Traditional Chinese Medicine: Food & Diet Therapy in Northwest Arkansas

Food and diet therapy is one of many modalities that make up traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), along with acupuncture, Chinese herbology and Tui Na practice. Diet is used to help a patient maintain balance; the balance of Yin and Yang and other vital substances of the body, and to resolve illness and prevent disease. The underlying principles are identical to those of other TCM modalities. The diet follows the same “pattern identification” where we look at the whole person and determine the pattern, or the patient’s group of signs and symptoms, followed by a treatment appropriate to the person’s pattern.

Traditional Medicine holds that foods have various properties, including warm, hot, cold, cool. Also, the flavors of foods such as pungent, sour, sweet, bland and acrid are used to help patients make the necessary changes to create balance and good health. Most foods are cooked since cooked foods are generally easier to digest and therefore provide a “net” benefit that can be greater than raw foods. Depending on the patient’s presenting pattern some foods are encouraged, some foods are discouraged. Certain foods are avoided altogether such as overly sweet foods and cold, raw foods, especially cold drinks. 

Bob Flaws book The Tao of Healthy Eating that can be purchased from Blue Poppy Enterprises provides a guide to food and diet therapy in TCM.