Cancer Acupuncture Cancer support with acupuncture

Cancer Acupuncture: What’s for Dinner?

A lot of patients are often not aware that the food they eat can greatly affect their body. These days in our society many people do focus on eating healthy food with fruit, vegetables, plenty of protein, less fat, less carbohydrates etc.

Yet, many people still feel 'yucky', or that they are not loosing as much weight as they would like or that they still have digestive issues such as constipation, diarrhea and bloating.

From a Chinese medicine perspective all foods have certain properties. It is important to eat not only from the nutritional food pyramid, but also according to the properties of food taking into account the season, your own body's constitution and any medical conditions you may have.

For example:

Many of my patients have done the right thing by cutting down on coffee and drinking green tea instead as well as eating more salad and fruit. However they often remain bloated and gassy after meals, still feeling that there is something wrong with their digestive system.

From a Chinese Medicine point of view, our digestive system is a sensitive organ system. Our digestive organs generally prefers things that are warm, non-greasy and non-spicy. Thus foods that are hot, spicy, deep fried, ice-cold, raw or cold in property adds extra load on our digestion.

With the change of season it is also important that through the warmer months we eat more cooling foods while cooked foods will be ideal for the colder winter months. Excessively consumption of  cool-cold properties food will eventually weaken the stomach leading us we often see patients with bloating or digestive conditions in the autumn-winter season.

It is also important to eat with the season. Most produce will have the properties that are ideal for the particular season. ie:

summer fruits/vegetables: cooling properties

winter fruits/vegetables: neutral-warmer properties

Therefore for this winter, instead of having salads I'd encourage everyone to have vegetables that are cooked (roasting, boiling, steaming, stir-fry, baking...). Have a nice warm meal like soups, pasta or rice, instead of sandwiches.

Tea such as green tea, white teas, are great in antioxidants. However, they are cold/cold in properties, as they are less processed and went through no fermentation. Therefore select warmer black teas like Pu-erh, Jasmine tea and Oolong tea for your cold winter days.

A slight change in the cooking, will see you to a better healthier body.

Dr Anni Chien CMD

Blue Sky Chinese Medicine Clinic

www.blueskyclinic.com.au

(02) 6162 4950