical jargon: It is the heat from our body’s (masculine) yang qi that provides ample metabolic strength to regulate our lymphoid cells and avoid autoimmune disease. It is that same heat, left uncontrolled, that creates a more inflammatory cytokine storm in the lungs and makes clearing external pathogens more stubborn. It’s not because your husband is being a little bitch.
As mental health issues have come to the forefront in recent years, many have sought more natural treatment options that don’t involve pharmaceuticals and their potentially harmful effects. Acupuncture has become a popular option for treating mental health issues, including depression. But does it work? Before we answer that question, let’s give a proper definition to both acupuncture and depression. continue reading
