There's a reason for the expression, "You are what you eat." Food can help our bodies heal, as well as help us maintain wellness and prevent disease. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), food is viewed as a powerful tool to help maintain one's health.
Walking into the Chinese Medicine Experience Center at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, visitors will soon be impressed by the wall full of ingredients mirroring the kind of things they can see every day in a typical kitchen, such as rose petals, cinnamon, and almonds.
"This wall is called the homology of food and medicine, because a lot of food can be used as medicine. When people catch a cold, we make ginger soup. You can also add some brown sugar to make it taste better and help with blood stasis," said Wang Lepeng, associate professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.
In TCM, experts would advise you to eat according to your body's constitution, current health conditions, and the season. Finding a balance between these can help achieve wellness.
"In Chinese medicine, we emphasize how the humanities correspond to nature. For each different season, we have different choices. That's the basic principle for a good medicinal diet," said Wang.
"Chinese yams go into three organs, or channels – the spleen, kidney and lung. So red-colored vegetables or herbs always tonify the blood. If we know how to cook with food that has a medicinal function, that will be better (for our health)," he added.
According to "Huang Di Nei Jing," the earliest and most important "bible" of TCM, the ways of best preserving one's health change throughout the four seasons along with one's sleep, diet, exercise, emotions and the way of "treating" the organs. TCM puts forward the four basic principles of growth in spring, vigor in summer, reserve (storage) in autumn, and preservation in winter.
"Human life and physiology vary and they respond differently. In modern times, you can follow this wisdom. You need to rebalance any abnormality to make it normal again," said Xu Anlong, president of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.