One of the more unique aspects of traditional Chinese medicine is our view of the inherent nature of foods and their ability to heal or hurt the body.
A food’s temperature is one of these qualities we measure and specifically prescribe for a person’s unique condition. Foods in the Chinese tradition are categorized as hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold.
And when I say cold, I don’t necessarily mean a temperature you can feel with your hands, though iced and cold foods like ice cream and chilled foods straight from the refrigerator do count. What takes a little more to understand is that foods that reduce our metabolic warmth are also inherently cold from the Chinese medical viewpoint. These would include raw foods like sushi, salads, and fruit; as well as many pharmaceutical drugs.
Let’s start with the foods that are cold in temperature. When ice cream hits the mouth, esophagus, and stomach the smallest blood vessels called capillaries constrict just as we do when we get cold, with our arms crossed and our shoulders rising to cover our neck. This same tension causes the muscles in those small vessels to contract, blood flow to slow or stop completely, and this can create pain. This is exactly what an ice cream headache is. Taking this same idea, many upon many aches and pains in the body can be due to cold foods alone. I had a patient who had headaches daily for decades and simply reducing cold foods had this person feeling no pain for the first time in a very long time. Many other patients have seen improvements in joint pain, acid regurgitation, weight loss and many other chronic problems.
When combined with a cold climate or a cold season like winter, it can cause even more of a reaction from the body.
If you have a chronic condition lasting 3 or more months do yourself a favor and see what happens when you remove raw and cold foods for 3 weeks. On the flipside, cooking your foods and incorporating warming foods like ginger, fennel, and anise can greatly reduce the issues associated with eating cold foods.
Happy eating!
*Photo credit: flickr.com/blu_pineappl3