Category Archives: Digestion

The Five Elements of Eating

Digestion, Five Flavours, Food, Nei Jing, Taste, , , ,

As a child I learned the importance of good food from my parents. While we didn’t have spare cash for holidays, flash clothes, or even schoolbooks,  good food was always  the highest priority, and I never suffered from going hungry. As a latchkey teenager, it became my responsibility to prepare dinner when my mother was working, and I built up a list of simple recipes, mostly one-pot meals in the trusty Sunbeam frypan. Things like spaghetti bolognaise, Mexican rice and curry. This early training engendered a love of a facility for cooking. And eating!

When I encountered the Five Element model of Chinese medicine, it was natural to bring this paradigm into the kitchen. In 1991 I joined a training in the Five Elements known as the Sophia Program of the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Maryland, USA. This showed me a way of living that is in harmony with the seasons of nature. Each year since then I have chosen a theme  to act as a framework for keeping in touch with the changing energies of the seasons and their corresponding Elements. My blogs over the past 11 years have reflected these choices.

Last month, after I’d penned the final in the series on the pathogenic factors and was casting about for a subject for the coming year, a friend gave me a lovely gift of Zoey Xinyi Gong’s new book, “The Five Elements Cookbook” which inspired the theme for the coming year.

What follows here is an introduction to the theme. Later articles will address each Element in its own season, showing how we can utilise Five Element principles to inform our cooking and eating choices to be in harmony with this fundamental rhythm.

Eating fresh, nourishing, tasty food that is artfully presented is one of the joys of living a human life. It stimulates the appetite, appeals to the senses and nourishes body and soul. It needs not only to taste good but smell good and look good. These qualities are reflected in some of the key resonances of the Five Elements.

The five flavours and their respective Elements are salty (Water), sour (Wood), bitter (Fire), sweet (Earth), and pungent (Metal). Not all dishes will have all five flavours, but a meal should include all representations for balance.

A balance of the five colours is similarly important. A variety of blue/black, green, red, yellow and white colours is appealing. Again, while not all colours need appear in a dish, some variety is important. Imagine how visually unappealing would be a meal of chicken, cauliflower and potato all smothered in a white sauce. Some salad greens or a spoon of a red condiment, for example, would temper the whiteness.

The Five Element model also provides us with information on how to choose foods that are in harmony with the season. It is natural that we are drawn to cool foods in hot weather and warm foods in cold weather.  But we can also make choices as to colour and flavour to support the energy of the season. For example, eating more green and sour foods in spring; more yellow and sweet foods in the late summer.

A fun use of the five flavours in cooking is the principle that the flavour of one Element controls the flavour of its grandson Element. Thus salt (Water) will control bitter (Fire); bitter will control pungent (Metal); pungent will control sour (Wood); sour will control sweet (Earth); and sweet will control salty. If you’ve made a dish that is too salty, try adding something sweet to balance the flavours. Too sweet? Add something sour. It can be fun to play with this. For more detail on this, see previous blog A Taste of Earth.

The five flavours can also be used medicinally to treat certain conditions. Each flavour benefits its corresponding yin organ: salt benefits the kidneys, sour benefits the liver, bitter benefits the heart, sweet benefits the spleen and pungent benefits the lung.

However, overindulgence of these flavours will not only injure the corresponding organ, but also the tissues associated with the grandson Element. For example, too much salt damages the blood vessels, as we know from western dietary models. Too much sweet damages the bones

Another resonance to consider is that of the climatic factors which we explored over the last year: Cold (Water), Wind (Wood), Heat (Fire), Damp (Earth) and Dryness (Metal). When there is weakness in an Element, the corresponding climatic factor can invade the body and become a pathogenic factor. We tend to be susceptible to the climate of the season, but we can succumb to any in any season. When this happens, we can turn to food to help combat the invaders.

This knowledge is ancient, well tried over millennia. The Huang Di Nei Jing, or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, was compiled about 2,300 years ago, and reflects countless prior centuries of understanding. This classic is replete with references to food and its use in medicine, and I will be drawing from that ancient text over the coming year. I will also include recipes that can support us in the season we are traversing.

Look out soon for the first tasty instalment in our southern hemispheric season of winter.

Huang Di Nei Jing

DAMPNESS

Damp, Digestion, Earth Element, Humidity, Oedema, Reproductive, Urination, , , ,

Wet, moist, dripping, sticky, sodden, muggy, close, clammy. These words convey the feeling in the human body of humidity or dampness. This is the climate that resonates with late summer and the Earth Element.

As with the other external climatic factors we’ve looked at so far (cold, wind and heat), dampness can become pathogenic when it invades the body.

Sticky humidity is usually linked in our minds with tropical climates where the humidity is accompanied by heat, creating that sagging, sinking heaviness that makes it hard to move. We perspire, but the sweat doesn’t evaporate in the air which is already full to dripping with moisture. We feel sticky all over; armpits and other creases feel like swamps.

But damp can also be present in cold climates where persistent precipitation drives up the moisture content of the air. I spent my early childhood in the north of England, in Manchester which lies at the foot of the Pennines and where the rain driving in from Ireland is trapped by the hills, and hangs over the city as low, grey cloud and an incessant drizzle. In such climates, clothing never feels dry, bedsheets are perennially damp. There is even damp in the walls of houses, known as “rising damp”.

Living in humid climates, both hot and cold, can lead to invasion of damp into the body. So too can sitting on damp ground or in wet clothes, living in a house that is close to a stream, or working in a damp environment.

As above, so below: people who have dampness within their body are more likely to complain about and be susceptible to dampness outside. This suggests a weakness in the Earth Element and its associated organ/channels of Stomach and Spleen.

As we’ve seen previously, climatic factors injure their corresponding yin organs. Cold injures the Kidney, wind injures the Liver and heat injures the Heart. Similarly, damp invades and injures the Spleen.

One of the many functions of the Spleen is the efficient transportation of fluids throughout the body. When Spleen is weak, fluids accumulate, often in the lower body, producing oedema and a feeling of heaviness and lethargy. Spleen, together with Stomach, is also responsible for transforming food into Qi and circulating that Qi to all the organs. When this transformation process is compromised, Qi is deficient and fatigue and lethargy result.

Certain foods are known to make this transformation process difficult. Sugary foods such as cakes, biscuits and ice cream slow down the Spleen. So too do dairy products and highly refined grains. Greasy, fried food is also hard for Spleen to metabolise. Another challenge to Spleen is cold food or drinks. And all alcohol. All of these foods are said to generate damp within the body.

So, damp shmamp, who cares? Well, consider this: internal damp can travel up the yin meridians of the leg to affect the organs of the abdomen. It can affect the reproductive organs, producing painful periods, vaginal discharges, genital swelling and itching; it can affect the intestines, causing bloating and loose stools; and when damp affects the bladder, it can create difficult, frequent or burning urination and cloudy urine. Other symptoms can include arthritis and swelling of the joints, poor appetite, fullness in the chest or epigastrium, feelings of tiredness and heaviness, fogginess in the head with difficulty thinking, and a sticky white or yellow coating on the tongue.

A full exploration of the many Damp conditions is beyond the scope of this article. But it must be noted that a diagnosis of damp is very common, especially in western countries or other places that have adopted the western diet. Damp can affect Stomach, Spleen, Large Intestine, Small Intestine, Bladder, Kidneys, Gall Bladder, Liver, uterus and the skin. Conditions can derive from external damp invading the body, or internal damp caused by a deficiency in the Spleen.

Points to clear damp

Points to clear damp are many and varied, depending on the organ/channel that is affected. As we are focusing here on external damp invading the Spleen, I’ll focus on these Earth points.

Spleen 3, source point of Spleen, directly balances the organ and influences its functions. Located at the ball of the big toe.

Spleen 6, Three Yin Crossing, treats damp in the Spleen, Liver and Kidneys. (Forbidden during pregnancy.) Located 3 cun (4 fingers width) above the tip of the inner ankle bone and close to the back of the tibia.

Spleen 9, Water point of the Spleen is perhaps the most well-known point for clearing damp. Located in a depression below the inside of the knee at the medial condyle of the tibia.

Stomach 36, our old friend with many functions, clears damp from Stomach and Spleen. Located 3 cun down from the outside of the knee and 1 finger lateral to the tibia.

Location of Spleen 3, 6 & 9