Western medicine does not pay attention to the issue of dietary contraindications, but Chinese medicine is particularly concerned, there are many esoteric truths, now a brief explanation.
Meat
desirable: black chicken, eggs, duck, lean meat, turtle, loach, eel, snail, liver of various animals.
Avoid: rooster meat, mutton, dog meat, carp, crucian carp, seafood, various pickled and fumigated products, fried and fatty food.
Note: people with cirrhotic ascites can eat carp and crucian carp; people with liver and gallstones should not eat eggs.
Fruit and vegetable drinks
advisable: fungus, shiitake mushrooms, bitter melon, cucumber, tomatoes, pears, spinach, coix seeds, hawthorn.
Avoid: garlic, garlic rice, onion, bamboo shoots, cinnamon meat, peach, milk, pumpkin, lychee, yellow cauliflower, Chinese cabbage. All spicy (aromatic) stimulants should be avoided as much as possible.
Note: Radish and water spinach (hollow cabbage) have no adverse effects on patients with liver disease.
Drinking alcohol and smoking are strictly prohibited in liver disease. A little sauerkraut is beneficial to the treatment of liver disease, but too much is not good, especially if accompanied by gastrointestinal disease.
1. Chicken is so nutritious, why can’t you eat chicken? Why can eat chicken again?
Chicken is a flesh and blood sentient thing, sweet and beautiful, can indeed nourish the qi and blood. But in Chinese medicine theory, chicken in the eight trigrams is Xun, in the gas is wind, should be liver wood rising Qi. After midnight, when Yang Qi is rising, all kinds of animals are still sleeping, but only the chicken should be in time to raise their wings and sound, so the chicken can be the most ascending Qi of the liver and gallbladder and can move the liver wind, so anyone who has the risk of liver wind moving inside should not eat chicken (such as hypertension, people with a history of stroke).
Liver in the body for the body Yin and Yang organs, so people with liver disease, it is appropriate to recuperate, such as the strong use of its Yang, it will hurt the liver Yin, so eat chicken, chicken soup is easy to move the liver Yang (rooster is particularly obvious), liver Yin easy to hurt, liver Yin injury is the loss of moistening and hardening, so there is a risk of forming cirrhosis of the liver. However, black chicken, whose meat and bones are black, black is kidney, can replenish water, that is, can replenish kidney yin and yin blood, so it is in line with the characteristics of liver “body yin and Yang”, so it can nourish yin, so we encourage patients with liver disease to eat more black chicken.
But the meat of the chicken is not as delicious as domestic chicken, so many people do not want to eat, if you have to eat chicken, you must avoid the rooster, you can choose the yellow hen. Because the male is also male, dry and also the sky, its nature is Yang, more likely to trigger liver hyperactivity. The yellow hen is yellow in color and spleen, and the mother, female, also Kun, also earth, its taste is sweet, and has the purpose of nourishing the spleen and earth; although the yellow hen is suspected of moving the liver wind, but its purpose of nourishing the spleen and earth, but also to prevent the transmission of liver disease (the scripture cloud, see the liver disease, know that the liver transmits the spleen, when the first real spleen), so there is no big problem.
2, the liver is an animal metabolic organ, which has a lot of toxic substances stored, why liver disease should eat animal liver?
Western medicine believes that the liver is an animal metabolic organ, with detoxification functions, many toxic substances absorbed into the blood from the gastrointestinal tract, as well as toxic substances produced by the body in the circulation of blood through the liver, detoxification in the liver cells, so the liver is particularly toxic than other organs of the body. However, the liver is originally used for detoxification, and the liver of a healthy animal (not a dead animal) is fully capable of detoxifying the toxic substances in it, so its toxic content is also very limited.
According to the theory of Chinese medicine, the liver can be used to nourish the liver, so that the liver is healthy and the liver disease can be easily cured. According to the theory of Western medicine, after the human body eats animal liver, it is digested and absorbed by the digestive system, and the decomposed components of the original animal liver become important raw materials for the regeneration of the human liver, which is very beneficial to the recovery of liver disease. In recent years, foreign countries have developed a series of animal liver preparations for clinical treatment of liver disease, also proved that patients with liver disease should eat animal liver.
There are esoteric reasons why various other foods are appropriate or inappropriate to eat, so I will not cite them all here. I will discuss them in my future book “Chinese Medicine Science”, or I will gradually add them to the list when I have time in the future.
In addition: on the issue of whether patients with liver disease can eat beef, I used to advocate not to eat, because I read a great doctor in the Republic of China, Zhang Xichen, “Medicine in the heart of the West”, which mentioned that he witnessed a patient with a history of cirrhosis of the liver ascites relapse due to eating beef and not treated, that the cow abdomen is as big as a drum, so eating beef is prone to “bulging “(roughly equivalent to cirrhosis of the liver ascites). But recently studied carefully, according to the theory of Chinese medicine and science, the abdomen should be able to treat the abdomen, rather than cause abdomen, and cattle are earth, especially yellow beef can complement the earth, the five elements, earth can control water.
So theoretically, yellow beef should be able to complement the earth and treat water, most suitable for the treatment of cirrhotic ascites (especially those with hypoproteinemia). So now correct the previous wrong view, advocate liver disease people can eat more yellow beef. As we all know, cirrhotic ascites itself is a disease prone to recurrence. Is the recurrence of cirrhosis after eating beef seen by Zhang Xichun back then a coincidence, or is there an inevitable causal relationship? I think the possibility of coincidence is high.
3, found some friends questioned whether milk and pumpkin can be eaten
Although milk is rich in nutrients, most oriental people have not developed the habit of drinking milk since childhood, so many people can easily form indigestion after drinking milk, and milk is liquid and tastes sweet, mainly has the role of nourishing the spleen and stomach yin liquid. Patients with liver disease, because the disease is in the liver, it is easy to affect the spleen and stomach (Chinese medicine is called “see the disease of the liver, know that the liver transmits the spleen”), and the nature of the disease is a lot of damp heat for the problem, so milk is not suitable for most people.
In addition, among the melons and vegetables, pumpkin is the sweetest, the part eaten is equivalent to the “fruit pulp”, according to Chinese medicine, “the fruit pulp is the main nourishment”, so pumpkin has the effect of strengthening the spleen and nourishing the stomach, the gastrointestinal tract repair benefits. At the same time, pumpkin is one of the most resistant to storage among the vegetables, the common environment for a long time without deterioration, has a natural role in fighting corruption, because the taste is sweet earth, so pumpkin has “earth to solve all the poison” image. In addition, the pumpkin color yellow and red and taste sweet, taste sweet is tonic, color yellow into the spleen, color red into the blood, so can nourish the spleen and blood, these are many other squash does not have the function.
However, the pumpkin taste big sweet, so the nature of warm, eat more can help damp heat, so the ancient Chinese have always regarded it as “hair”, that the body has “damp heat” can not eat. Chronic hepatitis patients have more damp heat in their bodies, so pumpkin is best not to eat.
In fact, each kind of diet, carefully analyzed, have their own benefits, but also have their own drawbacks, can eat mainly according to the patient’s constitution, but because of chronic liver disease (mainly refers to chronic hepatitis B) the special nature of the disease, so the diet is appropriate and contraindicated, for most patients, can not be generalized.