diet therapy

[Guest guest]

Gary wrote:

Coffee is necessary for my health, but it is not for everyone.

I base this

on the blood-type diet theory. As blood-type A, coffee is more

than

medicinal, it is essential. For blood-type O it is a big no-no.

I do not

believe in Chinese Food or Diet Therapy ( yes I am a heretic ).

Gary,

First, I consider dietary therapy to be fundamental to the long term

success of herbal therapy. Unlike acupuncture, which can be of immeasurable

benefit, yet remains optional or substitutable, at least. Foods are

also on a continuum with herbs and regularly constitute an overlapping

topic in TCM texts and classics. And I agree that coffee, like all

nonpoisonous substances, is good for some and not for others.

I have used blood type therapy myself. Dietary advice is part

of my scope of practice in Oregon and since I have a degree in biology

and a couple of years of naturopathic school, I have studied and practiced

this subject from perspectives other than TCM for 15 years. I also

owned a multidisciplinary clinic for three years that included a naturopath

who utilized blood type therapy as his foundation of dietary intervention.

As a matter of course, I provided all clinic patients with blood type diet

info and thus involved hundreds of patients in this therapy. I have

several observations to make.

Dietary intervention according to blood type seems to affect a symptoms,

etc. However, I have also observed that if people continue to eat

excessively sweet, spicy and greasy foods, their health does NOT improve,

regardless if the only eat foods on their type list. But I'd like

to add at the outset that I believe the reverse also is true. TCM

dietary therapy is limited in its own right. And scientific ideas

like blood type diet can be of importance just as the germ theory of disease

often serves us well. Both my staff naturopath and Peter D'adamo

are very clear about this. You still have to follow the basic rules

of eating. The question is what constitutes such basic rules?

I'd like to address your specific comments below.

Blood-type

food therapy works better although it is an incomplete paradigm.

I have experimented upon myself and my patients with typical prescriptions

to avoid

cold foods, raw foods, spicy foods, greasy foods, ad nauseum.

I felt no

effects of this therapy upon myself nor did my patients.

 

How many years have you been in practice? And am I correct

that your practice has taken place in a warm dry environment for the most

part (Arizona and NM)? Raw cold foods are certainly tolerated better

in the hot dry climate, as would dairy (yin balancing yang in both cases).

I think dairy and raw foods can very problematic in the northwest and my

experience suggests this single change can have profound effects on patients

health. There is also evidence mounting that many of the most potent

and important disease preventing substances in food are more accessible

when the food is cooked. For years, emphasis has focused on the substances

destroyed by cooking, but lately research has focused on what cooking enhances.

While raw foods are higher in vitamins than cooked foods, only a few vitamins

are actually destroyed by gentle cooking methods. Yet the breakdown

of cellulose by cooking vegetables renders the remaining nutrients far

more assimilable. A well known example is lycopene from tomatoes,

but this is true of all food compounds called flavonoids, which are turning

out to be extremely valuable substances.

Many raw food advocates point to the near total elimination of enzymes

through cooking. While enzymes are well known to be essential to

health, there is no evidence I now of that shows food enzymes to play a

necessary role in health. When I asked Peter D'adamo about this,

he referred me to the Pottenger studies on cats. Sorry, the fact

that cats may thrive on raw milk, a food with easily accessible nutrients

and no fiber, proves nothing to me about human needs. Nor does the

fact that our ancestors obviously evolved in a raw foods environment in

primeval africa. This is because much anthropological consensus now

has it that the fire was under primate control before homo erectus evolved

in modern homo sapiens (500,000 years ago). Thus, we have always

had fire. In addition, dental evidence suggests that our control

of fire gave us a serious adaptive advantage over our competitor primates.

Evidence now suggests that earlier hominid primates succumbed often to

dental caries and parasites caused by eating raw grains and other raw foods.

D'adamo also directed me to Weston Price's famous study of dental development

and diet. However, the details of this landmark ethnographic style

study present people all over the world eating WHOLE foods diets.

In no cases were the subjects living mainly on a RAW foods diet.

As for spicy and greasy foods prohibition, these concepts are directly

linked to herbal properties and can't be dismissed without also completely

dismissing the value of herb qualities at the same time. First, it

is herbs which give foods spice to begin with. So the same excessive

spices are also medicinal in many cases, such as gan jiang, chuan jiao,

rou gui, ding xiang, to name a few. These herbs warm the interior.

They often aggravate flaring of ministerial fire and yin xu. they

treat coldness. It does not seem reasonable to accept these herbal

functions and then say there is no effect from eating foods with lots of

these herbs. And while different constitutions have different needs

and tolerances, it is a central tenet of yin fire theory that all people

can be overstimulated by spice, because of its direct effect upon ministerial

fire, leading to myriad disease and shortened life.

As for greasy, this seems obvious. While the theories regarding

fat in the diet shifts a lot, there are some general points of agreement.

Fried foods provide fat which has become toxic; animals raised without

exercise on corn diet and rendered animal protein produce fat that has

pathological imbalances , causing the body to have inflammatory tendencies.

Margarine and vegetable shortening cannot be used in normal biological

process and just add fat tissue and also cause inflammation. Basically

all polyunsaturated oils, pressed or extracted are rancid by the time they

are purchased, unless they have been refrigerated in lightproof bottles

or otherwise preserved. Rapeseed is a toxic plant, the source of

canola. On the other hand, naturally raised meat, dairy, chicken,

eggs etc, have got a bad rap. They are safe in moderation.

But again, I must return to herbs to drive this home. If certain

herbs are said to be greasy and this is a constant cause for concern, this

must also be true of foods.

Finally, does the spleen like damp. No. Are raw and greasy

foods damp? Yes? This is tied to basic TCM theory. We

can debate the clinical validity of TCM ideas, but if the spleen does not

transform and transport fluids, the whole system falls apart for me.

 

I abandoned it

because it is really based on Chinese cultural mores. For example,

cheese,

yogurt and dairy were looked upon as very bad, not because they were

truly

bad for one, but because the hated Mongol invaders made it a part of

their

daily regimen.

I think you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

The example you provide is historically correct and TCM dietary texts do

not prohibit dairy, but ascribe it properties like any other food.

Zhu dan xi refers to the correct and incorrect use of milk in his works,

for example. So while chinese popular culture has a problem with

dairy for the reason you describe, I don't think there is evidence that

this bias extended to medicine as a rule. And these "mores" do explain

at all the more important examples you dismiss above.