Chinese Dietary Therapy, the Five Elements and Your Health

Drink milk for maintaining healthy bones.  Eat 5-7 servings a day of vegetables, Eat garlic “ because its good for you.  Drink more than two cups of coffee per day. Weve heard them all. So many phrases, guidelines, and rules! Whats right? What is too much? Whats enough? Its enough to cause confusion and anxiety.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) looks at food and how it affects our health in a completely different way, with no numerical guidelines involved. TCM dietary therapy deals with the properties of food and how food can actually be used as medicine towards preserving health, prevent and treat illness.

In TCM, everything is seen through the picture of yin and yang with the ideal of having complete balance between the two. Food is used as medicine to achieve and maintain that balance by simply adding, or removing specific types of food from the diet. The body and internal organs are also connected with the five elements and colours: wood (green), fire (red), water (black/blue), earth (yellow), and metal (white), and the five seasons (yes, five). Food is no exception and is placed into five main categories, and grouped according to flavour and nature.

The fire element connects with summer time, bitter tastes and is associated with the heart and small intestine. Bitter tasting foods are typically stimulating, and have a cooling and laxative quality: black coffee, black tea, plain chocolate, corn, green tea, and yes, cigarettes. Overuse of bitter or fire foods can be dehydrating, have an adverse effect on the nervous systems and ultimately weaken the heart and digestive systems.

The earth element in the late summer has a nourishing quality and is associated with anything sweet. It corresponds to the stomach and spleen. The mouth is considered the gateway to the stomach and often in times of stress, we tend to eat more, or eat specific types of sweet foods in order to alleviate that stress. Foods such as refined sugar, pasta, breads, sweet fruit, and cheese all have sedating, lethargic and phlegm-creating qualities. Too much of that can disturb digestion and cause bloating.

In the autumn season, the metal element has a pungent and hot taste association. “Metal” organs are the lungs, large intestine and skin. And eating pungent foods such as peppers, garlic, onions, ginger will typically make one sweat. If you want to improve appetite and speed digestion, add pungent foods to your diet.

Water foods have a salty taste. This element in the body is represented by the kidneys and the bladder. Too much of anything salty and watery such as miso, mushrooms, kidney and mung beans, soy sauce, olives, watermelon, and pickles causes problems – thirst, hunger, water retention and even anxiety. And in its respective season – winter – we usually tend to eat many of water element foods.

And in the spring, the wood element becomes prominent, especially through foods such as oats, rye, wheat, apples, citrus fruits, green vegetables, and green lentils. These have a cleansing effect on the body and affect the liver and gallbladder. For example, ingesting a cup of warm water with lemon juice can help process fats, especially after a heavy, rich meal.

So after all of this, take an evaluation of your eating habits. For example, do you need coffee to wake up? Do you use too much spice or crave sweets or salty foods? Ask yourself which taste you tend to gravitate to and eat more than others. This will be a clue as to where you are out of balance.

So as for any rules heres a few: balance all five tastes and colours on your plate, make sure to eat foods associated with the current season, and above all, sit down to eat regular meals and chew your food well. Pretty simple I'd say.

By Olena Gill