 Now, if you don't know my story, the reason and the way that I found traditional Chinese medicine was actually because I've had lifelong digestive problems. And I had seen four conventional physicians, a dietitian, nutritionist, and although they were all good people, none of their solutions or treatments did anything. And I tried chemical oxidives, pharmaceuticals, all kinds of stuff, and not much helped me regulate my bowel function better than a simple Chinese medicine formula. So I'm embarrassed that it took me that long to find a solution to my problems 10 years. But in this video, I want to share with you how to increase your digestion. Now, this is a very specific kind of digestion for a specific kind of person. But in this video, we'll share three of the most important things you should know. Hey, I'm Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day, current doctoral student in traditional or classical Chinese medicine. So I've included down there the first link in the description is a free download on five daily habits to add 10 years to your life with a few Chinese medicine practices. So you can check that out the first link in the description. So when I say how to improve your digestion, let me be very clear, this is not for anybody who wants to have better digestion. This is for a very specific pattern in Chinese medicine for a person who is tired, who runs cold, tends to have cold hands and feet, tends to have low energy, low appetite, and is prone to loose stools or constipation where the stools are softer. If you're someone who has a strong appetite, who's prone to being warm, who has dry stools or hard to pass stools that are hard and dry, this is not for you. So let's jump into some of the key practices you can do daily for the more cold, tired type person. So the first sequence is going to be for what to do more of. The second part is what to do less of. And the third part is some other lifestyle interventions. So what to do more of for this kind of person with a low appetite, who tends to be sometimes these people are thin, sometimes not sometimes can be quite overweight. But in general, these are some of the things to consider. So you want to have more vegetables or grains with a more warming or neutral temperature. You could have grains, whole grains, oats and rice. You could have meats would be very important for this kind of person, like beef, lamb, chicken and fish. Other things you might want to consider are things like warming teas, which means things like black tea, red tea, poor tea, maybe coffee if you tolerate it well, and not green tea. You also want to consider having more warming spices and herbs. So if you use these already in your cooking, great. If not, you can add these, for example, to your oatmeal in the morning or more to your chicken or your rice, your vegetables. So things like ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, garlic, onions, and overall for this kind of person, what you want as an ideal meal, for example, one of many options would be to have a grain on the warmer side. Maybe you could have like whole grains or even just like a brown rice with a meat as a protein and then sauteed vegetables. So that would be kind of like a classic example of a meal that's a little bit more balanced, a little bit more warming for this kind of person and stabilizing. So what do you want to be doing less of? The less is very simple for this person. In general, for less, you want less what's cold in Chinese medicine, less raw vegetables, less green tea, less. I mean, there's a big trend now that thinking that like a raw vegan is somehow the healthiest diet, but it just isn't true. I mean, even clinically, you see a lot of raw vegans that have a lot of health problems. And there's a very specific person that would benefit from being more of a raw vegan. But for so many that I see, it doesn't work well. So for this kind of person in particular, this is the worst diet. So what do you properly want? Again, more raw uncooked vegetables would be damaging to this kind of person. And the more warm cooked sauteed, maybe sauteed in olive oil or even butter would be better for this kind of person. You also don't want to do things like juicing. Okay, green juices, the celery juice, because you saw the medical medium recommended for everybody with some mysterious disease. These are bad recommendations for this kind of constitutional type, very bad. I have so many patients already coming in as a student on the celery diet that it would be contraindicated in Chinese medicine. And we see them improve when they get off it. So these things are all very cold. When you're doing green juices all the time, the 32 ounce celery juice, whatever you're supposed to do for that program, all of these very bad for that kind of person, this kind of constitution. Now in terms of lifestyle, overall, these people tend to do better with warmer climates. Now, of course, you can mimic that warmer climate with an herbal formula. So if the person's in a cold climate or a damp climate, it doesn't have to be a death sentence. It's just going to be a little bit harder. And this kind of person as well will do well with regular exercise. That's moderate intensity. So if you're already more tired and cold, you want exercise, but not intense exercise. Sometimes for these kind of people, things like hot yoga are very damaging. Again, it really depends on the person and the state of their innate strength of their constitution and the current state. They said how well rested they are. But exercise will warm the body, will strengthen what's called the yang of the body, and general is a great idea. Now, when it comes to herbal formulas that we tend to use as a general rule, I mean, there's tons of approaches. We tend to use formulas like Gui Jue Tang, Ling Gui Zhu Gang Tang, or Li Zhong Wan. All of these formulas are catered towards, number one, warming, number two, circulating, and number three, sometimes tonifying, strengthening. So if you think about that, warming, circulating, strengthening, it shows the three weaknesses that this person, this constitution, which is my constitution, tends to be prone to. So being cold, being stagnant, which is another manifestation of that cold, the cold hands and feet, getting cold easily, and then strengthening, which means the person has a tendency to run more towards the tired or deficient side of the spectrum. So this is the overall approach I would recommend to strengthen your digestion if you are this kind of constitution. We'll talk more about some of the other constitutions because, again, there's many reasons why a person can have digestive problems and there's literally thousands of formulas. I mean, in my own repertoire, I probably have 50 to 100 I could think of to go to digestion. So it's very, very, very case-specific and very individual and that's the most important thing in getting results in medicine but also traditional Chinese medicine. So I hope that helps. Again, you can check out the first link in the description which is the five daily rituals that add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And you can also check out my last two videos right there and there.