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

[Guest guest]

Chinese Traditional Medicine , " Mrs. Barley "

<chosenbarley wrote:

>

> My heart ached to have to feed my 63-year-old houseguest boiled

eggs,

> oatmeal & tea, day after day, for " candida " , on doctor's advice.

She

> had a mild case of skin cancer. If you think that eating that way

> improved her health, then you thought wrong. She was so weakened

that

> her radiation resulted in burns so bad they cut her leg off. There

> wasn't even anything wrong with her leg; the cancer was on her

hand.

 

The issue here is not that she was on a special diet but she was on

the wrong special diet.

 

How did the burns end up on her legs if the cancer was on her hand?

Usually when radiation is given, it's targeted to the specific area

where the cancer is.

 

BTW, the Chinese use herbs to prevent the side effects of radiation

and chemo.

>

> My other acquaintance forced herself to forgo countless foods incl.

> some common carbohydrates

> for a very long period of time, on doctor's advice. Some kind of

> anticandida diet, again. It did nothing for her socalled menopause

> symptoms and she ended up taking hormones. Still fat, tho. Any

> advice? Advice she can follow that revolves around food, as if

food

> is all there is?

 

While diet can help menopause, usually some other things are called

for too. There are some cases where diet will be enough, but usually

herbs are needed too.

 

One thing that I recommend is that people keep a food dairy. They

write down all they eat and they write down how they feel on a given

day. If they have bad dreams, they write that down too. I also

recommend they write down the weather conditions. When a person can

see a cause and effect relationship between a certain food and their

feeling worse, they will comply with eliminating or cutting way back

on that food. But it isn't always a bad effect they see. Sometimes

they see a correlation between eating certain foods and feeling

better.

 

I want to caution that a food dairy won't work for every medical

condition. For example, for certain heart and blood vessel

conditions, the time lag in terms of how the person feels overall

may be so long that the person can't recognize a cause and effect

relationship.

 

The time lag for a hypoglycemic diet can be 3 to 6 weeks (usually)

for the first stage of improvement to be reached. What happens is

that after feeling no better and usually worse for 3 to 6 weeks, one

day the person wakes up and feels more energized and the body feels

lighter. The next day or few days the person may feel as bad as

ever, but gradually those good days get more and more frequent.

(BTW, the body or limbs feeling heavy is a symptom of Dampness. When

someone says that their body feels lighter, this points to there

being Dampness problems. Dampness tends to take a long time to

resolve because it's " sticky " .)

 

A doctor, nurse, dietitian, or support group member, or even a book

needs to tell people who have to go on special diets what to expect.

When they're told ahead of time, compliance usually is greater than

if they don't know what to expect. They also have a yardstick for

judging if the diet really is what they need.

 

I want to give some cautions about diets to lose weight. NO ONE -

no matter how good their health - should go on a highly restricted

diet in order to lose weight in a hurry. It's one of the surest

paths to destroying good health. In the case of someone who actually

is obese and has been obese for some time and has multiple health

problems - from what I've observed - this can trigger death. Even a

weight loss diet that is healthy for most people can be unhealthy

and even fatal for them because they are so deficient in so many

things and the underlying imbalances are so great. The priority must

be building them back up and resolving imbalances, not losing

pounds. The pounds will start to come off when the person is built

up and the imbalances corrected or at least corrected some.

 

Even allopathic medicine recognizes this. For example, in the case

of extremely obese people who have to fast for a while (in a

hospital setting), the doctors take care to provide vitamin and

mineral supplements. Problems sometimes arise because not everything

the person needs is being supplemented. For example, EFAs (Essential

Fatty Acids) may not be included along with the vitamin and

minerals. Also, there may be substances which human bodies need that

haven't been identified. Sometimes there's no substitute for food.

 

When people have been sick and imbalanced for some time, their

absorption of nutrients often is not very good. The overeating is an

attempt by their bodies to get enough of the things they desperately

need. If they cutback their food intake, they may lose weight, but

they're getting sicker because they're getting more deficient.

 

It's also important that the person get enough rest. Some people

substitute carbs - especially sweets - for rest. The candy bar

momentarity gives them the energy they want to keep going when what

they really need is to get more rest. You will encounter people who

when they force themselves to exercise, their weight goes up or at

best stays the same. They start sleeping and napping and resting a

lot, and the pounds start coming off.

 

It is very helping for healers to go back to the basics. Back to the

basics that were stressed before the over-reliance on drugs. Back to

things like good diet and good digestion (the two aren't always the

same), enough rest, good air, proper exercise (not overdoing), etc.

One situation that sometimes is encountered in modern allopathic

medicine is that the nurse is more helpful than the doctor. Because

the nurse can't prescribe drugs, s/he's paid a lot of attention to

things like diet, rest, enough fluids, etc.

 

BTW, when it comes to some medical conditions like CFIDS (Chronic

Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome), the old basics help a lot.

They don't cure the condition, but they sure can make a great

difference for the better in many (not all) of these cases.