Sleep, Rest, Water, Warm cooked Wet Foods, Saturated Fats, (and meditation)...

What do all of the above have in common? They are all forms of Yin, which in Oriental Medicine is restful energy, the ability to receive (whether that’s life, fertility, inspiration, the capacity to reflect, or surrender to sleep), as well as the physical and energetic resources that the body needs for integrating life. The more Yin energy/ resources you have the more you are able to receive and reflect deeply, be flexible and fluid physically and mentally, and the faster you are able to integrate the emotional vicissitudes of life, or by contrast recover from a hard workout – all activity requires Yin/ resources to fuel it, integrate it, and aid in recovery. To those looking to preserve their youthfulness, Yin is the essence of a youthful appearance and the basis for longevity. Another way of talking about Yin from a Biomedical perspective is ‘hydration’. Hydration, hydration, hydration! We all know the importance of sufficient hydration, but especially in the Fall (and Winter), which in Chinese Medicine, is the season when ‘dryness’ is the pathological factor our systems (especially the Lungs), become most susceptible to.

As important as drinking water is for hydration, it’s simply not enough. For many people, assimilating water is a challenge if your digestive fire and therefore your digestion is already challenged – you often experience bloating and gas, loose stools, or don’t have a clear or strong appetite. Water for people who have digestive challenges may just end up as a damp bog in the stomach, instead of assimilated and distributed to places where it’s needed. Enter warm, wet foods: Soups! Stews! And grain porridges (especially for breakfast)! Warm foods, especially when they are well cooked and filled with water are in a form that is easy for the stomach to digest and assimilate fluids at a deeper level, and in the case of grain porridges, they are specifically nourishing to the lining of the stomach. If we consider breakfast foods across cultures, nearly every continent and culture has a version of a breakfast porridge: in parts of West Africa it’s a millet porridge, in East Asia it’s a rice porridge, in the UK it’s oatmeal, in the American South it’s corn grits! Cooked warm wet foods are the medium for much deeper fluid assimilation than just drinking straight water. High quality, cooked with lots of water, non-GMO organic, whole grains are essential to a healthy stomach. If you are still finding grains are hard on your digestion eat yams or sweet potatoes! (Either way, healthy carbohydrates play an important role in the health of our Stomach organ.) Hydration gained through foods - soups, stews, porridges, and even fruits - provide a deeper level of hydration necessary for the body. While traveling in Eastern Europe one summer, I found myself surrounded by delicious heavy foods, plenty of fresh water, and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and yet found myself deeply craving soups! While water cleanses and hydrates, soups, stews and porridges hydrate at a deeper level.

Your Stomach Fluids are your ability to adapt to your external environment:

Our systems are constantly being challenged to adapt to the external world, whether it’s our nervous system with (righteous) road rage, or immune system from the 25 degree drop overnight or a raging pandemic or jetlag, or our digestive system from the chili cheese dog with extra chili and extra cheese. In Oriental Medicine, the heart of our body’s ability to physically adapt to the present environment is our Stomach, specifically our Stomach Yin, or Stomach fluids. No wonder it’s also at the center of our bodies…! And no wonder all doctors across time and medical traditions have all prescribed rest, and lots of fluids when sick. The health of your stomach is as an essential aspect to a healthy immune resistance and response. Stomach Fluids enable your innate immune structures, like your mucous membranes and pores, to secure the entryways that pathogens would otherwise exploit to enter the body; Stomach Fluids are also necessary as the first layer of the body’s mediumship for expelling pathogens, through sweating, peeing, pooping, or vomiting, that have entered your system. This is not to say that there aren’t other aspects to a healthy immune system, but before I reach for an immune boosting herb, I will first reach for a hearty soup or tall glass of water (many times a day).

On Saturated Fats…

The list in the title is also a list of things that we need to prevent getting sick by increasing our system’s resilience; this includes saturated fats. The scientific literature and our understanding is turning and discovering that not all saturated fats are equal or bad for our health (check out this article by Harvard Medical School: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/new-thinking-on-saturated-fat). In fact, our bodies need healthy saturated fats as the building blocks for such essential things as the lipid bi-layer of every cell membrane. If your body doesn’t receive high quality saturated fats from your diet, it will not be able to make high quality metabolic structures, which can affect us as feeling hypersensitive to our external environment for instance, since our cell walls are made of a fatty acid bi-layer. Saturated fats hydrate at the cellular level. In Chinese Medicine, high quality saturated fats, like grassfed products, pasture-raised chicken eggs, and coconut oil, resonate with our constitutional layer - the deepest layer of our bodies, and provide the deepest level of Yin and therefore the deepest level of support and stability to our systems. A sense of deep stability is foundational to our resilience, resistance, and restfulness. In fact, the kinds of fats and oils we do put into our systems are actually a very important and often overlooked aspect to our health and well-being. Stay tuned for a future post on good fats and oils! (I know for many this is very controversial information on saturated fats! For more information on the role of healthy saturated fats in our diets, check out the book: “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” by Nina Teicholz, written in 2014. Interestingly, Nina Teicholz was vegetarian and ate low-fat for 20 years before she began researching an article on Trans Fats and then all fats for Gourmet Magazine.)

Since we are talking about things that are hydrating, it’s just as important to talk about what is dehydrating: sugar, alcohol, coffee, caffeinated teas, chocolate (sorry..), spicy foods, dry dehydrated foods like dried fruit, beef jerky, crackers, all deplete fluids or cause inflammation and heat in the system that require extra amounts of fluids. Folks who should pay special attention to expanding their hydration: anyone with an autoimmune condition or chronic illness, acute illness, insomniacs or if you have had a night of insomnia, anytime you travel, experiencing a big physical change to your system like surgery, are going through emotional transitions, you have dry lips, or experience neurological symptoms, like tremors… in essence if you are experiencing change you need more yin / hydration to move through it smoothly. As we deepen into Fall (but really year-round), this is an important time to fortify our defenses with good hydration, by expanding and deepening our definition of hydration! It’s also worth mentioning that carbonated drinks are not a replacement for regular flat water - i know, how boring!!

While I will always first recommend therapies that you can do for yourself like food, if you continue to experience a perplexing issue make an appointment to receive more insight from a Chinese Medicine perspective into what is off.

A Hearty Bowl of Soup to You!