 One of the topics people are the most interested in regarding Chinese medicine is Chinese medical dietetics or really using food as medicine. And we've discussed in other videos here how in ancient times one of our most ancient texts discusses this idea of food grade therapy versus basically medical grade if I could term it that. But effectively how there are certain substances, plants, animals, minerals that we use medically. Some are considered upper level medicinal meaning they have a less strong effect on physiology and are used generally speaking for more mild illness. Some are in the food grade category which may actually be foods. And then we have lower level medicinal and those are let's just say strongly therapeutic meaning they exert a strong influence on your physiology. They're required to treat serious illnesses but you don't want to take them long term due to the fact that they are a strong intervention right. It's like taking a Xanax okay every now and then but you don't want to take it every night to sleep. That's going to be a very dangerous and prolonged recovery to sleep naturally again. So let's discuss the basics of Chinese medical dietetics in this video. Hey guys Dr. Alex Hine author of the health book master the day Chinese medicine doctor. Now before we jump into this video two very important links right below. The first is for this free guide five daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you want to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine the contact info for my private practice is right below this video in California. Now the first important piece of understanding dietetics is understanding constitution because in Chinese medicine when we're talking about food obviously the same diet does not work well for everyone. You have some people who drink coffee every day no problem no digestive upset and you have some people who drink coffee twice a week and they already get indigestion acid reflux and their digestion has a lot of problems or they have stomach pain. So in the same vein some people can eat wheat every day no problem others cannot eat it once a week. Now when we talk about constitution we have to understand that first of all there are certain constitutions that run in families right susceptibilities to food or even outright diseases like celiac disease and on top of that they're just general certain body types. Some families like in my side my maternal side they're usually very thin very wiry kind of energetic people with poor digestion digestive problems and asthma and allergies. So understanding that as a constitutional susceptibility or weakness or maybe a better word is tendency means that that family needs to keep in mind certain dietary pieces of advice and lifestyle advice to minimize the problems that that constitution can have right so a person with allergies and flamminess in their throat probably should avoid dairy for example because it's going to exacerbate that kind of phlegm and mucus in the mucus membranes. General pieces of advice like that are useful to understand constitutionally. Now maybe if your family is Scandinavian or Eastern European you consume a lot of dairy no problem it's probably not a big deal for you. But understanding the general idea of constitution what is your body type do you run more cold do you run more hot are your bowel movements more soft are they more overly hard do you have a pale face or you more prone to a red face do you easily put on weight or do you easily lose weight all of these are factors we can use to gauge constitution. But today we'll talk about a very simple one because we're going to be talking about the herb ginger and it's very important for a lot of constitutions but I would say mostly what we call the cold deficient or wetter dampness prone constitution. Now the second thing we need to understand when it comes to Chinese medical dietetics is what's called flavor in nature of herbs or foods. Now the flavor in nature is an ancient concept where these ancient peoples and ancient doctors were trying to understand have you categorized medicinal substances in the absence of modern chemistry. How do you I mean you could put them in your mouth and try them for some people that will kill them mushrooms a lot of herbs we use in Chinese medicine are toxic unprocessed you know we use a lot of aconite and I think one gram of aconite unprocessed will kill you. So how do you use potentially a hundred grams in a day processed how do you learn that through trial and error you can imagine what the early history of Chinese medicine probably looked like with aconite poisoning but the general idea of flavor in nature are to generalize the flavor in nature of the herb or what we consider the temperature and the flavor. So ginger is warm and the flavor is spicy right spicy almost everyone can tell if they put it in their mouth and it's considered warming when we talk about this idea of flavor and nature warm or accurate this this flavor in our ancient medical texts is something that creates movement right you have a little bit of indigestion you have some ginger you have a lot of ginger you'll create burping and then it's going to increase metabolism it increases movement and that's very important to understand because that is one of the differentiations between warming and cooling medicinals right one of the things we're trying to focus on is does this generate movement or does it slow down movement does it move does it a string and everything in between so let's give the example of somebody who's prone to low appetite bloating and a food baby after eating the flavor of sweet whether that sweet is licorice that sweet is sugar that sweet is eating two mangoes after dinner sweet generates fluids and dampness in Chinese medicine so if you're experiencing a lot of bloating the flavor of sweet is not necessarily something you should have so have you ever had the experience of drinking a very sweet drink and afterwards you're like clearing your throat all the time that sugar generates this kind of this mucus and so people that are prone to that to begin with there are a lot of people with digestive problems like myself who are prone to that flamminess even if they eat healthy should avoid that flavor of sweet and should introduce more spicy accurate like ginger because that generates movement and will move some of that mucus and some of those fluids so fundamentally thinking of it almost like cooking is very important I think one of my first herbal mentors who I learned from in school described that food grade herbalism and food grade medicine is how you cook right and it doesn't mean just cooking healthy it means understanding your own constitution where if you are like the aforementioned flammie dampness prone kind of person in Chinese medicine the mucus membranes are a little bit damp like me you know a lot of flammie the throat maybe sinus problems or lung problems like asthma then you want to introduce potentially more accurate spicy fragrant herbs peppers gingers garlic cinnamon these will help create more movement so the mucus are not quite as damp but if you're someone who's a little bit dry those may be contraindicated those may not be good foods for you that may not be good food therapy or you know Chinese medical dietetic principles so understanding where am I on the spectrum of more damp more wet more cold to more dry maybe more heat in the face more dry stools then maybe you need more vegetables in your diet and more rice and less strong spicy flavors these are you know understanding constitution is where is my default genetic template then understanding food flavor and nature of food more warming more cooling more spicy sweet sour bitter we're gonna go into all of these a lot more in the future where I am right where am I on the spectrum where the food is whereas the food on the spectrum and then from there creating much more targeted to kind of daily food therapy towards whatever your goals are whatever your current pathology is and again we can go a lot of different directions with these videos but we'll talk more in the future about specific foods how you can use them specific constitutions at least the main predispositions that I see and certain basic pieces of dietary advice that can help but for now so this video is not too long the most important is your constitution and then the flavor and the nature of the food specifically if you're adding medicinal food grade products like ginger for example into your food understanding where you are in that spectrum is important so that is all I have for today's video again if you'd like to stay in touch download the free guide below this video if you'd like to come up patient in my practice in Los Angeles there is a contact info for my private practice right below this video