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Sunday, November 29, 2015

MedicalConspiracies- scurvy images and symptoms

very graphic pictures of scurvy:

https://www.google.com/search?q=scurvy+symptoms&client=ubuntu&hs=8ry&channel=fs&tbm=isch&imgil=L0mAyaImnBqQvM%253A%253BaK0dTh0s57qOdM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.medicalook.com%25252FNutritional_supplement%25252FScurvy.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=L0mAyaImnBqQvM%253A%252CaK0dTh0s57qOdM%252C_&biw=1001&bih=421&usg=__0Gvn0K4lFAPcHYG85EXEOPpODOA%3D&ved=0ahUKEwi_h82yurfJAhUGxWM KHaEOBUkQyjcIOQ&ei=K-RbVv_FCIaKjwOhnZTIBA#imgrc=L0mAyaImnBqQvM%3A&usg=__0Gvn0K4lFAPcHYG85EXEOPpODOA%3D



http://www.dermnetnz.org/systemic/scurvy.html

Scurvy

What is scurvy?

Scurvy is a condition characterised by general weakness, anaemia, gingivitis (gum disease), and skin haemorrhages caused by a prolonged deficiency of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in the diet. Vitamin C plays a crucial role in the formation of collagen, a major component of connective tissue. Connective tissue has structural and supportive functions which are indispensable to blood vessels and all tissues within the body. Vitamin C is also important in the proper functioning of the immune system, iron absorption, cholesterol metabolism and other biological activities. Thus scurvy has widespread effects.

Who gets scurvy?

Scurvy was often seen in sailors on long ocean voyages described from the 15th century onwards. Many men died from the disease until it was discovered that scurvy could be effectively cured and prevented by consuming vitamin C through lemons, oranges and limes. The nickname for British sailors of 'limey' derives from the practice of giving British sailors limes.

It is thought that scurvy occurs very rarely in modern societies of today as most people have access to year-round fresh fruits and vegetables which are rich sources of vitamin C. However, several groups of people are at risk. These include:

  • People with chronic malnutrition or those that eat less than 2 servings of fruits/vegetables per day
    • Alcoholics
    • Elderly
    • Men who live alone (bachelor or widower scurvy)
    • Children
    • People on peculiar diets or food fads
    • Psychiatric disease (delusions or fear of food, suicide attempt by self-starvation, eating disorders)
  • People with other medical conditions that may prevent the intake and/or absorption of vitamin C
    • Dialysis patients
    • Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohns Disease)
    • Malabsorption disorders
    • Severe dyspepsia
  • Under-developed third world countries where general malnutrition exists. Also, in populations that subsist mainly on cereal grains and without access to fresh fruit or vegetables.

What are the signs and symptoms?

The diagnosis of scurvy is primarily a clinical one, based on a dietary history of inadequate vitamin C intake and the signs and symptoms described below.

Symptoms of scurvy generally develop after at least 3 months of severe or total vitamin C deficiency. Patients initially complain of weakness, fatigue, listlessness and aching limbs, especially in the legs. If left untreated, scurvy can progress to the following more severe problems.

Skin problems – one of the first signs of scurvy is the development of perifollicular hyperkeratotic papules, often on the shins. These appear as reddish/bluish bruise-like spots surrounding hair follicles. The central hairs are twisted like corkscrews that may break easily. The papules may join together to form large areas of palpable purpura or ecchymoses (bruises).


Perifollicular haemorrhagic papules
Close-up
Corkscrew hair

Extensive purpura

Scurvy

Oral problems – gums may swell and become red, soft and spongy. Any slight friction may cause the gums to bleed. Often this results in poor oral hygiene and dental diseases.

Musculoskeletal problems – bleeding in the joints causes extreme discomfort and pain. Joints may be swollen and tender and the pain can be so severe that patients cannot walk.

Eye problems – patients may complain of dryness, irritation, light intolerance, transient visual blurring and stickiness. Haemorrhaging (bleeding) beneath the conjunctiva and within the optic nerve sheath may also occur.

Anaemia – this develops in 75% of patients as a result of blood loss into tissue, altered absorptions and metabolism of iron and folate, gastrointestinal bleeding and intravascular haemolysis.

Heart and lung problems – shortness of breath, low blood pressure, and chest pain leading to shock and death.

Treatment and prevention with vitamin C

Treatment of scurvy is simply with vitamin C supplements taken orally. The adult dosage is 800-1000 mg/day for at least one week, then 400 mg/day until complete recovery. Children should be given 150-300 mg/day for one month. Some improvement of symptoms is usually noticed within 24 hours. Except for the loss of teeth through dental disease, permanent damage from scurvy does not usually occur.

Prevention of scurvy is easily achieved by take the recommended daily intake (RDI) of vitamin C. This is between 30-60 mg/day. By following the "5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day" rule, you will be getting the RDI and maintaining sufficient body stores of vitamin C.

Related information

References:

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Posted by Medical at 10:03 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- "The Amazing Benefit of Heat as a Cancer Treatment!"

The Amazing Benefit of Heat as a Cancer Treatment!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXRFT061o44&feature=em-subs_digest-g


iHealthTube.com: "The Amazing Benefit of Heat as a Cancer Treatment!" iHealthTube.com: "The Amazing Benefit of Heat as a Cancer Treatment!"



M, check out the latest video from your channel subscriptions for Nov 28, 2015.





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Posted by Medical at 7:02 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- Can plants actually talk and hear?


http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/can-plants-actually-talk-and-hear

Can plants actually talk and hear?

By: Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet
Acoustic sensors measuring hydraulic emissions from plant leaves in a Duke University laboratory. (Photo: Dan Johnson, Duke University)

The forest really does hum with life.

Though often too low or too high for human ears to detect, insects and animals signal each other with vibrations. Even trees and plants fizz with the sound of tiny air bubbles bursting in their plumbing.

And there is evidence that insects and plants "hear" each other's sounds. Bees buzz at just the right frequency to release pollen from tomatoes and other flowering plants. And bark beetles may pick up the air bubble pops inside a plant, a hint that trees are experiencing drought stress.

Sound is so fundamental to life that some scientists now think there's a kernel of truth to folklore that holds humans can commune with plants. And plants may use sound to communicate with one another.

If even bacteria can signal one another with vibrations, why not plants, said Monica Gagliano, a plant physiologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley.

"Sound is overwhelming, it's everywhere. Surely life would have used it to its advantage in all forms," she told OurAmazingPlanet.

Monica Gagliano, plant acoustics researcher. (Photo: University of Western Australia)

Gagliano and her colleagues recently showed corn seedling's roots lean toward a 220-Hertz purr, and the roots emit clicks of a similar tune. Chili seedlings quicken their growth when a nasty sweet fennel plant is nearby, sealed off from the chilies in a box that only transmits sound, not scent, another study from the group revealed. The fennel releases chemicals that slow other plants' growth, so the researchers think the chili plants grow faster in anticipation of the chemicals — but only because they hear the plant, not because they smell it. Both the fennel and chilies were also in a sound-isolated box.

"We have identified that plants respond to sound and they make their own sounds," Gagliano said. "The obvious purpose of sound might be for communicating with others."

Gagliano imagines that root-to-root alerts could transform a forest into an organic switchboard. "Considering that entire forests are all interconnected by networks of fungi, maybe plants are using fungi the way we use the Internet and sending acoustic signals through this Web. From here, who knows," she said.

As with other life, if plants do send messages with sound, it is one of many communication tools. More work is needed to bear out Gagliano's claims, but there are many ways that listening to plants already bears fruit.

When the bubble bursts

Scientists first recognized in the 1960s that listening to leaves revealed the health of plants.

When leaves open their pores to capture carbon dioxide, they lose huge amounts of water. To replace this moisture, roots suck water from the ground, sending it skyward through a series of tubes called the xylem. Pit membranes, essentially two-way valves, connect each of the thousands of tiny tubes. The drier the soil, the more tension builds up in the xylem, until pop, an air bubble is pulled in through the membrane.

For some plants, these embolisms are deadly — as with human blood vessels — because the gas bubbles block the flow of water. The more air in the tubes, the harder it is for plants to pull in water, explains Katherine McCulloh, a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State University.

But researchers who eavesdrop on plant hydraulics are discovering that certain species, like pine trees and Douglas firs, can repair the damage on a daily or even an hourly basis.

"These cycles of embolism formation and refilling are just something that happens every single day. The plant is happy, it's just day-to-day living," McCulloh said. "In my mind, this is revolutionary in terms of plant biology. When I learned about how plants moved water, it was a passive process driven by evaporation from the leaves. What we're beginning to realize is that's just not true at all. It's a completely dynamic process."

How to listen to plants

The technology to hear plant bubbles explode is actually quite simple. Acoustic sensors designed to detect cracks in bridges and buildings catch the ultrasonic pops. A piezoelectric pickup, the same as an electric guitar pickup, goes through an amplifier to an oscilloscope that measures the waveform of each pop. The acoustic sensor is pricey, but Duke University botanist Dan Johnson has funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build a low-cost version this summer. He'll give the embolism detector to high school students at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham.

"I think plant hydraulics will be the piece of the puzzle that tells us which species are going to live and which species are going to die with climate change," Johnson told OurAmazingPlanet. "Plant hydraulics will tell us what our future forests will look like in 50 years."

Two geologists in Arizona are also building a low-cost acoustic detector, crowd-funded at about $1,000, drawn by the age-old allure of communicating with plants.

"We became fascinated with the thought of being able to listen in to the plumbing of the saguaro cactus," said Lois Wardell, owner of Tucson-based consulting firm Arapahoe SciTech. Starting with a 3-foot-tall potted saguaro, Wardell and geophysicist Charlotte Rowe hope to distinguish between cacti drying out and those complaining about other environmental stress.

"We're working on trying to differentiate these two signals: I'm cold versus I'm really thirsty," Wardell said. "We've already managed to produce a few squawks." [Saguaros: Living Bouquets of the Sonoran Desert]

What plants say about drought

Acoustic emissions, or the sound of bursting air bubbles, could also upend assumptions about the effects of drought on plants.

In the arid Southwest, Johnson was surprised to find that the plants considered the most drought-tolerant, such as junipers, did worst at repairing embolisms. Broad-leaf plants, including rhododendrons and beaked hazels, were better at fixing the damage caused by dry pipes.

"With the incredible drought going on there right now, the species we predicted to die are exactly the opposite of what's occurring," Johnson said. "We're seeing a lot of deaths in junipers, and those are typically the most drought-resistant in that area, whereas most of the broad-leaf systems go dormant and they repair whatever embolisms occur the next spring, when there's more water."

Johnson predicts that in future severe droughts, the plants that have a harder time repairing embolisms are more likely to die. "It's the plants that can repair embolisms that are going to survive," he said. [Gallery: Plants in Danger]

Living in drought-stricken Australia, Gagliano is also excited by the possibility of decoding drought signals. "We don't know if these emissions are also providing information to neighborhoods of plants," she said. "Plants have ways of protecting themselves when they run out of water, and they are really good at sharing information about danger, even if one sharing is one that's going to die."

Sensing sound by touch instead?

Critics of Gagliano's research point out that no one has found structures resembling a mouth or ears on corn or any other plant. Nor do the group's studies prove that plants "talk" among themselves.

"This is pretty provocative and worth following, but it doesn't really provide a lot of evidence that these are acoustic communications," said Richard Karban, a University of California, Davis, expert in how plants communicate via chemical signals.

But simpler life forms manage just fine without complex sound receptors and producers. Walnut sphinx caterpillars whistle by forcing air out of holes in their sides. Flying insects perform death drops when they sense a bat's sonar clicks. Earthworms flee the vibrations of oncoming moles. [Listen to caterpillars communicate with their butts]

Of course, there may be another explanation for the apparent response to sound reported by Gagliano. One that could also account for the century of researchers and home gardeners (including Charles Darwin) who manipulated plant growth with music.

Could a sense of touch be why plants seem to respond to sound?

Even humans can perceive sound without hearing it, said Frank Telewski, a botanist at Michigan State University and an expert on how trees respond to wind.

"How many times have you sat next to someone who has their car stereo at full blast? You can really feel it pounding in your chest," he said.

Trees perceive and respond to touch, like wind or an animal passing on a trail. And like the wind, sound is a wave that travels through air.

In fact, a tree needs wind to grow, Telewski said. "If you stake down a seedling, you do it a little bit of disservice, because a tree needs to perceive motion. It's like physical therapy for the tree. If you stake it too tight, it does not allow the plant to produce stronger tissues."

But Telewski is open to the idea of plant communication by sound. He said in the last few years, researchers in China have shown they can increase plant yields by broadcasting sound waves of certain frequencies. Other groups have investigated how different frequencies and intensities of sounds change gene expression. Their studies find that acoustic vibrations modify metabolic processes in plants. Some of the beneficial vibrations also drive away pesky insects that munch on crops.

"We're not there yet," Telewski said of the effort to prove plants communicate. "Sometimes a fantastic hypothesis can turn out to be true, but there has to be fantastic evidence to support it."

Answering critics

Karban, from UC Davis, notes that the plant field is not very receptive to new ideas. The idea that plants could talk via scent, or volatile chemicals, was roundly pooh-poohed in the 1980s, but Karban and others went on to prove that plants including sagebrush warn their neighbors of impending danger by wafting chemical signals into the air. "At times in my career I've tried to push new ideas and it's been very difficult," Karban said.

Gagliano remains undeterred by the skepticism.

"I was guided to sound by the long tradition in folklore of people talking to plants and listening to plants and plants making sounds," Gagliano said. "I wanted to see if there was any scientific basis for something that stays so stubbornly in our culture."

But the corn root clicks are at the lower end of the human hearing range. "In theory, we could hear it, but realistically, these were emitted from roots in the ground, so the truth is we probably wouldn't hear it," she said. And the fizzy bubble bursts in xylem are ultrasonic, about 300 kiloHertz, detectable only by insects and some other animals.

This spring, Gagliano and her collaborators will screen more plants for communication skills. "We will see whether some groups of plants might be more chatty than others, and if some plants have specific requirements for sound," she said. They also plan to record sounds emitted from plants and play them back and see what kind of response, if any, they produce in other plants.

"Shamans say they learn from the plant's sounds. Maybe they are attuned to things we don't pay attention to," Gagliano said. "It's really fascinating. We might have lost that connection and science is ready to rediscover it."

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Related on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet and MNN:

This story was originally written for LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet and was republished with permission here. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company.
Related topics: Forests & Trees, Research & Innovation, Science

Posted by Medical at 6:43 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- How plants use quantum physics to survive


http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/how-plants-use-quantum-physics-to-survive


How plants use quantum physics to survive

By: Katia Moskvitch, for LiveScience.com
The bizarre rules of quantum mechanics may enable some plants' energy processes. (Photo: agsandrew/Shutterstock)

Humans can't teleport or reside in multiple places at once — but the tiniest particles of matter can.

These eerie quantum effects have traditionally been studied and observed only under the strictly controlled conditions of a physics lab. That is, until some scientists suggested that such weirdness also exists in wet and soggy biological systems.

In recent years, this hypothesis has gained more and more support, with a new study detailed in the journal Science suggesting plants may rely on such physics to survive. [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

The most efficient path

Plants are able to harvest as much as 95 percent of the sunlight they soak up, instantly converting this solar energy into chemical energy, in 1 million billionth of a second, in a process called photosynthesis.

The new Science study on purple bacteria, which also photosynthesize, gives more support to the idea that plants use quantum mechanics to achieve this near-perfect efficiency. A trick of quantum physics called coherence, the researchers suggest, helps the energy of the elementary particles of light, called photons, find the most efficient path to a plant's (or purple bacterium's) so-called reaction center, where the light's energy fuels the reaction that produces carbohydrates.

On a physical system, coherence could be illustrated with a pair of pendulums that continuously transfer energy from one to the other, backward and forward, in a coherent, cyclic mode.

When a photon excites molecules inside a cell, the energy does not hop through the system, but follows different energy pathways at once, simultaneously searching for the most efficient way into the reaction center where the chemical reaction actually takes place.

This is known as the quantum principle of superposition, or being in many different places at the same time.

Quantum effects in nature

Coherence has been suspected and experimented with in living systems before, when researchers fired extremely short but intense laser pulses at multiple molecules of a photosynthetic organism — a purple bacterium called Rhodopseudomonas acidophila that applies the exact same principles of light harvesting to survive as plants do — and tracked the flow of energy through its system. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]

The latest research, led by Niek van Hulst of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, Spain, went a step further.

"Previous studies have done experiments where they had millions of molecules in the same volume that they were measuring," co-author of the new study, Richard Cogdell of the University of Glasgow, told LiveScience.

"The quantum effects could be seen, but they were rather weak. And we never knew whether it was because they are weak or because each of the individual molecules was slightly out of phase with each other so they interfered in a way that you did not see the coherences of quantum behavior."

For the new tests, the scientists used purple bacteria once again, but this time shot laser flashes at a single molecule instead of using many molecules at once.

The light-harvesting complexes of the bacteria are arranged in a pattern of adjacent rings, or molecules that make up one light-harvesting complex. In the organism, the rings pack together, but the researchers isolated individual rings, and put them outside of the bacterium, on a surface. When a photon comes into contact with an isolated ring, some of it gets emitted as fluorescence — a form of natural luminescence —which is essentially the spontaneous transfer of energy from a high-energy level to a lower-energy level.

The researchers noticed that the amount of fluorescence didn't stay constant: It kept rising and falling, "oscillating between the high state and a low state, which is this coherent oscillation," said Cogdell.

That oscillation suggests the laser light was able to find the most efficient energy pathway to the reaction center almost instantaneously — despite the highly variable conditions of a biological system. 

"This sort of coherences have been seen in physical systems before, but only at very low temperature and very well-defined controlled conditions," Cogdell said. "The surprise is that you can see these effects in wet, messy biological systems at room temperature. That's the remarkable finding, that you can find it in biology."

Greg Engel, a chemistry professor at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience that the most exciting element of the research was "pulling back the curtain" and learning how photosynthetic energy transfer really works. "The authors point us toward new design principles for controlling the flow of energy through molecular systems," Engel said.

Once it is clear what factors affect the frequency of the coherence and whether it is possible to vary it, the findings could lead to boosting the efficiency of the light-harvesting process, said Cogdell.

And that achievement could pave the way to much more efficient photovoltaic cells to generate electricity, with the help of artificial photosynthesis, mimicking the extra-efficient process possibly happening in every single, tender green leaf.

Follow Katia Moskvitch on Twitter@SciTech_Cat.

Related on LiveScience and MNN: 

This story was originally published on LiveScience and was republished here with permission. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. 
Related topics: Energy, Energy Efficiency, Science

Posted by Medical at 6:36 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- New quantum camera capable of snapping photos of 'ghosts'


http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/new-quantum-camera-capable-of-snapping-photos-of-ghosts

New quantum camera capable of snapping photos of 'ghosts'

By: Bryan Nelson
It's a little eerie as quantum cameras capture ghost images using quantum entanglement. (Photo: Keoni Cabral/Flickr)

By utilizing a process that Einstein famously called "spooky," scientists have successfully caught "ghosts" on film for the first time using quantum cameras.

The "ghosts" captured on camera weren't the kind you might first think; scientists didn't discover the wandering lost souls of our ancestors. Rather, they were able to capture images of objects from photons that never actually encountered the objects pictured. The technology has been dubbed "ghost imaging," reports National Geographic. 

Normal cameras work by capturing light that bounces back from an object. That's how optics are supposed to work. So how can it be possible to capture an image of an object from light if the light never bounced off the object? The answer in short: quantum entanglement.

Entanglement is the weird instantaneous link that has been shown to exist between certain particles even if they are separated by vast distances. How exactly the phenomenon works remains a mystery, but the fact that it works has been proven.

Quantum cameras capture ghost images by making use of two separate laser beams that have their photons entangled. Only one beam encounters the object pictured, but the image can nevertheless be generated when either beam strikes the camera.

"What they've done is a very clever trick. In some ways it is magical," explained quantum optics expert Paul Lett of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. "There is not new physics here, though, but a neat demonstration of physics."

For the experiment, researchers passed a beam of light through etched stencils and into cutouts of tiny cats and a trident that were about 0.12 inches tall. A second beam of light, at a different wavelength from the first beam but nevertheless entangled with it, traveled on a separate line and never hit the objects. Amazingly, the second beam of light revealed pictures of the objects when a camera was focused on it, even though this beam never encountered the objects.

Because the two beams were at different wavelengths, it could eventually lead to improved medical imaging or silicon chip lithography in hard-to-see situations. For instance, doctors might use this method for generating images in visible light even though the images were actually captured using a different kind of light, such as infrared.

"This is a long-standing, really neat experimental idea," said Lett. "Now we have to see whether or not it will lead to something practical, or will remain just a clever demonstration of quantum mechanics."

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Related topics: Research & Innovation, Science, Technology

Posted by Medical at 6:28 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists | MNN - Mother Nature Network



http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/parallel-worlds-exist-and-interact-with-our-world-say

Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists

By: Bryan Nelson

Do parallel worlds ever cross paths? (Photo: Martin Brigden/flickr)

Quantum mechanics, though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that famed physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Attempts to explain some of the bizarre consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.

Now there's a new theory on the block, called the "many interacting worlds" hypothesis (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only that parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative, the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics, reports RT.com.

The theory is a spinoff of the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics — an idea that posits that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual, though parallel, world. One problem with the many-worlds interpretation, however, has been that it is fundamentally untestable, since observations can only be made in our world. Happenings in these proposed "parallel" worlds can thus only be imagined.

MIW, however, says otherwise. It suggests that parallel worlds can interact on the quantum level, and in fact that they do.

The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957," explained Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the physicists to come up with MIW. "In the well-known 'Many-Worlds Interpretation', each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realised – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese."

"But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all," he added. "On this score, our "Many Interacting Worlds" approach is completely different, as its name implies."

Wiseman and colleagues have proposed that there exists "a universal force of repulsion between 'nearby' (i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar." Quantum effects can be explained by factoring in this force, they propose.

Whether or not the math holds true will be the ultimate test for this theory. Does it or does it not properly predict quantum effects mathematically? But the theory is certain to provide plenty of fodder for the imagination.

For instance, when asked about whether their theory might entail the possibility that humans could someday interact with other worlds, Wiseman said: "It's not part of our theory. But the idea of [human] interactions with other universes is no longer pure fantasy."

What might your life look like if you made different choices? Maybe one day you'll be able to look into one of these alternative worlds and find out.

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Related topics: Research & Innovation, Science


Posted by Medical at 6:21 PM 0 comments

MedicalConspiracies- Traditional Chinese Medical (TCM) view of food therapy


Thank you Diane for the links, here is the info for those that were unable to get to the site. G

________________________________________________________________________________

Food Therapy

The Traditional Chinese Medical (TCM) view of food therapy

There is so much conflicting information about food and diet that it becomes nearly impossible to know what the 'best food' to eat really is, or if certain foods are 'good' for you or 'bad' for you.

In Chinese medicine, there are not 'good' foods or 'bad' foods; there are appropriate foods for each individual and inappropriate food for a specific individual, just as there are appropriate herbs for each individual depending on what their health needs are. Yang warming tonic herbs would be quite beneficial for an individual who is cold and fatigued; however, the same nourishing warming herbs may cause irritation and headaches in someone who is thirsty and experiencing night sweats as seen with Yin Deficiency. Like herbs, foods have different energetic qualities; they can be warming or cooling for example. In TCM, food therapy is simply part of the larger system of medicine which includes acupuncture and herbalism.

I thought salad was good for me!
During the 80's and 90's well intentioned health food proponents touted the benefits of raw foods and the importance of enzymes from raw food for digestion. According to TCM, there are three very important errors in this logic: 

  1. No one dietary guideline is going to be correct for all individuals.
  2. Raw foods tend to be 'Cold' and an overconsumption of them will damage the Spleen energetic organ system. In Chinese medicine the Spleen is paired with the Stomach and is central in the proper digestion and absorption of food. Therefore, a diet with an overabundance of raw vegetables, juiced vegetables, raw fruits and fruit juices is going to have the opposite effect on your health than argued.
  3. The signal that the digestive system is purging more efficiently due to enzymes is typically noted through more abundant loose bowel movements; this is actually a symptom of Spleen damage in TCM.

Foods for Spleen Qi Deficiency and Internal Dampness
Rye, kasha, amaranth, aduki bean, cooked soy beans,millet, bitter greens such as arugula and dandelion (in moderation as they are cold), cooked celery, turnip, asparagus, radish, green onions, cooked carrots, horseradish, garlic, pumpkin, winter squash, yams, sunflower seeds`. Consider Restore the Middle Way herb formula.
Avoid or use in small amounts: dairy, meat, eggs, tofu, fried foods, refined carbohydrates, sweets, cucumber, watermelon, fruits, and fruit juices.

I thought water was good for me!
It is true that you want to stay hydrated; beyond this, forcing liquids just so you can say that you had your '8 glasses of water' each day may only be putting an extra burden on the Kidneys according to TCM. Additionally, chronic dryness and thirst are likely an indication of Yin Deficiency where your cells are not properly absorbing the water that you are consuming. Imagine that your cells are dry peat moss; you add water to the peat moss, but it just rolls off. If you have become Yin Deficient, Yin tonic herbs and foods are utilized to improve the cells permeability so that the water you consume can actually be used by the cells. 

I thought drinking iced water helps will help me lose weight!

A really great way to see all of the blood drain out of your acupuncturists face would be to announce that you are drinking large amounts of iced water because you read that it would  crank up your metabolism and help you lose weight. This latest misguided logic combines the ability to damage the Spleen AND compromise the Kidney energetic systems according to Chinese medicine; the result would be weight gain and more serious imbalances that could take years to repair.

Foods for Yin Deficiency
Rice (preferably brown short grain), amaranth grain, quinoa, millet, wheat germ, barley, black beans, tofu, kidney beans, mung beans, tofu, seaweed, spirulina, string beans, beets, white mulberry, goji berry. In moderation: pork, clam, oysters, sardine, eggs, blackberry, raspberry. With more extreme conditions: dairy products, watermelon, banana, grapes. Consider Yin Valley herb formula.
Avoid: fats. red meat, alcohol, coffee, spices

I thought drinking large amounts of water would help keep my body detoxed!

A lot of people feel that water consumed is going to bathe there cells and tissue and result in a body cleanse. In reality, only the amount of fluids required for normal bodily cellular function is going to permeate in to the tissue; the rest will be excreted through the urine. Again, forcing fluids will only contribute to poor health and Kidney Deficiency over time and disrupt the Yin-Yang balance of the body.

Food Therapy for Liver Imbalances

Tonify Liver Blood – greens, spirulina, red grapes, blackberries, blueberries, blackstrap molasses, gelatin, cardoon, artichoke, red beets, alfalfa, kelp, avocado, nettle, dates,  mulberry fruit, sesame seed, oysters, chicken soup, eggs, pork, beef and animal liver
Cool Liver Heat – mung beans, mung sprouts, nettle, celery, seaweed, lettuce, rye bread, quinoa, amaranth, millet, cucumber, watercress, tofu, chees, plums, mushrooms, rhubarb, radish and daikon radish, raw  green vegetable juices 
Extinguish Liver Wind – celery, basil, sage, fennel, ginger, anise, oats, black soybean, black sesame seed, pine nuts, vinegar, coconut, cold-pressed flax oil, lemon, western skullcap, and chamomile Avoid: eggs, crab meat and buckwheat

Warming Foods for Yang or Qi Deficiency

Garlic, black pepper, ginger, basil, rosemary, cinnamon, cloves, chili peppers, fennel, cumin, onion, vinegar, winter squash, kale, mustard leaf, butter, lamb, beef, chicken, trout, mussel, shrimp, molasses, walnuts, sesame seeds, lentils, black beans, aduki beans; cooked fruit: coconut, raspberry, date, cherry, peach, guava. Consider Ancestor Treasure formula.
Avoid: raw fruits, vegetables and juices, eggplant, asparagus, wheat, dairy.

Healing Congee Recipes

For those who are recovering from serious chronic illness, congees are a way to rebuild the health with a cereal of rice or grain combined with appropriate foods and tonic herbs. This type of therapeutic porridge is easy on the digestive system and is well assimilated for those who are weakened from chronic disease. Cook as you would rice or grain.

Cancer recovery congee recipe:
1 cup brown rice
1 T. each ground codonopsis, astragalus, goji berries (or 3 T. powdered Zenergy herb formula)
2 cups water
Dash of salt

Detoxification congee recipe:
1 cup barley rice
1 T. each ground budock root, turmeric, coriander seed (or 3 T. of Central River powdered herbal formula)
2 cups water
Dash of salt

Poor digestion congee recipe:
1 cup brown rice
1 T. each ground codonopsis, hawthorn berries, fennel seed (or 3 T. powdered Sea of Qi herb formula)
2 cups water
Dash of salt

Healthy Diet and Chinese Food Therapy
Remember, always love your Spleen! The Spleen is in charge of the transformation and transportation of foods and fluids after the stomach has rotted and ripened them. In other words, the Spleen determines how foods are utilized in the body and plays an important role in safe weight loss. Nourishing the Spleen with tonic herbs helps it do its job more efficiently. The Spleen also houses the pancreas and oversees blood sugar levels and the proper utilization of blood sugar. It is widely understood in Chinese medicine that sweet cravings are a result of Spleen Qi Deficiency. The Spleen is damaged by Dampness and foods that create Dampness. These would include fried foods, sugars, iced drinks and an over consumption of raw foods; ironically, too much salad, juicing, and fruits will damage the Spleen and cause additional weight gain.

Again, remember that there are no 'bad foods', only inappropriate foods. There are certainly some non-foods, such as sodas, that are 'bad' for you. However, all real whole foods have a place in our lives if used appropriately or in moderation. A fabulous slice of cheesecake may not be listed below as an acceptable part of your everyday diet, but once in a while you must feed the spirit. Trust that your body is wise and will absorb and utilize necessary nutrients and dispose of inappropriate substances. If you scold yourself the whole time you are eating your cheesecake and telling yourself that it is going to give you a heart attack, it will surely damage your health. On the other hand, if you enjoy it and honor the wisdom of your body, it can do you no harm (in moderation of course).

Helpful Diet Tips
Many improvements in diet have more to do with honoring food than villainizing it. Much of the food listed must be prepared. Making time to prepare the food that will help to heal you is part of the process in becoming well. Eating out from time to time while making good menu choices will work in a pinch, but for long-standing wellness you will probably have to become skilled in food preparation (unless you have scores of healthy restaurants in your area).

  • Taking time to enjoy your meal will be the next part of the learning process. You will get more nutritional goodness out of a hotdog that you lovingly prepare, sit down to in thanks, and enjoy with candlelight and music than a tofu burger you inhale while driving down the interstate. 
  • Try to include ½ cup each of leafy greens, beans-legumes, vegetables, nuts-seeds, mushrooms-onions, and cooked berries every day; this leaves little appetite for poor nutritional choices.
  • As part of Asian Food Therapy tradition, it is imperative that breakfast be included as part of a healing regiment, especially if you are trying to lose weight as the Spleen is most active in the morning.
  • For hunger between meals and to avoid snacking, consider broths and miso soup.
  • All meals should be consumed before 7:30PM. 
  • It should be assumed that organic and locally grown foods would be preferred when available. 

General healthy food guidelines to maintain wellness:
This is in no way a comprehensive list of foods; however, it should be a starter guideline.


Vegetables (25%) Try to consume a large variety of vegetables, organic when possible. Eat at least 1/2 cup of greens per day, one salad, and 1/2 cup of assorted vegetables per day
Enjoy Abundant Amounts of: steamed carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, turnip greens, collards, kale, mustard greens, steamed cauliflower, steamed broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, Napa cabbage, winter squash , sweet potato, yam, onions, leeks, scallions, shallots, asparagus, cooked beets, steamed celery, Jerusalem artichoke, artichoke, kohlrabi, eggplant, cooked tomatoes, cooked spinach, steamed zucchini, green beans, grape leaves, mushrooms, peppers, green peas, gobo-burdock root, seaweed, snap bean, Brussels sprout, chard, lamb's quarters, okra, steamed summer squash
Enjoy in moderation: cucumber, lettuce, potatoes, raw tomato, corn, raw vegetables

Legumes--Beans, Peas, Lentils (15%) Try to consume at least 1/2 cup of legumes daily
Enjoy in abundance: aduki bean, black bean, lentils, tofu, tempeh, TVP textured vegetable protein, split peas, whole peas, pinto beans, kidney beans, lima beans, black eyed peas, mung bean, soybean, garbanzo, miso, sesame, hummus

Nuts and Seeds (5-10%) Try to consume 1/4 cup per day
Enjoy in abundance: nuts & seeds--especially in shell, almond, black sesame seed, chia seed, flax seed, pecans, pine nut, pistachio, pumpkin seed, squash seeds, sunflower seed, walnut, hummus
Avoid: rancid nuts-*when nuts are hulled or shelled they immediately begin to deteriorate, processed peanut butter, peanuts, cashews

Grains (5-15%)
Enjoy in abundance: short grain brown rice, brown rice, oats, barley, wild rice, millet, amaranth, whole grain breads, rye, kashi, buckwheat, bran, spelt, foods made with whole grains
Enjoy in moderation: corn meal, maize, polenta
Avoid: white rice, white bread, potatoes, foods made w/white flour, pasta, noodles, soft whole wheat breads, French bread, rolls, cereal, cake, cookies, and processed cereals

Sweeteners (>1%) Refined sugars create Dampness in the body
Enjoy in small amounts: rice syrup, stevia, maple syrup, barley malt, date sugar, agave, molasses, unrefined cane juice or powder, local raw honey, small piece dark chocolate
Avoid: white sugar, cane juice or sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose , brown sugar, Nutrasweet™, Splenda™ , any artificial sweetener, turbinado sugar, candy

Oils (5%) Fried foods increase Dampness in the body
Enjoy in moderation: unrefined olive oil, unrefined oleic sunflower oil, unrefined canola oil, unrefined oleic safflower oil, unrefined sesame oil, ghee, camolina oil, coconut oil
Avoid: fried foods, animal fats, hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, peanut oil, palm oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, margarine, shortening, refined canola oil, and refined vegetable oils

Dairy (2-5%)
Enjoy in moderation: cottage cheese, yogurt, organic 1% milk, lite sour cream, ghee, unprocessed cheese
Avoid: ice cream, frozen yogurt, sweetened yogurts

Beverages (3% caloric)
Enjoy to satisfaction: herb teas, clean water (room temp), green tea,
Enjoy in moderation: black tea, organic milk, coffee, soy milk, red wine, rice milk, oat milk
Avoid: forcing liquids, juice, iced beverages, iced tea, iced water, beer, sodas, and alcohol

Animal Protein (5-10%)
Enjoy in moderation: organic beef, organic chicken, lean pork, lamb, quail, eggs, cold water fish, seafood
Avoid: lunch meat, meat fats, and canned meats

Fruits (5%) Try to consume several tablespoons of berries each day
Enjoy in abundance: avocado, tomatoes
Enjoy in moderation: stewed apples, figs, grapes, grapefruit, lemon, mulberry, oranges, tangerine, papaya, cooked peaches, cooked pears, raspberry, blackberry pineapple, plums, pomegranate, strawberries, goji berry, raisins, apricot, cranberry, quince, guava, bananas, apples, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew melon
Avoid: all refined fruit juices


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