To Vinod and Amy ...weak stomach in TCM ??

[Guest guest]

Chinese Traditional Medicine , " emailme_marilyn "

<emailme_marilyn wrote:

>

> thank you so much to both of you.

> ill try to stop my husband from eating cold food/drinks, he also

> already stopped eating raw sushis (because of his liver's high

sgpt).

> however we thought eating salads can help him lose weight (those

salad

> and juice diet).

> if he can't eat veggies and fruits, what is a typical healthy meal

for

> an obese person?

>

> marilyn

>

If I understand Vinod correctly he just means raw fruits and

veggies. In TCM most anything that is raw takes a lot of energy to

digest (in other words it's cool, and needs to be heated up for

rottening and ripening of the stomach, and this is both

energetically speaking and temperature, hence why it is bad for

people with disease to eat or drink cold stuff) and is therefore

unfit for a weak constitution, or disease. Light steam to a heavy

cook is all that is needed depending on how diseased the individual

is. Light steam for regular to light disease and heavier cooking

the more diseased they are. In other words eat fruits and

vegetables but, just eat them cooked to some degree. It is easier

on the body that way.

 

Also something else worth mentioning. Cold drinks and ice cream or

anything cold of that nature are rough on the body (meaning anyone's

body, but especially diseased people), so moderation is always a

good idea, and cool is much less hard on the body which is much less

hard than frozen. Think of this in the example of heat stroke. If

someone had heat stroke someone who knew how to treat it would never

put ice on them. The reason is it would induce shock to some

degree. Instead they would take their core body temp and put them

in a bath of water 3 degrees F lower or so and slowly bring them

down, and add more cold water as the core temp comes down until it

reaches desired temp. Another thing to think about is if you take a

real glass that has come out of the hot dishwasher and put it in ice

water it will shatter. If you have an overall hot composition, this

is exactly what you are doing every time you take something cold

into your body.

 

Cold between meals is also much more tolerable by TCM standards on

the body. In other words if you want to eat ice cream, eat it

between meals, not at a meal, as the body will handle this much

better. This is also true of cold drinks, or anything cold in

nature. I'll explain the reason for this in both TCM and western

thought. In western medicine it is well known that for the gastric

juices to function properly the mass of food in your stomach needs

to be exactly 37 plus or minus 1 degree C. If your stomach does not

process at this temp there will be an incomplete breakdown (some

people emphasize protein here, as these proteins bonding to the

walls of the gut create allergies, remember that in western medicine

a big portion of how the body sends messages is protein). The body

has a pretty good system (that is when someone is healthy) of being

able to regulate this temperature, considering nothing is overly

extreme. Your overall meal when combined into a single mass (ie

after you have chewed it and it is all sitting in your stomach, with

all drinks ect included) should be about 100 F (or 37.8 C) according

to TCM, which resounds quite nicely with western medicine. Also if

you over eat (or over drink with a meal for that matter) the acids

and other gastric juices will not completely mix, and will also

result in an incomplete breakdown, causing the same types of

indigestion problems.

 

In TCM the spleen and the stomach are one of the first steps in

digestion. TCM clearly states that the spleen is very sensitive to

dampness and can be overloaded by eating, so both forms of medicine

in this example have the same findings, which is overall great! TCM

is sometimes better described by analogies. Picture a camp fire

with an old pot belly cooker (I am thinking like witches brew here)

over the fire. If this were made of clay or porcelain and it was

hot (or ready to digest) and you put ice water or something very

cold, it would crack and the water would flow out onto the fire,

extinguishing it, and you would be left with no fire, and a broken

pot. This is Not very desirable if you are hungry (quite literally

as your body would be hungry for the nutrients from digestion).

Take another example, let's say you over eat and/or drink with a

meal. In the pot analogy here, it would be like filling the pot to

the brim on a hot fire. You really can't over fill a pot, you can

just fill it to capacity and then the rest will drain off (this is

noted in TCM as the yang organs can overflow, but never be filled to

capacity), and this would start to put out the fire (ie eating till

you are stuffed). Since you have a really full pot, you need a good

fire to make sure it all gets cooked, but you have started to shoot

yourself in the foot because you have started to put out the fire

(this is why eating till you are stuffed can be bad for your health

over the long term). And in the example of eating till you are

completely full-If was up to the brim you could not stir it without

it spilling and putting out the fire, so let's say instead you just

let it sit. Well if you have ever cooked on a camp fire in the same

conditions, you know that the stuff on the edge will burn, while the

stuff in the middle will not get cooked. This wouldn't be desirable

either, because you would have half burnt, half not cooked food.

And in this case the uncooked food could actually be unprocessed

proteins that enter in your gut and get absorbed and might help

create food sensitivities and allergies, and also other portions of

the food could have a high acid content that could maybe irritate

the gut wall.

 

This is why it is best to eat to the point where you are not quite

full, and when you eat only drink a glass or two of moderate

temperatures, remembering your total intake average temperature is

best around 100 F. Drink for hydration should be taken between

meals (30 min either way of a meal I think is the suggestion). This

of course is the optimum for best health, and sometimes people can

get away with more depending on the state of disease or health they

are in.

 

I would also like to take some time to explain out another " urban

myth " . People think that it is ok to eat cold with a meal, and

their reasoning is, oh well my body can heat it up. Yes it is true

that we are warm blooded and can heat things up, but to this extreme

we do not have the capacity in the given time. Food only stays in

the stomach about 30 min, so in this hypothetical case we would have

to heat the mass entirely up to our 100 F in 20 min, to allow for 10

min for the mass to mix (the mass has to completely be mixed with

the acid before it goes into the gut, as not much mixing takes place

there). Let's say you eat a 1 lb meal, and drink 1 cup of water and

it takes the same amount of energy to heat the meal up as it would

if it were water (not an unreal example considering most food is 50%

or greater some form of moisture) just for figuring sakes. BTU

stands for British thermal unit. It is a form of measuring energy.

It takes one BTU to raise 1lb of water one degree F. Water is 8lb's

to 1 gallon, so 1 cup (8 oz) of water weighs 1/2lb. Just for sake

of figuring, lets say your meal is 80 F, and your glass of water is

50 F. If I average these two together, factoring in the weight, I

get a 1.5lb mass @ 70 F. Not too unrealistic eh? Ok so to raise

1.5 lb from 70 F to 100 F takes 30 degrees times by 1.5 lbs or 45

BTU. 1 BTU = 251.9 calories. Now a calorie is not the same as a

Calorie. Calorie is what we use in diet, and that is 1000 calories

(kind of confusing I know). So to raise this mass to the temp

required would take 11.3 Calories, and lets say that 80% of calories

burned actually turn into usable heat that we can pipe off to the

stomach, so now our total is 14.1 Calories, and that would have to

be burned in 20 minutes. Now imagine you take the same meal and

guzzle it off with a 64 oz ice cold coke. Not including the health

effects of the sugar and carbonation, your body would have to burn

55.4 Calories in the same 20 min. This might not sound too

unreasonable, but the human body is only about 11% efficient

converting Calories into heat (see note for reference at the end).

So let's put this into perspective. If 175lb man were running a 9

min mile he would be burning about 306 Calories in that same 20

minutes and would have covered over 2 miles. At 11% efficiency this

is 33.66 Calories turned into usable heat energy (this does not

include the heat energy lost in perspiration, as it is lost and no

longer usable). Most people are quite sedative after a meal, which

would make the figures even more astounding. You can see for this

example just how the body is not capable of bringing such an amount

of liquid up to temperature in this short time frame to allow for

complete digestion, hence why it is good to have an overall average

temperature of a meal around 100 F.

 

 

Also if you are a woman, it is not a good idea to eat ice cream on

or around your cycle. Women are susceptible to both cold and damp

on the menses, of which ice cream is extremely both. I stated this

recently, but it seems relevant here, so I stated it again. =P

 

 

It looks like Vinod has already responded in the time it took me to

write this =P. I hope this might better help you understand some of

these concepts in TCM, and hopefully it can do the same for others

on the list! I hope my posts have information that relevant to the

situation and helpful in explaining TCM and not too long. If they

seem a little long, just let me know, and I can shorten them up a

bit. Cheers! =)

 

 

 

Note:

The following excerpt is from LIVING IN SPACE by G. Harry Stine

 

" During sleep, the body's energy expenditure is about 65 Calories

(kCal) per hour. At rest lying down, it rises to 80 kCal/hr and, when

sitting up, to 100 kCal/hr. During light exercise, this jumps to as

much as 200 kCal/hr and, during heavy physical work, to 500 kCal/hr.

Under normal conditions the human body is only 11 percent efficient

as

a heat engine. This means that 89 percent of the metabolic heat

output

shows up as increased perspiration rate, increased respiration, and

slightly elevated body temperature " pg 135