“Food and medicine are not two different things: the are the front and back of one body.” ― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Our diet constitutes a key part of our overall health and despite an overwhelming amount of information regarding diet and nutrition now available to us, each person’s body is unique and will react differently to every diet, supplement and food item. In addition, our environment, which also has a role to play in determining what types of food are best for our health, is in constant flux, especially in the UK.
Diet from a traditional Chinese medical perspective considers the whole person and their unique constitution. The focus is on acting preventatively, to avoid illness and disease in the first place, instead of retrospectively, as well as restoring and maintaining health. In pre-communist China, doctors were paid by clients as long as they were healthy, but stopped receiving payment when a patient became sick! It can be understood as the real meaning of health care, whereas conventional medicine is more concerned with illness care.
From the point of view of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), our digestive system is regarded as the digestive fire, which must be nurtured and looked after in order to effectively digest food and transport nutrients throughout the body. Unfortunately, we often eat mindlessly, discarding the need to check in with our bodies to see what we really want (not to be confused with feel like) to nourish ourselves and support our gut or digestive fire with. For example, people living in the UK are often affected by a weak digestive fire due to dampness, which can cause feelings of fatigue and fogginess in the head. Eating suitable foods to reduce the work on your digestive system (such as traditional stews and soups) can reduce physical ailments appearing elsewhere in the body.
Guy, our acupuncturist, herbalist and primary practitioner at Well4ever combines his extensive knowledge and practice of TCM, including acupuncture and Chinese herbalism with advice and recommendations on what and how to eat and what to avoid. He can provide and support you with a Food Diary if appropriate.
Well4ever also provides Lorisian Food Intolerance Testing, enabling you to detect any food intolerance you may suffer from supports you in adapting your eating habits accordingly. You can test for intolerance for up to 150 different foods and the results come with a support package on how to manage any recommended changes in your diet.
At Well4ever we couple any food intolerance test results (a Western-style diagnosis) with Chinese medical treatment, ensuring that the root cause of any imbalances are detected and treatment is directed towards solving the cause of the problem, not just the symptom. The body is a hugely complex organism and any impact on one area will have a reaction somewhere else.
Meet Guy and take a look at Guy’s nutritional advice.
“Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time.” ― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Nutrition and Chinese Medicine by Marianna Riddle is licensed under CC 4.0
References:
- Carter, Brian. Chinese Medicine is Preventative Medicine.
- May, Alida. Diet
