Winter is Coming

Or winter is here rather, and I have found myself in a quandary.  What do I eat in the morning?  I don't want to eat bread, and I tend to steer clear of dairy and eggs, so what to eat?  My lovely roommate Charli makes green smoothies for herself every morning, and while I was loving them in the summer, I found that it is too cold for me in the morning in the winter.  This would make sense from a Chinese Medicine standpoint.  Summer is the Yang season, and is fire, so cooling foods would serve the body well.  However, winter is Yin, and our bodies need warming foods to  keep our internal yang strong and for our bodies to function properly.  So, I have been having a hard time with this, until my friend Rachel suggested I add some warming spices to my smoothie such as ginger or cardamom.   I thought this sounded like a good idea, and so I tried it, and low and behold I felt much better.  I was feeling pretty proud of myself, then I went to theory........ According to Chinese medicine theory, your body does not like raw in winter, and over time eating a bunch of raw food will cause Phlegm, which no one wants.  SO, again I was stumped.  I decided this rule sounded a little stringent, and honestly felt a little offended for my beloved green smoothie, I felt that I needed to defend it's virtue and get to the bottom of this, could my green smoothie really cause Phlegm?  I should add physical manifestations of Phlegm are no fun, they include cysts, goiters, sluggishness, lethargy, weight retention to name a few.  Well I have consulted some admirable sources (one of my professors and my acupuncturist, both of whom are brilliant) and this is what I have come up with.

During winter we want to avoid raw food. We want to feed ourselves warm nourishing meals, including warming spices into our diets such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, garlic and I would throw tumeric in there because I think it is a magical root.  However, the everything in moderation rule will apply, so if you have one raw green smoothie in the am, it is not going to give you goiters :) It is however, a good idea to amend your smoothie for the winter weather. It makes sense that the same smoothie that serves you in the summer, would not be the best in the winter.  Fortify your green smoothie with warming spices and add some fat to it, such as coconut milk in order to help and feed your body in the winter.  Other than that, drink ginger tea to help your stomach fire, and have the rest of your meals be cooked, nourishing meals.   :)

The End...... For Now.

Bad Medicine Talk

I have, in my life, run into many people that think some of my faith in holistic health, is unfounded.  I even once had someone tell me that acupuncture is a sham, and that it can all be explained by the placebo effect.  I appreciate other peoples skepticism, and input.  However, I would like to remind people that all the studies out there are not always totally truthful, and that when considering a claim, one must also consider the source, who funded the writing that is making this claim etc. This statement goes for both holistic claims as well as western medicinal claims and or refutes.  In essence I would like to remind people to keep an open mind about everything, even those ideas that seem foreign to them.  I recently watched a ted talks that talks about bad medicine, and I have to say Ben Goldacre MD. can speak to the flaws of publications better than I can.
Enjoy:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html

Hypochondria

I took a week off of blog posts.  I have been rather busy, and just couldn't seem to take the time to post.  However, I am back! Lately in school I have observed that I am feeling like every symptom mentioned pertains to me.  Theory class is especially bad for this, as we are talking about the Organs of the human body, and how they can cause pathology when out of balance, the Zhang Fu organ theory.  I am now convinced that all of my Organs are out of balance and I am a big mess, while still maintaining decent health from an outward perspective.  And my teachers say the imbalance will only get worse in school because I am going to be working so hard, and not be able to pay attention to the rhythms my body wants.  But, at least in the end, I will know how to heal myself a bit better! :)

Though the study of Traditional Chinese Medicine Theory (TCM Theory), I have been feeling reaffirmed in why I chose this medicine to study.  I like the holistic nature of it.  I like the idea that a pathology in one area affects all other areas of the body in one way or another.  I like the notion that this medicine derived from centuries of observation, and trial and error.  This medicine has a very scientific approach even if it wasn't always written down in the jargon of "double blind study", or "case study". Ancient Chinese philosophers organized data from doctors, found patterns, and compiled them in huge texts such as the Huang di Nei Jing for future practitioners to use and study. It is funny to me that people in this modern age disregard this medicine just because they can't understand the theory of it, and most of those people that I have met, have never taken the time to try and read about or understand the theory themselves.  This makes me want to understand the theory well, so that I may be able to bridge the gap for people as a practitioner.

A few things I have noticed my first term at OCOM are:
 1. I feel a tremendous pressure to understand all of my classes well because they are all so relevant, the western medicine classes just as much as the eastern medicine classes. In undergrad I was pretty sure some of the classes I was being forced to take as pre-req's were total B.S. and I just needed to pass a test then I could forget it.
2. Whenever I have free time, or even when I am at work, I think to myself, "I should really be studying right now", I didn't so much feel that way in undergrad.
3. Getting used to being in a college that is pass, fail, it is still hard to detach my ego from the concept of a high GPA. :)

More to come later.....