Week Four: Excess Flashcards
What are some ways that a person can become hot?
1) Prolonged exposure to a hot environment
2) Overactivity or prolonged strain.
3) Over-consumption of heating foods.
4) Hot pathogen lodges deeper in the body causing inflammation and irritation
5) Feelings that cannot be resolved or expressed.
6) Acute feverish illness from a “hot” pathogen.
7) Damp and stagnation easily combine with heat.
How do you treat True Heat?
True heat needs cooling and expelling.
How do you treat chronic heat?
Avoidance of hot foods and the use of more cooling foods and methods of food prep. If there is a pathogenic invasion the pungent flavour can be used to drive the hot invader to the surface.
What are some common heat reducing foods?
Asparagus: great for lungs
Banana: useful to treat drug addictions
Clam: cooling and salty, moistens dryness
Grapefruit: reduce fever, simmer pulp 10 min
Lettuce: cooling, bitter, diuretic, scanty urine, insomnia
Peppermint: cooling, pungent
Watermelon: summer-heat, seeds for constipation
How can someone become cold?
- Cold may arise from yang xu
- Cold can take hold by penetrating the body from the environment or through food
Where does cold penetrate to?
Muscles, joints or even organs such as stomach, intestines, uterus and bladder.
What does cold arise from on an emotional level?
- Fear that causes us to contract, inhibiting our ability to flow and act freely.
- May also be the result of long held unexpressed emotions such as love, grief and anger or old emotional injury and trauma
What does cold do in terms of action?
Contraction and obstruction of flow of blood and qi.
For chronic conditions of cold what type of foods apply?
Warm and sweet
For acute stages of cold invasion what types of food are used?
Warm and pungent foods to drive Cold to the body surface, even to the extent of causing sweating.
What are some foods for treating cold?
- Butter
- Black pepper
- Cayenne
- Cherry
- Garlic
- Ginger
- Trout: tonifies middle burner
- Shrimp: tonifies yang and qi
What are some signs of damp?
- Bloating
- Coldness in MJ
- Edema
- Fogginess
- Heaviness
- Loose stools
- Melancholy
- Tight band headache
What does dampness arise from functionally?
Failure to burn off or transform moisture in the body. Nearly always associated with a weak spleen, often a weak kidney and sometimes with a weak lung.
What are some causes of dampness?
- Eating oily, greasy, sweet, refined foods
- Alcohol
- Foods that injure yang
- Living in a damp environment
- Damp pathogens lodgin in the body
- Suppressant drugs
How is dampness treated?
- strengthening the spleen
- tonification of KI, LU and Yang
What kind of food therapy is required for damp?
Avoid: dairy, meat, eggs, oily nuts, concentrated sweeteners, simple sugars from fruit
Add in food that dry damp: rye, amaranth, corn, aduki beans, celery, lettuce, pumpkin, scallion, alfalfa, turnip, kohlrabi, white pepper, raw honey
What is phlegm created by?
Mainly by a disorder o the spleen. If the spleen is too weak, qi flow slows, T & T becomes congested and damp accumulates.
What happens with chronic spleen qi or yang deficiency?
Dampness collects over a longer period and creates concentrations that eventually thicken into phlegm especially if subjected to heat.
What other organs are involved in the formation of phlegm?
Lungs and kidneys
Lungs may fail to disperse and lower fluids
Kidneys may fail to transform and excrete fluids
Compare substantial to non-substantial phlegm
Substantial phlegm includes material phlegm like mucus and sputum.
Non-substantial phlegm is immaterial and includes:
- gall and kidney stones in their hardened forms
- oppression in the chest
- plum pit qi
- gathers subcutaneously
- affects joints in rheumatic and arthritic conditions
- can collect in channels and cause numbness
What temperature and what foods can be used to transform phlegm-heat?
Temperature/Flavour: bitter-cool, salty-cool, sometimes pungent-cool and sweet-cool
Bitter-cool: asparagus, broccoli, celery, wild rice, lettuce, dandelion
Salty-cool: oysters, seaweed
Sweet-cool: pear (Asian pears) best for phlegm in the lungs, mung beans, soy milk
Pungent-cool: daikon radish, peppermint
What temperature and what foods can be used to transform phlegm-cold?
Temperature/Flavour: bitter-warm, pungent-warm (occasionally sweet-warm)
Bitter-warm foods: basil, parsnips, brussel sprouts, cardamom
Pungent-warm: cinnamon, ginger (esp. fresh), horseradish, chives, garlic, leeks
Sweet-warm: cherries, plums
What are some food tips to avoid qi stagnation?
- Do not overeat or consume too much heavy food at once
- Avoid sugar and stimulants that give temporary relief but worsen the problem over time
- Chew food well to help it pass and digest
- Choose pungent foods to help with dispersal of qi (make sure to account for whether heat, cold or xu are involved)
What are some foods that are good for qi stagnation?
Carrot, clove, garlic, radish, turmeric, chive