Self-Administered "Dietary Therapy" Should Not Be Arbitrary
Self-Administered "Dietary Therapy" Should Not Be Arbitrary
Like medicine, food possesses specific properties. From the perspective of food nature alone, they vary in cold, hot, warm, and cool qualities—selection must consider different diseases and body constitutions.
"Dietary therapy" is short for "dietary treatment"—a method of using food instead of medicine to treat illness. There's also using food to regulate constitution and strengthen health, known as "dietary nourishment." This practice is common in China and widely recognized by the public. Many families routinely prepare special meals for dietary nourishment or therapy. For example, in summer, people often eat lily, mung bean, and mint soup or mung bean-coix porridge to clear heat and relieve summer fatigue; in winter, they prefer to make Laba porridge with red dates, goji berries, peanuts, longan, white hyacinth beans, and adzuki beans for warming tonification. Clinically, we recommend suitable dietary therapies to aid disease recovery—for instance, giving patients with gastric cold discomfort and non-greasy tongue coating a ginger-red date decoction; advising women with cold abdomen and loose stools to eat spiced lamb soup—often achieving satisfactory results. For those suffering from early-morning diarrhea (waking up with abdominal pain and loose stools), regularly consuming rock sugar five-fruit pudding (first boil red dates, longans, and goji berries with rock sugar for ten minutes, then add chopped peeled pears and peeled bananas, thicken with cornstarch, and consume) can improve spleen-kidney yang deficiency and gradually alleviate early-morning diarrhea. However, choosing the right dietary therapy for each patient is not simple—poor choices may backfire and hinder recovery. Therefore, dietary therapy must be approached with caution, ideally under medical guidance. If self-administering based on books, start with small doses and closely monitor responses—stop immediately if adverse reactions occur.
Currently, many health supplements are popular choices for self-administered dietary therapy. Some contain herbal ingredients and claim diverse benefits—regulating immunity, adjusting lipids, weight loss, longevity, etc.—some ads even exaggerate these claims into enticing therapeutic effects, confusing consumers who then impulsively buy and consume large quantities. Results often fall short of advertised promises, and some even cause side effects. Relying solely on advertisements for dietary therapy is unwise.
We must recognize that food, like medicine, has inherent properties (such as four natures, five flavors, ascending-descending-floating-sinking, toxicity, etc.). Food nature varies in cold, hot, warm, and cool qualities—selection must consider disease type and individual constitution. Some hypertensive patients read about hypertension in newspapers or diet therapy books and arbitrarily pick a remedy—results may not be effective. Why? Because they focus only on the disease, ignoring individual differences. Even with the same condition, different constitutions lead to vastly different clinical presentations—some are heat-type, others cold-type, stagnant-blood-type, or phlegm-type. Heat-type individuals should eat cooling foods like celery, malabar spinach, and chrysanthemum; cold-type individuals should consume warming foods like garlic, magnolia flower dishes—no room for negligence.
Especially important in self-administered dietary therapy: understand your own constitution and identify foods to avoid for your condition—strictly follow dietary restrictions. While some Western doctors dismiss dietary taboos, centuries of accumulated experience show that certain restrictions hold practical significance. Beyond allergic constitutions, different constitutions and diseases require avoiding certain foods—these should be taken seriously. (Author’s institution: Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital)