Digestion is Like Fire, Digestion is Like Earth

I see so many individuals who have digestive conditions. In order to address the cause of these conditions it is important to understand that digestion is like fire and digestion is like earth. What does this mean? Well, digestion is like fire in that this is how we burn up, or metabolize, nutrients and reduce them to "ash," or waste material. This literally is our metabolic fire, the juice that keeps we warm-blooded creatures moving. We don't want our fire to be too low or we are always tired, with poor appetite and susceptibility to cold. However, we don't want our fire too be too high either, or we end up with heartburn, stomach ulcers, excess thirst, or acid reflux.

On the other hand, digestion is like earth because this is how we dissolve and break down foods into smaller particles so that their nutrients can be absorbed and utilized by our cells. Think of the soil and how anything that falls on the forest floor is slowly broken down and absorbed by the soil and its microbes. This is exactly how our digestive organs work. We use stomach acid and digestive enzymes to reduce foods to smaller and smaller particles and then absorb them through our intestinal walls into our bloodstream. And, just like the soil, our digestive process depends on the beneficial bacteria in our intestines to help up do this effectively. In fact, we actually couldn't live without the bacteria in our guts! This is why supplementing with digestive enzymes and probiotics can be so beneficial for those who have poor digestion.

I started thinking about all of this and its implications on diet just the other day when I came across an article from the BBC, "Did the Discovery of Cooking Make us Human?" It's quite an interesting hypothesis, you really should read it. In the article, the author proposes that if we ate nothing but raw foods, like chimpanzees, we would have to eat around five kilos of raw food per day to get enough calories to survive. Not only that, but we'd have to spend a staggering 6 hours per day chewing in order to properly extract the nutrients from our foods.

Cooking our food saves us from all of that chewing because it breaks down cells walls so that our intestines don't need to do as much work to release the nutrients. In other words, cooking predigests our foods, saving us energy because we don't need to work so hard to digest it. Apparently cooking our foods may have even precipitated an evolutionary leap for us, freeing up energy to power a larger brain, and freeing up time for the development of culture. In fact, once we started cooking out foods our digestive system reduced in size by 20% and our brains grew by exactly the same amount, 20%! As the article states, "Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains."

History of Ginkgo, Chinese Medicinal Herb

There are many reasons why ginkgo is a popular symbol. Ginkgo trees are not only beautiful, they are an important medicinal plant with a fascinating story. The ginkgo is considered to be a living fossil and is the only remaining representative of the Ginkgoales order, which had 19 original varieties. Fossils from these plants date back 270 million years, putting the ginkgoes on the planet before the dinosaurs. At one time they were common and widespread throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. If you look closely at a ginkgo leaf you will notice how the veins are all the same in width, beginning at the stem and fanning out, and there are at most two lobes. This is quite different and simplified compared to the leaves of more modern tree species, like maples, which have multiple lobes and a central vein that branches out into smaller and smaller veins. Like redwoods, ginkgoes have very long life spans, with some individuals estimated to be more than 3,000 years old.

Ginkgoes were first discovered by Europeans in the 17th century in Japan by the German botanist Englebert Kaempfer. Up until then the plant was considered to be extinct by many, as it was known mostly through fossil records. The tree, however, had survived in Asia in Buddhists monasteries and Shinto shrines, where they had been revered and cultivated since around 1100 AD. These monasteries and shrines acted as ancient nature preserves, offering protection for the trees and conserving the natural landscape around them. Ginkgo is thought to originate in eastern China in the Xuangcheng province, spreading first to Japan, around the same time that Zen Buddhism was introduced there.

Ginkgo is used as a medicinal plant in both eastern and western herbal traditions. In the west the leaves are taken to enhance blood circulation and oxygenate the heart. They are also known to increase the supply of oxygen to the brain, making them applicable for conditions marked by memory loss, such as Alzheimer's. They are anti-oxidant, reduce blood pressure, and inhibit clotting. They are also used for tinnitus, vertigo, hearing loss, impotence, and Raynaud's disease. In the east the seed is favored over the leaf. It is prescribe for chronic coughs with wheezing and copious sputum. It is also taken for vaginal discharge and cloudy urine. The seeds are first mentioned in Chinese herbals published a long time ago, way back in the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368).

Today ginkgoes are widely cultivated and propagated in both the east and the west, primarily as ornamental landscape trees. They are very hardy and are not easily susceptible to environmental pollutants so they thrive in places where the air quality is poor, such as in New York City, where they line the streets of Greenwich Village. There are even some ginkgoes in Japan that survived the 1945 atomic blast at Hiroshima in an area where all other life was obliterated. All are all still alive today, located in temples or public gardens. Because of this the Japanese consider the ginkgo tree to be a powerful symbol of hope. Though the seeds of the ginkgo are edible and considered a delicacy in Asia, they are covered in a fleshy coating which some consider to be untidy for landscaping. Because of this, the seedless male tree is preferred to the female as an ornamental. This, unfortunately, has made it difficult for the tree to propagate itself naturally, and ginkgoes are still considered to be an endangered plant. Still, for a tree that was almost extinct not too long ago, the ginkgo is doing quite well.

The ginkgo is an important symbol for many reasons. First, it is an amazingly ancient tree. Surely there is an inherent wisdom in a plant that has survived for 270 million years. Second, this is a tree of great beauty. Who hasn't appreciated the ginkgo in the fall, with its beautiful golden leaves? Third, the ginkgo is a powerful medicinal plant. It has been used in many healing traditions and over many centuries. Even today in America it is one of the top ten herbal supplements. And finally, the ginkgo is an example of how humans can consciously choose to help save a rare and endangered plant. This began almost 1,000 years ago with the Chinese Buddhist monks and continues today all over the world where this plant is appreciated and revered.

Fall Health: A Chinese Medicine Perspective

As the sun descends lower and lower and the weather starts to cool, we enter fall, the season of harvest. Just as our physical work over the past few months results in an abundance of fresh produce, what we have channeled our intentions and mental energy into comes to fruition as well. Like trees dropping their leaves, fall is an excellent time for us to complete projects and emotionally let things go. As the plants die back to their roots in preparation for winter's long rest, we also begin the process of energy conservation and consolidation. We naturally begin to reduce outdoor activities and turn inward, spending more time at home doing contemplative activities like reading and writing. The Autumnal Equinox falls this year on Monday, September 23rd.

Carbohydrates and Dampness

One of the major categories of imbalance in Chinese medicine is Dampness. Dampness is a type of accumulation that bogs us down, making us feel tired, heavy, unmotivated, and physically weak. It can affect our thought processes, causing fuzzy thinking, absentmindedness, and poor memory, especially short-term memory. Other common signs of Dampness include loose stools, achy muscles, post-nasal drip, oily skin and hair, and candida imbalances. Weight gain is common, as are other types of accumulations like phlegm, lypomas, swelling, nodules, cysts, and cellulite. Some western medical examples of conditions that could be categorized as Dampness include chronic sinus congestion, hypothyroidism, and fibromyalgia syndrome.

In Chinese medicine Dampness usually occurs when our digestive organs are unable to burn the food we eat cleanly and efficiently, resulting in the accumulation of thick, residual fluids in different areas of the body. Sometimes this happens because we have low digestive fire, perhaps due to genetics or medications like antibiotics. In other cases it has more to do with diet, especially the over consumption of Dampness-producing foods, many of which are staples of the American diet. In either case, dietary changes can often be very helpful.

Of the three major categories of nutrients (proteins, fats, and carbohydrates), carbohydrates are the most relevant foods to look at when there is Dampness, especially the simple and refined carbohydrates. By their very nature these foods tend to be dense and sticky, making them harder to process, gunking up our system and requiring more digestive energy to burn. Too much of these Damp foods, especially over a long period of time, can even smother our digestive fire, lowering our metabolic rate. Think of foods like oatmeal, dough, bananas, icing, pie, jam, pastries, and mashed potatoes and you begin to get the general idea. Below are the major categories of foods that contribute to Dampness: