Traditional Chinese Medicine
Black Friday & Raw Ginger
Friendly reminders for the next cold month of holiday season: To ward off cold weather most of the body’s excitatory and invigorating substances rush to the surface, thereby leaving our metabolic and endocrinological layer more vulnerable to cold and/or hypo-functionality. This can be the case even in places like Los Angeles, where the climate is relatively colder than what its inhabitants are used to.
A daily cup of ginger can warm our “more internal parts,” as to do with organs and hormones. I would recommend 3 slices, as depicted here, simmered in 3-4 cups of water for 30-40 minutes. If you’re dealing with sinus and/or respiratory issues you can use 4-5 slices, which changes the chemistry of the ginger to act more upon the lungs. If your physiological pattern includes “blood deficiency,” it is advisable to combine with a teaspoon or tablespoon of honey, or a few red dates, so as to not aggravate dryness.
Little known facts about raw ginger:
- can raise blood pressure and heart rate
- Increases stomach motility and acid secretion
- Evidenced to have an antibiotic effect against Salmonella typhi (Typhoid fever), Vibrio cholerae (Cholera), and Trichomanas vaginalis (an STD). Obviously, consult your physician. If used in such cases it should be within the context of a greater, targeted, customized formula
Second and final reminder: BLACK FRIDAY!
$50 OFF all follow up sessions and $100 off initial visits between now and New Year’s. Exclusions include those with 10 discounted session packages, those receiving superbills, and of course insurance patients.
Mitigating the Side Effects Of Holiday Indulging
As all of our stomachs, intestines, livers, and pancreases quiver in fear, anticipating the overindulgences to come in the next six weeks, there are steps we can take to mitigate their onslaught of abuse, first and foremost of which is to potentially be mindful to not over-abuse—an unrealistic request for enough of us! So, what OTHER MEASURES can we take?
- Strength training: By making good use of the excess proteins and calories we can getbigger and badder musculature, and since the muscles draw upon the pancreas and stomach for tonification, strength-training provides the additional benefit of putting less burden on these organs, enabling them to better deal with the burden of parties.
- Hot tea: Booze if you must leading up to, during, and even after the meal, but bookmark your gluttony with hot tea—either Pu-Erh, which contains naturally occurring pro-biotics, or whichever flavor floats the boat. Hot tea will dilate and relax the blood vessels of your enteric nervous system (belly) which aids in digestion by breaking down the inevitable accumulations of gravy, yams, and butter.
- Breakfast! Some people make the mistake of skipping breakfast (or even lunch) the morning of Thanksgiving to “make room” for the feast to come. This is an error, as skipping breakfast actually sacrifices some of the gut’s enzymes and beneficial acids, which can make digesting the feast more difficult. Fine if you want to go small, but have something, preferably, oatmeal, millet congee, or eggs and vegetables.
- Stress management: The holidays bring at least one challenging individual into our homes, so in the words of my daughter’s favorite song: “Let it go.” Ignore if possible, just for the day, and re-address if you must the next time you speak to them.
- CHINESE HERBS! Last but not least, YOU GUESSED IT! Commonly used ingredients include hawthorn berry, which can lower cholestrol, magnolia bark if you’re the type who feels gassy and stuffiness in the chest, tangerine peel if you feel too low on appetite to get properly gluttonous, obviously ginger and licorice, the latter if you tend to GERD, also barley sprouts or medicated leaven, which are great for food stagnation.
If you’d like a brief consultation to determine what is the best gluttony-support formulation for your body type and indulgence to come, please don’t hesitate. If not for my own gout disease and general health awareness, I myself would have the inclination to over-indulge frequently, regardless of holiday season.
A brief expression of gratitude. I realize that Chinese medicine is inconvenient. It’s expensive, it tastes bad or it hurts for a moment, it takes time out of the day, etc. etc. I am grateful to all of my patients for trusting me, relying upon me, and staying the course, often through the trial-and-error process that in my opinion real medicine should look like. Happy Thanksgiving!
Chinese Medical Dermatology
November is skin care awareness month, and although it is not a subject I discuss often in my blog or instagram, dermatology makes up a huge part of Chinese medical literature. As always, I hope and believe people will consider us to treat the actual root (not “the root” that certain pharmaceuticals’ TV ads claim to) of any skin issues that might befall them.
The first time my daughter had Covid she recovered quickly, as most babies and toddlers do, but it left her with some atopic skin issue on her face. We applied some topical creams that had been helpful with issues in the past, but to no avail. I consulted a teacher of mine, who recommended a formula we don’t generally think of for dermatology. It would be more categorized—that is oversimplified—as an immunological treatment, containing all the usual suspects for an exterior virus: Ephedra, ginger, wild ginger, cinnamon branch, etc.
My apologies for the cliche, magical resolution anecdote, but it does happen and did so here, probably and partially because of how young and fundamentally healthy she is. Her skin cleared up within 24 hours, to never return. We didn’t even finish the recommended dosages.
In Chinese medicine the liver is said to connect to our tendons, the stomach to our muscles (which is why proper diet can potentiate strength training), kidneys to the bones, and lungs to the skin. One way or another, most skin issues can be traced back to either our lungs, or their “paired organ,” the large intestine. In the case of my daughter, it was obviously the former.
There are 2 fundamental reasons why our skin erupts. Either inflammation trapped somewhere in the body is seeking an escape route, or a lack of blood and vital substances in the body are failing to reach the surface to lubricate and/or nourish our proverbial “exterior.” To assign the same prescription to both patterns based on a biomedical label would be ludicrous.
Cases of the former generally present as hot, red, itchy, and angry, whereas the latter are paler in color, dryer in texture, and more troubling cosmetically than anything else. Nevertheless, cosmetics matter. We’re all entitled to nice skin—more importantly to the quality and quantity of blood that belies it.
Hot and red, itchy skin generally benefits from a (closer to) vegan diet, plus bitter and anti-inflammatory herbs and foods, such as dandelion greens, kale, green tea, and a hiatus from alcohol. Acupuncture points are used to clear heat and fluid retention. We might also bleed particular vessels near the sites of eruptions to help move stagnant blood perpetuating the vicious cycle. Herbal medicines might revolve around gardenia fruit and scutellaria bark.
Pale, dry skin earns the opposite recommendation: Meat, beef, and more meat, bone broth, eggs, and plenty of sleep to help restore and regenerate blood. Black tea instead of green tea, the latter of which might further weaken the stomach with its bitterness; and moxibustion more than acupuncture to help warm and strengthen the organs. Herbal medicines likely revolve more around angelica and peony root, both of which can also be instrumental in reducing menstrual cramps. In both patterns, abstinence from dairy is advisable.
Finally, and as always, important to get your annual skin cancer scans with your dermatologist to rule out anything that is better taken care of with modern technology.
Halloween: from a Chinese Medical View
FEAR, in Chinese medicine, is said to harm the kidneys, a mechanism that is easily relatable and biomedically translatable in that when scared, our brains signal to our adrenal glands to release cortisol and adrenaline, which in turn subjectively exhausts our hormonal reserves, or the Chinese concept of healthy blood and fluids.
This blood and fluids are necessary to attract our excitatory hormones and neurotransmitters back downwards so they can do things like transform fluids and allow us to sleep and relax. As they deplete, with age, stress, and self-destruction, we become more prone to more easily releasing cortisol, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. Eventually we run out of cortisol, adrenaline, as well as our fluids that fall under the concept of “blood,” and we die, buried in the ground like the ghouls, goblins, ghosts, and skeletons that started this whole problem in the first place!
CANDY, in Chinese medicine, is said to harm the spleen, which really just means it destroys our digestive system—the system whose job it is to produce the blood and reserves that are necessary to mitigate the side effects of adrenal and cortisol spikes that are relatively unavoidable in modern life. I’ve had many patients who grew up in foreign countries relate to me that while they had plenty of sweets and treats as kids growing up, nothing was as saccharin sweet as what they tasted upon arriving in the U.S.
While it’s nice to be nice to ourselves, forgiving and all that, I believe packaged junk food that really doesn’t expire should be invisible to us if we wish to have any hope for long term health. My wife and I unapologetically shelter our daughter from it as much as possible for as long as possible to give her organs as much time to develop sans the perversion of corporate crap.
With that said… the reason many of us experience sweet cravings when stressed is because cortisol and adrenalin are up, therefore blood and fluids are down, and what substance to better mimic the mush of mucosal fluids than SWEETS? The ancient Chinese used (relatively) sweet flavor herbs, such as red dates, licorice, and rehmannia to “calm the liver”—that is to mitigate hyper-reactions of adrenaline.
SO IT MAKES SENSE! THE LOGIC OF HALLOWEEN IS CONSISTENT WITH THAT OF DAOIST BIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES! Go out, get scared, have fun, then come home and enjoy a few treats 🙂 Discard or donate the rest. Ignore candy and forget about treats for the rest of the year, or at least until Christmas, for God’s sake, and use healthier options to reattract your stressed floating “yang qi” downwards:
- Nut butters like from Fixx and Fogg
- Dark chocolates like from Blue Stripes
- Coconut yogurts maybe with red dates, goji berries, and/or maple syrup, and/or nut butters with dark chocolate… ANYTHING besides refined junk food, please.
Just as “fear harms the kidneys,” excess anger is said to harm the liver, grief does the lungs, and worry harms digestion as much, if not more than poor diet. None of us, myself included, will ever be immune to worry (no vaccine for that (yet)!), so friendly reminder to have a context of friends, spiritual practice, and/or spiritual community to lean on.
Happy Halloween!
What Fall Flavor Are You?
The brilliant rationale behind why the ancient Chinese associated certain seasons of the year with certain organs, then certain organs with flavors of foods (and herbs), had to do with the organic physiological responses to temperature and climate, how they align with each bodily system, and the biochemical reactions incited by each flavor in the body. For example:
Acrid goes up and out. Haven’t we all had the experience of sweating or decongesting after spicy food? Bitter goes down and out. Most have also had the experience of drinking coffee or green tea, then having to go to the bathroom. Sour goes down and in, as does sweet, whereas salty goes down and in, but brings enough water into our cells to then vaporize upwards, which is why its mechanism can RAISE blood pressure.
Unfortunately, in (Traditional) Chinese medical schools, due to modern misinterpretations of the medicine we are lucky if we’re taught half-truths of fact—too often we were told objective untruths—though regarding flavors and seasons we at least got the former.
We were taught that the acrid flavor corresponds with the lungs, which correspond with fall, though this is only one of fall’s flavors, and arguably the less significant one, nor was it ever really explained WHY the lungs correspond with autumn.
Fall is nature’s regression and recession, just as the days grow shorter and animals begin their hibernations, gases and blood in the human body sink deeper, as in towards our adrenal glands, where we can reproduce ample hormones and healthy blood to then rise again in spring. The chemical mechanism induced by acrid foods or herbs DOES NOT encourage this movement. So, while less educated practitioners uniformly advise everyone to eat more onions, garlic, and ginger during fall, recall there should never be any one size fits recommendations in (holistic) medicine or nutrition.
Because the chemistry of acridity moves things upward and out in the body it is surely useful for dislodging the phlegm and mucus often accumulated during allergy, flu, and covid season. It can also be useful for patients who find that during autumn and/or year-round, they have a remarkable difficulty with all kinds of rising—whether out of bed in the morning, off the couch to exercise, intellectually, or in sexual engagement.
For the other half of the population, the more calming, descending mechanism of sour is more logical. Especially since along with bitter, another “flavor of descent,” sour is one the more unrepresented ones in most American diets, maybe partially explaining why modern Americans have so much difficulty with grounding, sleeping, and slowing down.
To understand which flavor should dominate your diet and herbal formulas this season, you can try feeling the (second/middle finger) “guan” pulse position on your left wrist. If the artery feels small or weak your body needs acridity! But if it feels big, inflamed, angry, you need LEMONS 🙂 When life gives you lemons, first feel your pulse. Or get your acupuncturist to do it.
As for nature and safer one size fits all advice: ‘tis the season of root vegetables, so cook plenty of carrots, radishes, beets, yams, and brussels sprouts. In fact, a perfect way to roast the latter is with garlic, onions, and lemon (+salt and olive oil), thereby getting the best of both worlds. Really in my house I should separate them on the pan and take the lemon part for myself and allot all acridity for my wife! But who has the time? I’ll just drink my sour herbs.
