Chinese medicine dietary therapy

Food therapy may augment TCM herbal therapy or sustain improvements after herbal treatments have ceased. It may also be used in prevention, to nourish health and prolong life.

- Karen Goldrick

Food has been used as medicine for thousands of years. It is one of the treatments in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), alongside herbal medicine, acupuncture, physical therapies such as tui na (Chinese massage), and meditative movement such as qi gong and tai chi. TCM food theory considers the energetics of foods based on temperature and taste. Other considerations include temperance (for example, eating in moderation), method of food preparation (cooking vs fresh) and eating according to the season.

Temperature

Foods in TCM are regarded as hot, warm, neutral, cool or cold. Heating or warming foods are fed to animals that have cold conditions such as chronic diarrhoea or acute flu. Cooling foods are fed to those with heat conditions, such as acute allergic dermatitis.

Highly processed diets like ultra-processed cooked dry foods are considered to be heating and therefore contraindicated in animals with heat or damp heat conditions. On the other hand, raw diets are more cooling and may be contraindicated in dogs and cats with not enough fire to warm the spleen (symptoms of vomiting, poor appetite, acute small intestinal diarrhoea).

Vegetables are considered cooling (spinach) or neutral (sweet potato). In general, vegetables can clear heat, ease defecation, promote urination and dissolve phlegm (pathogenic damp). They also contain vitamins, antioxidants, inorganic salts and sugars.