Many of my friends always ask questions about dietary contraindications while seeing a doctor, and I am generally happy to answer them. Because the most basic needs of people to live are air and food (including water, of course). They are so important to life, so of course they have an impact on the occurrence and treatment of diseases, can we not take them seriously? People who live in a fixed place do not have the right to choose the quality of air, so the concern for health and disease can only be taken seriously in the diet (psychological issues are discussed separately). And the concern of our friends also shows that, as Chinese people, our traditional culture still continues, no matter how advanced modern science is, how modern nutrition uses analytical methods to know the composition of food (with little regard to whether it can be absorbed and used by the body smoothly), and what conclusions different foods have on the pros and cons of the human body, still cannot replace our traditional culture’s view of food, which is very gratifying as a TCM It is very comforting to work as a TCM practitioner. So how to choose food after illness? Personally, I think we can consider the four aspects of taste, body, season and disease: 1. The food we eat, like our people, are the products of nature. China’s vast territory, latitude and longitude, temperature, humidity, altitude, geographical composition and other natural conditions vary, so in different areas of the food properties are different, and the rotation of the four seasons of the year brings different properties. The most basic can be divided into cold, hot, flat three, such as bitter melon, duck meat on the cold side, cinnamon, lamb on the warm side, wheat, lotus seeds belong to the flat …… and so on; taste refers to sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty five flavors and light taste, different food taste different, and can be compounded to exist. In terms of classification, in animal food, the sky flying warm, swimming in the water cold, running on the ground with different properties, swift action such as sheep, chickens, dogs and so on more warm, slow action such as pigs, ducks and so on more cold; as far as plants are concerned, condiments are mostly warm and hot; food is mostly flat, so it is suitable for eating in large quantities. The majority of vegetables and fruits are cold, Chinese people like to add such as pepper, onion, ginger and other warm adjuvants to temper the cold vegetables is very correct. Incidentally, modern nutrition advocates eating more raw vegetables, that can reduce the consumption of vitamins, nutritious to the human body, does not advocate frying and deep-frying and other traditional Chinese cooking practices should not be vigorously promoted, it is contrary to our traditional understanding, long-term consumption is easy to hurt the body’s Yang energy. Therefore, when choosing food, you need to consider the properties, not simply to a certain food contains more vitamins, or more protein or more fiber and then feast on it. In addition, friends with taste preferences should also consider the “taste” of food, according to traditional Chinese medicine is acid, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty, in the human body correspondingly into the five organs, namely the liver, heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys (not anatomically referred to the tissue organs), in order to nourish our internal organs. For a healthy person, harmonizing the five tastes and not favoring them is the basic of health maintenance; while after illness, it is necessary to give proper preference to the taste trade-offs according to the deficiency and reality of the internal organs. Huang Di Nei Jing” clearly pointed out that “the reason for eating more salty, the pulse condensation weeping and change color; eat more bitter, the skin haggard and hair plucked; eat more pungent, the tendons are urgent and claws withered; eat more acid, the meat corpuscles and lips uncovered; eat more sweet, the bone pain and hair fall, this five flavors of the injury also. Therefore, the heart wants bitter, the lungs want pungent, the liver wants sour, the spleen wants sweet, the kidneys want salty, this is the combination of the five flavors also”. That is to say, long-term preference for a certain flavor can harm our five organs, and needs to be considered when blending food. After talking about attributes and tastes, we also need to consider the type of food. As Chinese people, it is better to follow the traditional diet, following the principle of “five grains for nourishment, five fruits for help, five animals for benefit, five vegetables for filling” is our basic guideline to maintain human health, that is, the usual food composition is mainly grain, supplemented by fruits, vegetables and meat. For example, from the 1970s to the 1980s in the United States, because people generally like meat, fried food and sweets, the incidence of obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other “civilizational diseases” has increased year by year, and medical investment has become increasingly large. The U.S. government’s “over-nutrition” problem is also declining year by year, and the medical expenditure paid for this purpose has been decreasing significantly, so the fat people in the United States now mostly belong to the poor class. On the contrary, in our country, after the reform and opening up, the standard of living is getting higher and higher, because of poverty and have to “vegetarian” Chinese people, now in the structure of food meat and high-fat food accounted for a larger and larger proportion, fruit and a variety of desserts to eat more and more, the result is that in all age groups, that is, from infants to the elderly are different The result is that various problems occur in all age groups, from infants to the elderly, due to imbalance in dietary structure. The health problems that have occurred in developed countries are now being repeated in our country, which is a reality that cannot be avoided and that each of us needs to think about and should actively respond to. The “light” of “modern science” has washed the brains of most of us, and the “nutrition”, “health science”, “Chinese medicine” and “health care” advocated by some experts have been washed. ” and “Chinese medicine for health” advocated by some experts. So people are generally concerned about the “lack” of nutrition, lack of certain vitamins, lack of protein, lack of minerals, never consider whether they really lack nutrition, not to mention whether the “nutrition” eaten can be absorbed and used by the body, whether it is really beneficial to their The “individual” benefit. People who drink milk for a long time but lack calcium never consider the fact that their ancestors rarely drank milk and basically did not lack calcium; people who advocate eating more “fresh” vegetables and fruits also consider the fact that people who lived on the Loess Plateau in the past rarely got to eat fresh vegetables but were not obviously lacking in vitamins. Many people are encouraged by “modern nutrition”, lectures and books by “experts” to make “nutritional recipes” every day, thinking that they can keep their health or live a long life from then on, at the expense of But the end result is that most of them spend a lot of money and have health problems instead. The most representative one is the promotion of eating more “fresh (green, anti-seasonal)” fruits and vegetables and drinking more water, which has resulted in a significant increase in allergies to sunlight among the most beautiful women (men like to eat more pastries and drinks, which are also sweet foods) and a general increase in calcium deficiency among people who like sweets. For the “experts” who advocate these claims, it’s a sin! To summarize, food has a nature, taste, cold, hot, warm and cool vary, sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty each have their own main, complementary, diarrheal function varies, must be based on the taste of food to choose suitable for their individual food, follow the modern nutrition from the perspective of component analysis is not necessarily beneficial to you. 2, the human body: simply put, is divided into physique. The human physique is divided into a variety of “Ling Shu” that “five elements of the people”, “Yin and Yang 25 people” classification, the simplest can be divided into two kinds of people, namely cold, hot two categories. Cold (like warm, fear of cold, cold or eat cold easy diarrhea, etc.) people can eat some hot food; hot (fear of heat, like to eat cold, easy to constipation, etc.) people can eat some cold food. Here we also want to emphasize that the nature of water is wet, cold, so the cold side of the body should not drink more water, the body has a damp evil should not drink more water. 3, seasonal: Chinese medicine said “spring and summer Yang, autumn and winter Yin”, that is, different seasons to have the corresponding principles of health. “Eat radish in winter, eat ginger in summer” is very image and correct. Specifically, in the spring and summer, the human body is in a state of dispersion with nature, and the yang energy in the body is relatively insufficient (resistance is weakened, so the summer is a high season for intestinal diseases), so it is not suitable to eat a lot of cold and sour, bitter, salty (with astringent effect, not conducive to the dispersion of yang energy) food. Therefore, I am very much against drinking cold drinks, eating fruits and drinking beer in summer without regard to the needs of the body. In summer, drinking cold drinks, herbal tea, on the one hand, the body can be dispersed outside the Yang Qi to the body to lead to resist the cold food, so as to achieve the purpose of heat, cooling, on the other hand, can supplement the body because of the Yang Qi dispersed and depleted fluids, so moderation is very important. People who have cold drinks all day long eventually have to pay for the side effects of cold food, that is, the spleen Yang deficiency, phlegm and dampness, first appearing abdominal obesity, followed by adverse meridians, increased vascular resistance, increased blood pressure; excessive pancreatic burden, increased blood sugar, and so on, and so forth, all kinds of diseases will appear. On the contrary, in the autumn and winter season, the body’s yang energy is collected, the body’s yang energy is relatively strong, but it is not suitable to eat too much warm food (eat radish is to unblock the body) and spicy food (the nature of hair is not conducive to the collection of yang energy). People are generally used to eating warm food such as mutton and dog meat in winter, just to disperse the body’s Yang Qi to the surface to resist the cold outside, but for health, cure is not very appropriate. 4, disease: no matter what kind of disease, the reaction to each person’s body, will show different signs, such as psoriasis, most to the autumn and winter season aggravation, summer to reduce or alleviate; but there are some people to the summer instead of aggravation. So even for the same disease, there are different ways to treat it. There is no such thing as a “magic pill” that can cure a disease with only one medicine, and there is no such thing as a universal food or health product that is suitable for all diseases. We often say that “Chinese medicine treats people” because the same disease will manifest itself in different people with different “evidence”, and naturally the treatment methods are also different. This is objective and not the subjective imagination of TCM doctors. At the same time, different diseases will have different manifestations during their occurrence and development, such as psoriasis, which is mostly blood-heat at the beginning, and blood-dryness, blood-stasis, dampness and qi-deficiency during the development process, which vary according to the individual’s constitution. For TCM doctors, not only do treatment prescriptions and medicines vary, but also dietary taboos vary in different stages. For example, during the progressive stage, most of the symptoms are blood-heat signs, so pungent, warm and dispersing foods should be avoided; while during the stable and receding stages, some pungent, warm and dispersing foods may be needed to help the body’s positive energy to remove blood stasis or dampness. Besides psoriasis, in other diseases such as eczema, scleroderma, vasculitis, etc., there are issues that require dietary contraindications due to changes in the stage, course and duration of the disease. Because the complexity of the disease is objective, each disease, and especially each person’s dietary restrictions during the course of the disease, need to be guided by your doctor and are individualized programs. The better your doctor knows you, the more targeted the guidance will be, and the better the results will be. In fact, our bodies are the most intelligent (under normal mental and psychological conditions) and have the most say in different foods. “evidence, from the point of view of health and rehabilitation, it is better not to eat or eat less.