In chinese medicine, you are what you eat.
Cells in your body have the ability to regenerate and reproduce. Some specialize in eliminating toxins that negatively affect the body, others burn fat. All that your cells need to activate positively is to receive the right nutrients! Even though this process is slightly different for everyone, when turned on the regeneration mechanism starts! There are lots of different diets out there, and your food choices may be great for you but not great for your partner. Your nutritional advice is not the key to a fountain of youth but it can put in place the main elements that will allow your body to face the passage of years as harmoniously as possible!
In chinese medicine, food recommendations take into consideration the true nature of a food. There are 3 main criteria ;
- The temperature of the food: there are 11 types of temperature but the most used are cold, cool, neutral, warm and hot. Different foods are better in different situations, for example if your body is chilly from a cold or you are having hot flashes, we need to rebalance the temperature in different ways. By meticulously choosing the natural temperature of what we are eating, we can quickly shift a condition and then maintain a regular diverse diet.
- The taste: Sour, bitter, sweet, blend, acrid, spicy, astringent, salty… Every taste has different functions. It can open, close, stimulate, suppress, clear, dry, increase circulation, slowdown the metabolism or dissolve accumulations. Thinking about when you are experimenting with baking pastry ; a cake can rise or flatten depending on the amount and the ingredient you are adding!
- The territory: Where do you want to interact in the body? Location is important! Are we eating to transform the skin or the tendons? Do you want to focus on the surface or a deeper layer in the structure of the cells? Do we want to treat the stomach, the spleen, or the liver?
Putting food in our mouth is more then just eating 3 meals a day. With just a little bit of planning, we can use food as medicine. If you want to get more nutritional recommendations, let us know during your next visit!

Here is a simple chart of the five tastes from Kitchencounterpodcast