Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

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Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby D_Glenn on Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:48 am

Try to make a topic of this but I just want to rant about how messed up the western diet has become. The worst example would probably be how overweight people opt out of eating a good 'hot' meal or foods that increase our metabolism and instead go for the extremely 'cold' green salad which essentially slows the thryoid down, lowers the metabolism, and starts a whole cycle of damage to the spleen which is normally responsible for our natural healthy cravings but when damaged begins to continue cycle of craving more cold foods and raw sugars.

salad, grapefruit - cold
egg whites- cool


http://www.shen-nong.com/eng/lifestyles ... d_tcm.html

http://www.ehow.com/video_4942003_tradi ... nergy.html


Eat the complete opposite of the western "weight-loss" diet and one might actually lose some weight. ;)

Chew your food as the saliva indentifies the food in your mouth and tells the body which enzymes to put into the stomach. Don't drink large amounts of 'ice cold' beverages while eating, preferably no liquids as they dilute the stomach acids. If you have to drink then make sure it's something more acidic. Don't ever take any antacids anytime close to a meal and ideally never take them.


.
Last edited by D_Glenn on Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby shawnsegler on Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:28 pm

Great info, D!

Thanks.

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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Brady on Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:52 pm

I liked those links alot. The idea of TCM based nutrition makes good sense to me.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 6:35 am

too much supposition for me.

What studies exactly show these things to be occurring?

This is my principle misgiving with many things TCM.

IE: there isn't a lot of actual good science behind it and a lot of guessing or attribution given to a process or a substance based upon a perceived result instead of an actual look at what happened, what changed, what actually occurred.

Not enough science in TCM quite frankly. I (and many accredited and adpet doctors) don't give it a lot of cred really.

Physician heal thyself has equal validity.

People are fat because they eat too much and don't move enough. Because they eat to alleviate boredom or to quell emotional surges.
You will find more fat people in abundant societies. The so called "west" will only naturally have a lot of obese people for that reason alone.
Last edited by Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Brady on Mon Jul 20, 2009 6:55 am

Darth,
Would you not agree that the science behind food and nutrition is often changing and is difficult to piece together? Add to it the food industry's hand in creating favorable results and conclusions become very difficult.

I don't see it as supposition as much as a culture's learned understanding of how food interacts with our systems, developed and tested through practice. May not be a perfect science but I think thats a good thing.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:46 am

I think that the fundamentals remain constant and it is the minutia that is in flux and not because of teh food itself but rather the natural human condition.

what is sustenance for you may indeed be poison for me. So it is often erroneous to say "x" has properties that are good for all humans, when in fact, no it doesn't.

so, fundamentally, the proteins available in one food over another are apparent, but how the body deals with them is different from person to person.

To say that a heavy reliance on crap foods causes ill health and obesity is a no brainer.
To say that eating only whole foods and not overdoing it is a no brainer.

when you get to the ideas that chemical systems are being turned off in one perons over another without a data control sets, that is where it gets sketchy and that is where TCM seems to reside a lot. It claims observation over time, but often, this is simply not true and certainly not on a large control set and ergo, erroneous.

acupuncture has been shown to have merit in some cases. Herbology is also good when it focuses on treatments and uses large and verifiable data control sets.

when the info is being handed out by shamans or people who don't bother to invest time in equal base medical study, I start to take issue with some of the conclusions reached. Unfortunately, a lot of TCM is not practiced by qualified people.

Having known a few Kungfu teachers who fancy themselves as healers but who haven't actually done any real training outside of a seminar here and there, or a session of classes at a community college and more often than not, just learning massage and how to make dit da jow... is disturbing to me.

all I'm saying is get a second opinion. :)
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Bhassler on Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:57 am

D_Glenn wrote:Try to make a topic of this but I just want to rant about how messed up the western diet has become. The worst example would probably be how overweight people opt out of eating a good 'hot' meal or foods that increase our metabolism and instead go for the extremely 'cold' green salad which essentially shuts the thryoid down, lowers the metabolism, and starts a whole cycle of damage to the spleen which is normally responsible for our natural healthy cravings but when damaged begins to continue cycle of craving more cold foods and raw sugars.

salad, grapefruit - cold
egg whites- cool


http://www.shen-nong.com/eng/lifestyles ... d_tcm.html

http://www.ehow.com/video_4942003_tradi ... nergy.html


Eat the complete opposite of the western "weight-loss" diet and one might actually lose some weight. ;)

Chew your food as the saliva indentifies the food in your mouth and tells the body which enzymes to put into the stomach. Don't drink large amounts of 'ice cold' beverages while eating, preferably no liquids as they dilute the stomach acids. If you have to drink then make sure it's something more acidic. Don't ever take any antacids anytime close to a meal and ideally never take them.


.


There are different approaches even within TCM. My own program doesn't necessarily agree with what you have, but it is effective nonetheless. The important thing to me is that we are self-consistent within our own systems. So one person may eat a lot of raw veggies and plant protein with relatively few carbs while another person may go with the traditional meat and potatoes diet. Each can work, but when you mix and match (meat and plant protein exclusively) things turn into a mess. Eating, sleeping, medicine/herbs, exercise-- all should follow some sort of unified paradigm that works for the individual. In short, if you're serious about it, find a good professional and stick with the program.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Bhassler on Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:12 am

Darth Rock&Roll wrote:too much supposition for me.

What studies exactly show these things to be occurring?

This is my principle misgiving with many things TCM.

IE: there isn't a lot of actual good science behind it and a lot of guessing or attribution given to a process or a substance based upon a perceived result instead of an actual look at what happened, what changed, what actually occurred.

Not enough science in TCM quite frankly. I (and many accredited and adpet doctors) don't give it a lot of cred really.

Physician heal thyself has equal validity.

People are fat because they eat too much and don't move enough. Because they eat to alleviate boredom or to quell emotional surges.
You will find more fat people in abundant societies. The so called "west" will only naturally have a lot of obese people for that reason alone.


Actually, I have a friend who showed pretty conclusively that a TCM program would reduce costs of healthcare and insurance over the course of 5 years and took it to the insurance companies. They told him "that's great, but the average policy life is only 2 years." So the data was there, but economic factors prevented anyone from doing anything about it-- none of the big insurance companies wanted to be the first one to jump. If they all did it, then everyone would make money off it.

That's more of an aside, though.

RE: "there isn't a lot of actual good science behind it and a lot of guessing or attribution given to a process or a substance based upon a perceived result instead of an actual look at what happened, what changed, what actually occurred."

ALL of science is guessing or attribution given to a process or a substance based on a percieved result. We think that we know about electrons because every time we flip the switch the lights go on, but the fact is no one ever has directly seen or experienced an electron, let alone the many distinct parties that supposedly have to be able to experience/recreate a phenomena for it to have any sort of scientific validity. Everyone can create circumstances that will allow the switch to magically make the bulbs light up, but the existence of the electrons themselves are still supposition. Ancient peoples believed that if they sacrificed goats the rains would come in the spring. Every year they killed the goats and the rain came. It worked, over and over again. Anyone could kill a goat and the rain would come. Does that make it scientifically valid? As far as that goes, no one has ever prevented ALL goats from being killed prior to the rainy season, so for all we know it really is dead goats that cause rain.

Additionally, science by it's very nature is limited to discrete, finite phenomena. You can only study as many things as you can keep track of-- so anything more substantially more complex than A+B=C is not viably studied and documented to the standards that many consider to be "proof." This is not to denegrate science, but merely to point out the limitations of so-called scientific inquiry. Just because we don't have a study that says so doesn't mean that a lot of people don't think Megan Fox is hot.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby D_Glenn on Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:29 am

What works for a male is obviously going to be different then for a female. Summer, winter, spring, fall--- all different. Heat, cold, dry, damp. There is certainly no simple answer but there is a common link to obesity which in some cases could be the spleen disorder resulting in lack of craving for proteins with an increase in craving for sugars or the opposite which would be a stomach disorder. You could look at the spleen and stomach as opposites, spleen prefers warmth, stomach likes it cool. Men are naturally warmer, women colder so that should be taken into account. Cold in some cases could refer to raw foods as well as the enzymes in the food aren't activated so one has to rely on their bodies own. Also note that the pancreas(enzymes) is part of the spleen's function in tcm, and the spleen also has a secondary control of the gallbladder(fat emulsifier for fats in the gut). So 'function' of the spleen isn't just the actual organ in the western sense.


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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Ron Panunto on Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:39 am

So like where does a pepperoni pizza or a Philly cheese steak, or a good Italian hoagie fit into these energetic food categories, because this is the kind of food that I mostly eat (washed down with a few good pints of ale or a bottle of red wine).
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:29 am

Bhassler-

attention, your argument fell to pieces and shattered on the floor with this statement:

"ALL of science is guessing or attribution given to a process or a substance based on a percieved result."


No, science is NOT guessing at all.

It is observation, replication, determination.

Everything that science holds to be true, it does so because it can repeat the process using a method that was devised during the observation and measurement portion of the study. Measurement of the observation is solidified through replication of the event.

Not really a lot of guess work to come up with the analysis of the result.
Science can in turn predict results.

Aspirin will do "x". This was determined through science.

"Egg whites are cold" is determined through...??? how is it determined?
"eating a salad shuts off your metabolism" was determined how?
"putting a needle in your head will cessate your smoking cravings" how does that work?
"putting a needle in your distal point will alleviate a ruptured disk in your back", no it won't, and how is that determined.

and on and on it goes and don't even start on 5 element theory which is a grossly misappropriated and often entirely incorrect way of going about things.

I'm not saying western alopathic medicine is the only way to go and I support homeopathy and naturopathy because it does do a lot to ease peoples symptons through guiding them into better living tailored to their needs. But when it comes to treating the acute, I'll take western medical procedures over mystical practices any day!

Who here has undergone any surgery using tcm for anesthetics?
Who has undergone any acute treatments using TCM?

Preventative measures are another thing entirely. Sorting your diet out and such can be a game of hit and miss, trial and error and it doesn't matter which path you choose and in fact, how old you are has a lot of pull in what you can and cannot eat as well.

just rambling now though... :)

In summary, I don't trust TCM and i do trust empirically measured methods of medicinal practice.
I get massages because they feel good.
I alter my diet because something I'm eating isn't making me feel good.
I can't be bothered with acupuncture or various concoctions, de-concoctions, draughts etc when there is a known remedy readily available at a pharmacists.

why eat a bunch of roots and bug wings when you can simply take an imodium? Know what I mean?

people get silly about asian medicine (including ayer vedic from india), including the practitioners at times.

Not completely devaluing it. But there is a place for everything and western medicine has made the greatest advances so far by all measures.

eastern stuff is generally for chronic symptoms
western medicine is for acute
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Bhassler on Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:32 am

D_Glenn wrote:What works for a male is obviously going to be different then for a female. Summer, winter, spring, fall--- all different. Heat, cold, dry, damp. There is certainly no simple answer but there is a common link to obesity which in some cases could be the spleen disorder resulting in lack of craving for proteins with an increase in craving for sugars or the opposite which would be a stomach disorder. You could look at the spleen and stomach as opposites, spleen prefers warmth, stomach likes it cool. Men are naturally warmer, women colder so that should be taken into account. Cold in some cases could refer to raw foods as well as the enzymes in the food aren't activated so one has to rely on their bodies own. Also note that the pancreas(enzymes) is part of the spleen's function in tcm, and the spleen also has a secondary control of the gallbladder(fat emulsifier for fats in the gut). So 'function' of the spleen isn't just the actual organ in the western sense.

.


This is fine as far as a general overview, but I wouldn't take it as a basis for any sort of dietary prescription. One person might have excess yang energy and kidney deficiency which would lead to lack of exercise and overeating due to fatigue and insecurity, while another person may have spleen deficiency and an excess of yin energy and eat moderately and still be overweight because they're not processing the food they get correctly. One person needs yin kidney food and the other needs yang spleen food. Both are fat.

Western med treats symptoms, TCM treats the underlying cause. To say "fat people need to do X" is to generalize based on the sypmtom, and is not what TCM is best suited for.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Bhassler on Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:42 am

Deduction:

Rule - All the beans from this bag are white.
Case - These beans are from this bag.
Result - These beans are white.

Induction:

Case - These beans are from this bag.
Result - These beans are white.
Rule - All the beans from this bag are white.

Abduction:

Rule - All the beans from this bag are white.
Result - These beans are white.
Case - These beans are from this bag.

If you think about this a bit you can see that with deduction there is no possibility of error and no possibility of novelty. In going from the general to the specific it must follow that the beans are white. With induction there is a possibility of error as well as correctness in our guessing. Each drawing out of a white bean is a new confirmation of our guess while the drawing out a differently colored bean would be really novel. The general rule would be invalidated with a singularly different result. But we are justified in making the guess because in every result so far the beans have been white. While the probability is high for all the beans being white it is by no means certain. With abduction the guess stands the greatest chance of being in error but with it comes the possibility of the greatest creative leap. Here, unlike in induction, we conclude without any prior evidence that the beans are from the bag. We have a Rule, All the beans... ; we have a Result, These beans are ... ; and we guess the Case, These beans are from this bag. That's the guess. Peirce considered one of the greatest abductions of all time to belong to the astronomer Kepler. With abduction one invents context for content. In Kepler's case he initiated a new world view.

Source: http://semiophysics.com/SemioPhysics_article1.html


The scientific method uses induction, which implicitly has room for error. Although the guesses made by science are reasonably accurate, they are not definitively true. What many people fail to understand is that the scientific method is not a method of arriving at answers per se, it is a method of questioning and recording observations. Much of what passes as "scientific truth" is in fact speculation based on observations, but it is not the observation itself.

I agree that western medicine is generally superior for acute interventions. If I break my leg or get a spear through my chest, I want the best that western medicine has to offer. For chronic conditions, however, western medicine frequently does as much harm as good.

If I tear my ACL while skiing, is it chronic or acute? The tear itself if acute, but the movement and lifestyle patterns that led to me tearing the ACL in the first place are chronic.

None of it is black or white-- those that think it is one or the other are probably the least scientific of anyone.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:01 pm

when you tear a ligament, that's it, it's gone and it won't repair itself, it has to be repaired surgically.

this is done via surgery where the ligament is tied back together.

so, the tear is acute and the treatment is surgery. :)

alopathic medicine depends on common sense as far as prevention goes.

but so does eastern medicine.

nutritional information is as valid from western medicine as it is from eastern, in fact, probably moreso for us westerners as we have a western diet for the most part. Do you think Chinese people come hoe on Friday, look at each other and moan, "not chinese food for dinner again!" lol.

common sense is not all that common though unfortunately and so in a rich society we have many of the people who do not make sensible decisions about their diet and instead feed themselves out of convenience and ergo wind up eating a lot of crappy food because thy do not have the knowledge to eat properly or they are lazy or they are devoting their time to something else that will push out good nutritional choices or slow food thinking.

The slow food movement in europe will hopefully get here and we will see the gradual fall of fast food insanity that is part and parcel to the western diet for the most part.

If there's any business I'd like to see changed from the ground up, it's the fast food industry.
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Re: Tcm & energetic qualities of food.

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:03 pm

It is worthy of note that North Americans and western europeans on average have the longest life spans when compared to other populations. so, we're doing something right. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

(check out the map)
Last edited by Darth Rock&Roll on Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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