Traditional Chinese Medicine is a fully integrative & holistic way of viewing the body. It includes Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, TuiNa Massage, Lifestyle and Nutrition!
Food is an integral part of TCM and one of the medicine’s most important tools for healing.
In TCM, each food has it’s own unique impact on the body. Foods have their own temperatures (from cold to neutral to hot), their own flavors (sour, acrid, sweet) as well as the organ they impact . Ideally, a person who has a cold constitution will eat more warming foods to balance themselves out while a person who has a hot constitution could afford to eat more cooling foods.
Beyond a patient’s innate constitution, foods can help certain ailments that arise. If an ailment involves temperature hot or cold, dry or damp, or even windy, there are foods that counteract and heal that energy.
And finally each season has foods which help to heal any imbalances that season may cause. By balancing your energies, the body heals itself.
In terms of a summer recipe, cucumbers are mildly sweet, impact the spleen positively, are cooling and moisturizing. They have a high water content so are great at keeping you hydrated!
Cucumber TCM Health Benefits:
- Clears heat from the body
- Detoxifying
- Anti-Inflammatory
- Strongly alkalizing
- Benefits the heart
- Moistens the lungs
- Promotes the healing of skin ailments
- Promotes urination
- Benefits the eyes
Ingredients
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 medium white or red onion
- 1/4 cup vinegar (2 oz).
- Light salt & pepper
Directions
- Peel & cut the cucumbers lengthwise, then slice into 1/4 inch slices.
- Slice the onion in half, then slice thin.
- Add cucumber and onion to a bowl and mix.
- Add light salt & pepper.
- Add the vinegar.
- Mix thoroughly.
- Serve! This dish gets better after it marinates for a few hours to plan ahead 🙂
Check out my favorite two books on Traditional Chinese Medicine diets!
- The Tao of Nutrition by Cathy McNease
- https://bookshop.org/books/the-tao-of-nutrition/9781887575256
- Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford
- https://bookshop.org/books/healing-with-whole-foods-asian-traditions-and-modern-nutrition/9781556434303
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