Food From A Chinese Medicine Perspective with Ellen Goldsmith | How Humans Heal Podcast

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Educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Please help me welcome Ellen Goldsmith. She's an acupuncturist and expert in the use of diet with Chinese medicine. She practices Chinese medicine and acupuncture. She's an author and a professor of Chinese medicine. So thank you so much for joining me, Ellen. I'm so happy that you've come to share with us today.

Oh, my pleasure, Dani. Great to be here.

Yeah. Yes. And it's so how amazing how you're making Chinese medicine. You're kind of translating and making it accessible to people and especially the use of foods as Chinese medicine, which I think is really unique. I mean, I know you've been teaching this for years, but even for me, it feels like a new way of looking at using foods as medicine. Of course, from a naturopathic perspective, I mean, that was my original draw to what I do was how can we use food as medicine? And so I'm so excited. Please share more about how is it that you came to really use Chinese, you know, foods as Chinese medicine?

Well, I guess it, you know, goes back to playing around when I was going to college and just becoming more of a vegetarian and kind of just wondering, what does food do to me? You know, how does it make me feel? How does it change the way I feel? How does it change my perspective on things? And there came to a point, like in my mid-20s when I was a dancer in New York and my energy wasn't so good. And, you know, I kept talking to people about it, like, hey, do you know anybody? And they kept telling me about this woman, Shizuko Yamamoto. She is a Japanese shiatsu master and teacher of macrobiotics. So I went to see her and she gave me a shiatsu treatment which completely blew my mind and my body and woke me up and made me feel so alive. And she talked to me and she said, you know, you eat too much fruit and you don't eat enough vegetables with every 20 something year old. That's usually the statement now, but back then I was just, how do you know that? And so she told me what to do and I Came back to her later, and she treated me again, and I said, will you teach me? I want to learn from you. And she said, no, you have to go to this place called the Cushy Institute, which was the institute to study macrobiotics in the 80s. And I went to Brookline, and I learned about food. Yin and yang. And macrobotics is a little different than Chinese medicine, but it still uses the premise that there is an order to things and that it's all about balance. And it's different than, like, the nutrient balance and the vitamin balance that we talk about in Western nutrition. And so I started learning how to cook, and I. There's a community of people in New York City at that time. And so I had this community that I got to play with and eat with and change my food, which always makes changing our diet much better, because it's much more fun to do it with people, because food is also social. And I felt. Started to feel really good. And then there was a point in macrobotics about two years down the road where I reached a new plateau, and I was kind of like, my energy wasn't so good, and I had to change it again. And that was curious to me, you know, like, why? Good diet, good, you know, over time. And so I was practicing shiatsu, and I was always curious in Chinese medicine, so I started studying, and I got treatments, and that helped me a lot. And I studied with Jeffrey Yuen in New York and different teachers. And then I came out here to Portland and studied the National University of Natural Medicine in their Classical Chinese Medicine program. And, you know, Chinese medicine is a way of really looking at the world. And the premise is that what's outside there in nature is inside of us. And the goal really is to get back to our true nature so that we can live, you know, we can feel healthy, we can feel in the flow, we can feel more at ease. And, of course, life isn't always like that.

But because food was kind of where I lived and what I liked, I just was very curious about it. I was asked to teach dietetics in the College of Classical Chinese Medicine and just kept studying it and just going, wow, this is powerful. How do we look at food from an energetic perspective, from a dynamic perspective that as we change, our needs change? Even when we eat a good diet and our diet gets better, better, we're still changing. And I also saw it as a way to keep practicing Chinese medicine when our patients stop coming to us, because, you know, I mean, you know, as a. As a Physician people will take your recommendations, and then they will.

You know, stop change.

They go off into their life.

Yeah, they go into their life, but the thing that we do every single day is eat.

Yeah.

So, you know, I just felt like, wow, if I could bring this into the kitchen in a way that all of us could access, because all of us, you know, it's modern times now, but if we go to the way, way, way back to our ancestors, all traditional cultures before industrialization had a tradition of food as medicine, you know, and you can see something. Yeah. And you can see the trail of it through the Silk Road. Like, there are remnants of Chinese medicine and food as medicine in Iran, in southern Spain, with similar.

They're called vegetable doctors in Iran, where they actually talk about the warming and cooling aspects of food. And then I just read that in Pompeii, they discovered remnants of Chinese food and such in archeological digs. So the Silk Road took a lot of these ideas, and people.

Latched onto them, as I did.

Well, and to just realize that.

This isn't a new concept, food as medicine. This is ancient.

This is just the idea of. And I think when we look at Chinese medicine and reading your book, it reminded me, by the way, this is your book. The Nutritional Healing with Chinese Medicine. When I. It reminded me that in Chinese medicine, not only is there an honoring of how food is so important to our health, but also rest and sleep and movement and, you know, like these sort of basic care activities to help us in our daily life. Those are not new concepts. This is back centuries ago in Chinese medicine and carried forward. It's really amazing to think of that history.

It is. And even in the neijing, which is the classical text of Chinese medicine, in the first chapter, Huangdi talks about how in ancient times, people knew the rhythm of rest and activity. They didn't drink too much wine, they ate in regular fashion, and they lived until 100. Now people burn themselves out and die at 50. This was 2,500 years ago.

Wow.

So, you know, I mean, it shows you that human beings for millennia have been trying to get back to true nature. There's always been a struggle to be well and be in rhythm with life, even back then. So, yeah, it's not a new thing. And I think if we recognize that it's part of, like, if we really pay attention to nature, a lot of good things could happen, and we would also pay attention to our nature. And I think food can help us do that. It can make us more attuned to our energy to Our bodies to, even to our minds and our sense of, you know.

Our sense of ease and clarity.

I love that. I really am so inspired by now the research that shows us how much nature just say spending time in nature or even looking at pictures of nature, it just shows us in this research that our brains respond to the colors, the shapes, the chemicals that plants put off. And then of course, if we eat these plants affect us. So it's such an interconnectedness with nature that of course in our busy lives we tend to lose track of that. And so how beautiful to like you're saying, bring attention to that and to recognize that basically in Chinese medicine it's all about creating this balance, right? Just this. You're alluding to it a little bit. I hear you saying like this. It's all about finding where your body's out of balance and what can you. In the, in the example of food, what could you eat that could bring your body back into balance or tell me in your words, Ellen.

Well, I think it's a very apt description. You know, I mean, we all understand what feeling in balance is. And I don't know about you, but when I always ask my patients, you know, what their goals are and oftentimes, no matter what their problem is, they always talk about they want to feel more balanced, they want to feel more calm, they want to feel less stress, that kind of thing.

And you know, just take, I mean, the reason I, in the book where I did these 175 recipes, I organized them by season, was because we're always in, we're always interacting with our seasonal, you know, attributes. Like now it's winter. And of course with climate change, the winters are changing, but it is colder, the days are shorter. And for our bodies to function well, we need to be able to generate our own internal warmth, right? But.

We can't be too hot otherwise we dry up because spring is always coming. You know, this is the thing. Life is not static, even though it seems suspended in Covid time.

I love that though. It's like integrates in this knowledge of change, like sort of acceptance that change is going to happen. Things aren't going to stay the same. Things are going to move and shift. So let's move with it. Let's. Let's create a balance for this day, for this season and then know that they could shift again as the season changes. It's very, it helps keep you in the moment too.

It does. And I always talk about, when I'm teaching this to my students, I always Say that the beautiful thing about seasonal change is that it gives us an opportunity to recreate over and over again. It gives us an opportunity to leave behind what we don't need. Because as we move from winter, which is like deep storage, hibernation, rest, reflection, and we burst out into spring and we have to be able to burst out, our energy needs to kind of lift up and move out, right? So all those heavy foods and more fat and longer cooking, you know, into spring, you know, it's gonna be harder. We're gonna feel like heavy, we're gonna, you know, but we still need to protect ourselves because spring, as I said in the old jazz standard, can really hang you up. You know what I mean? It's a very changeable season. You have wind, you know, it's rainy, it's hot, it's cold, it's, you know, as my grandmother would say, don't be an idiot, wear your jacket and button it up. You know, when you go out there on the streets, especially in New York, where it's super windy in March and everything.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's a beautiful way for us to just pay attention to ourselves, you know, and we. And also I think the beauty of this is that you don't have to get fixed, you know, you don't have to be rigid. You know, I mean, of course certain health conditions demand us to make really significant changes and those changes can really improve your health. And we know that in any serious GI issues, you know, autoimmune issues, etc. You know, that as a naturopathic doctor. So, you know, I think. But it allows people to, you know, just be more fluid with food. And also, you know, I always say to people, yeah, you gotta learn how to cook. And that's the only good thing about COVID A lot more people are cooking because then you can really manage your well being and you can also manage your preferences, you know, what you like to eat. But if you're eating like packaged food, you're kind of a slave to salt, sugar and fat, which is hard to break.

Well, and I love how in your book you really start the reader at the very beginning and say, here's what Chinese medicine is, here's how it relates to foods. Here's these different food options and how they fit into these different categories of cooling and warming and then lead us into understanding the different ways we could cook those foods. And so then you start to really gently guide us into cooking, you know, going and feeling that curiosity and fun with it, which I really Enjoy. And so maybe talk us through a little bit more in terms of, like, what would be a way that a person, besides the seasons, like, I could see where if it's cold outside, we want to eat something more warming. But what might they see inside their body that might help them know, oh, I need something more warming or more cooling in my food?

Well, you know.

For like, people who are hypothyroid, you know, cold, you know, it's just like cold hands, cold feet.

So they feel cold.

Yeah, feel cold, you know, and inevitably, when I talk to, you know, some of my patients, not all of them, of course, but, you know, what do you have for breakfast? Well, I have a smoothie that's kind of cold. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

You want to have something that's a little bit more warming for yourselves. Or if you really, you know, those smoothies are the thing, because they're easy. I know they're filling, they're, you know, you can get a lot in there. Don't have them ice cold. You know, add in some cinnamon, add in some ginger, add in some nutmeg, add in some warming spices that are, you know, will kind of just moderate the coldness of that. Right. If you're a hot person, you're probably get more frustrated and irritable more quickly or you, you know, you feel angry and you kind of just, you know, just all this tension or if you get like red face or you just sweat easily, then. Then you're more of a hot type of a person. And you might want to, like, avoid those foods that you probably love, which are spicy foods, you know, and, you know, Thai and Mexican and, you know, spicy Indian and all those kinds of things. And peppers. And peppers and hot pepper and everything. And hot sauce on everything. Right. So, you know, if you're one of those people and you find like, whoa, you know, I do have a short temper. I mean, not to say that there isn't anything else going on in your life that you might need to pay attention to. And certainly we've all been in a pressure cooker this year, so I want to honor that, you know, but just to know that things that are more.

Warming, like spicy foods, alcohol, lots of coffee.

You know, fried foods, greasy foods, things like that are going to add to the kind of heat buildup in the body. And it's kind of like a pond, you know, that that's stagnant, you know, thermal pollution, that algae kind of grows. You know, in Chinese medicine, we'll call that like a damp Heat. So, you know, you may have, like, acid reflux, you may have bowel issues, you may have.

You know, headaches. You know, things like that. So, you know, foods that I always tell the. My hot people just add in green vegetables and have them every day and just cut back on the spicy and the greasy and a little bit more simple. And you might notice a change there. You might notice, wow, I just feel a little bit calmer.

Wow, I love that. I love that. And it made me think, too. When I was looking at in your book, there was a recipe for oatmeal. And I thought to myself, I mean, there's something really simple that probably a lot of people have for breakfast is oatmeal. But again, it's what you put in the oatmeal. So maybe that oatmeal might be different based on the season or based on what you need to shift in your body.

Yeah.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah.

Like, what can you just as an example, what can happen with oatmeal that makes it completely different?

Well, yeah, I mean, oatmeal, I don't think I did mostly like congee, but that kind of grain breakfast. You know, congee is a kind of a rice soup, rice porridge that you take one cup of rice, but you could take oats. You could take whole oats, that is millet. You could take barley, whatever. And you take one cup and you put like 12 to 16 cups of water in.

So it's like a really hydrated grain.

Yeah. So it's warm and wet, you know, and it's easy to digest. So it's not hard on your digestive system. But, you know, in the congee world, which I guess you could do with oats, but oats are, you know, the meal is a little bit different than the.

So, you know, you can cook it with chicken broth or fish broth, maybe not 12 cups, but you add like 10 cups of water, and you put the chicken broth in. You can add in leftovers from dinner into it. You can poach an egg and put it on top. You can just cook it like congee. This rice kind of porridge with butter and honey is very good for just building chi.

You know, you can put vegetables in it. Typically in China, you'll put pickles in it.

You can put red dates, you know, if you like a more sweet flavor. And the sweet flavor is very nourishing and benefits the chi, which is that potential for our vitality. So those are good things to add in. But the nice thing about this wet, warm breakfast is that your digestive system doesn't have to work hard to break it down, you know, it's almost like a soup, you know, and so you get that nourishment without a lot of hard work. And some people don't have a big appetite in the morning, you know, or some people are. If you're recovering, especially like if you're recovering from COVID you know, where you're. A lot of. You have those tail conditions that a lot of people have, or you're tired, you know, you. You can even put herbs in them. Sometimes we'll cook congee with astragalus, you know, which is a chi boosting herb. There's another thing I do in the book, which is in every season I make these essential seed and nut porridges. So they're a grain free dish. Like I just had mine this morning, you know. And the winter one has chia flax.

Hemp, walnut, which is a very typical warming nut, and cashew with a little sea salt. And you kind of. You'll roast them gently and then blend them up so they're kind of like almost like the texture of brown sugar. And put in some unsweetened roasted like plantain chips. You can usually get them in a bag, like Trader Joe's has them.

And then you just add water. And because of the chia and the flax and the hemp, it kind of gets this texture that's very much like oatmeal, but it's grain free.

So it's really yummy. I mean, I had it this morning with some butter and some honey. Nice chi building for winter.

And too then with the nuts and seeds, you're getting some more protein than you would from a grain and.

Exactly.

With certain conditions, people need to avoid grains. So more than nut and seed base. You know what? I've had something like that and I really, really enjoyed it. It's true. It's amazing how it does become.

Like a cooked cereal doesn't have the grain in there. I love that idea. And like you're saying then you can do it a little differently based on the season.

Mm, yeah. And it's also because of the essential fatty acids. It really fills you up and you don't need a big bowl, you know, and it fills you up and because of the fat, you're satisfied for much longer than with oatmeal.

Like with oatmeal a certain amount ahead of time. So it's.

Yeah. So I have like a big jar of it in My fridge. I double the recipe in my book, and it usually lasts me about a month.

Okay. So then you don't have to keep mixing and grinding. You just have it done, and then you can just scoop it out each day. Oh, I love that.

And kids love it. My friend's kids really like it. So, you know, you know, it's nice. Or you can sprinkle it in, you know, and you can kind of, you know, trick your children and give them some essential fatty acids.

Yeah. If it tastes good, then they. They're like, happy to have it and then.

Exactly.

All these extra nutrients in there. Yeah. You mentioned also fermented foods that sometimes are added. And you point out in the book that fermented foods have been used again for eons in Chinese medicine. Let's touch on that a little bit. Because I think fermented foods are such a so popular right now for people. We're realizing that getting some fermented or bacterial cultures from our food can be very good. I always am very careful because sometimes when we hear something is good for us, we kind of overdo it. And I think with what you're teaching us, it really shows us that you also don't want to. You don't want to overdo the spicy foods. You also don't want to overdo the fermented foods. So it's a matter of using a small amount to get the good stuff, but not underdoing it or overdoing it.

Right, Exactly. I mean, that's the thing. Americans have this, you know, more is better, but it's never enough kind of thing, you know, and that's where, you know, the overlay of the Eastern philosophy in Chinese medicine, it doesn't have to be either or, you know, we can add it in. You know, I think it's a beautiful overlay to Western nutrition because it gives you the energetic perspective of it. But, you know, the whole thing is about balance. I mean, you know, you tell your patients, eat the rainbow. You know, because if you get all the colors, you're going to get all the flavors. You're going to, you know, again, for your eye, just that, you know, contact with nature, it kind of, you know, we are aesthetic beings. We are. We do respond to beauty, you know, and so the beauty on a plate makes us like, oh, that's really cool.

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So.

It is about the balance. But you know, a little bit of fermented food, food every day you just bring that bacteria, that beneficial bacteria into your gut and your microbiome and building diversity there. And Sandor Katz, you know, who really kind of brought fermentation forward into the food culture in a big way. His couple of beautiful books, Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation. Anyway, I was talking with him once and he was telling me about his trip to Asia that in China it's you know how like sourdough starters are a big thing. There are people have in Sichuan, which is the province up near Tibet, people covet their fermented brine. And there was one person that had like brine that was like 2000 years old or something, you know, so it's always been in culture. And actually when I was studying about fermented foods for the book, Sauerkraut actually came from China. I don't know how it ended up in I think western China and then ended up in Germany. Kind of took hold of the kraut thing. But there is a very, very long tradition and all cultures have it, no matter Mexico, Asia, Africa. I remember growing up, my friend's father was Polish descent and he was a merchant marine. And on the table, the kitchen table, there was this thing called Zud and I and it was this fermented rye kind of concoction. Of course I was a kid so it looked really weird to me. But now I probably want to know everything about it.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it's really something when we, we go, oh wow, this is something that was someone way back when figured it out and you know, it's really helpful to our health. And so now we're getting the kind of the science and research to show that and to be able to come Back. But also, yeah, do it in a way where we can also recognize the balance. Even with fermented foods, does it shift with the seasons?

And then, let's say, you know, I think we use different foods. So, like, this morning, I was actually digging into my homemade pickles, you know, and I was like, oh, God, I was getting down to the bottom of the journey. Oh, you know, I want to make some more, but I can't, because pickling cucumbers come, like, in a short season every time of year. But, you know, certainly you can do a tremendous amount right now with root vegetables. You can make quick pickles with carrots, with turnips, with cabbage. Of course, you can make your own sauerkraut, or you can make kimchi, you know, which is, of course, more spicy. Or you can make quick pickles. Like, Japanese tradition has a lot of these quick pickles. So you just press it with a little salt, and it kind of helps to break it down. And the nice thing about a lightly fermented food is that it. The breakdown has started. So it's easier to digest.

Because your body isn't having to take a raw food and warm it up and break it down. And that makes your stomach work really, really hard. A lot of that hcl where get that fermented food in there, it's already starting to break down, and you already have a little bit of acid going in there as well. You can just do a little bit. And it's really nice if you're having just a very simple meal to add just a little bit kind of pickle or condiment, and that would, you know, really.

Just kind of, you know, kind of get your attention, you know what I mean?

Yes, it does. And it kind of like, it gives different flavors in the food, and it kind of resets your palate a little bit, I notice, you know. Yes, it's like, again, it doesn't require very much, but it serves these different purposes. And I think it's a perfect example of just by adding a little bit of something, how this food now becomes medicine. It's helping us. Like, what comes to mind is how we're so used to. We expect a lot of our bodies. We're used to it being hard. We almost expect that things should be hard and that our body should be able to handle it anyway. You know, like, I'm supposed to be able to work all day and run through and get some fast food and eat it on the run and. And what you're saying is, hey, how about we eat in A way that makes it easy for our body to digest and support our digestion. What about that?

Yeah, right.

Like what a concept, you know, to choose foods in a way that's going to help our bodies get more out of our food.

Exactly. And it's not just, you know, they say it's what you are, what you eat, but really we are what we digest.

You know, and it's not just what we eat, but how we eat. You know, gobbling down food on the run, like, you know, being on our phones or whatever is just like your body doesn't really know what's happening. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

We recognize that our body takes in all these signals, you know, from our environment. Am I sitting, am I, am I calmly chewing and eating and am I enjoying the food and you know, the taste and everything. It's like complet different signals within our body so that it can have a chance to make the, like you were saying, the stomach acid and the pancreatic enzymes to be able to digest the food. Like it's a whole different experience.

Yeah. And, you know, just want to bring it. I know you, you deal a lot with stress in your, in your practice and your writings and such. And you know, it's just very stressful to be, you know, just tense when we're eating. And you know, eating is an opportunity for us to.

You know, right now it's harder because people are having to eat alone and that brings up a whole other slew of issues. You know, when life is normal or if you live with people, it is an opportunity to stop and to rest and just to kind of share stories or enjoy your food or something to that effect, which, you know, we're rhythmic beings and as adults we forget that. I always say, you know, for those of us who are parents, when we, when our kids were little, they were our little rhythm machines. You know, that's true. You know, when they get to be teenagers, they go, oh God, that rhythm is way off. But.

They remind us, they remind us, they remind us about rhythm because when they're hungry, they want to eat. When they're tired, they want to sleep. And you know, you know, like, if you miss that window.

Their cortisol is like, ah, through the roof. And they, you know, they just can't calm down. So we're like that too. But we have found more adaptive ways. You know, we don't eat, we get really tired, we don't eat, we get grumpy, we don't eat, we get a stomachache. Or a headache. We don't drink enough, we get a headache. You know, we're too tired and we can't go. And we don't go to sleep. We get too wound up. So, you know, the beauty of Chinese medicine is that it's a rhythmic medicine. You know, we're looking at balance in regards to rhythm and activity and environment. And all of these things influence us and how we feel. So, you know, when we're eating, if you're eating and you're guilty, or if you're eating and you're miserable about your food, then stop. You know, wait a minute. You know, food is not about guilt or morale. And I mean, there is a certain moral to morale. To. Moral, sorry, not morale, moral to, you know, eating well, etc. Just in terms of a lot of things. But, you know, if we feel those things or we're depressed about our food, then it's time to look at things differently and look for ways where we can feel more comfortable, more at ease, more fulfilled, more nourished, you know, in the. In the biggest sense of the word, that.

Yeah, that. That really brings that meaning to the word nourished. You know, nourished in many ways in terms of, you know, you've mentioned Covid, and maybe that's another good example of how can we be eating to support our immune system, whether it's preventing, whether Covid or another virus or say, when you catch a virus. What are some of examples of what you would suggest in that in those situations?

Well, you know, our immune system, since stress is so huge, and certainly we've. All the whole world is under stress now. You know, there's a lot of trauma from this year that we're all been experiencing in various degrees.

So it's kind of not what you eat, but what you cut out. That's super important.

Cutting out processed foods, cutting out sugar, Sugar will really depress the immune system. So a little treat every now and then is fine. But if you're just binging on Oreos or whatever, ice cream, it's just gonna mess up your immune system. So again, just those classic foods like greasy foods, fatty foods, creamy foods, creamy and cold foods like ice cream, lots of sugar, refined carbohydrates.

Fast food, processed, all of that stuff is going to put a stress on the immune system. So the immune system is going to have to deal with that, and then it has to deal with what's out here. Right. So if we kind of cut those things out, maybe your listeners go, I can't do it. Well, Take the big thing and cut that thing out and add in vegetables instead. You know.

Dark green leafies. I can't tell you to eat enough of them. You can't og on them, you know what I mean? Unless you have kidney stones that you have to watch out for kales and brassica kind of thing. But.

Vegetables, vegetables and more vegetables are really good for you.

I encourage people to eat sea vegetables. Seaweeds. Now nori is really, really high in protein. There's tons of minerals in them like calcium and magnesium, iron, etc. And a little bit of sea vegetable is really nice. You know, even like a slice of nori or some dulse, which is a red, kind of very salty, rich with iron. Sea vegetable that you can kind of put in a salad or sprinkle over food, things like that. Putting combo in beans that mineralizes that. So getting minerals into the system is really important. Bitter greens, which is not a big usual thing in our culture, but chicories.

Endive. I love broccoli rabe. A lot of people don't, but it's quite bitter.

It is a little bit bitter.

Yeah. Those are really good because it helps to clear out any kind of heat buildup in the body. Again, if you're feeling healthy, you know, having a little bit of an immune boost in your. Like putting some astragalus in your.

Chicken broth that you're making, you know, and ginger, red dates or goji berries actually are building qi and blood. So from a Chinese medicine perspective, you can put that in there. They're not sweet, sweet tasting. When you cook them in a soup, they're very, they're mild.

I want to put goji berries in a soup. I'm going to try that.

Yeah, it's really nice if you put in like a little. And some mushrooms. Mushrooms, mushrooms.

I love the mushrooms.

Mushrooms they found, you know, just have an incredible positive effect upon the immune system. So shiitake mushroom, maitake mushroom, oyster mushrooms, cordyceps, which you don't find in the store, but you can get them from a Chinese herbalist or like the ultimate tonic. You can put those all in soups. You make a nice mushroom broth, this good immune boosting soup. You know, if you're starting to feel sick. I really recommend for people to speak with their naturopathic physician or their Chinese acupuncturist, Chinese medicine practitioner and getting some herbs and some, you know, supplemental things.

To boost, you know, in addition to these dietary choices. Yeah.

Just because, you know, it's. Yeah. And. But also you Know, Covid is. Is a beast. And, you know, that's really important to kind of catch it, nip it in the bud. But not overeating is also really important. People overeat and they're overtired. It kind of throws their immune system off and they get sick. It's interesting. Yeah, it is.

It's such a good point. Like, I. When I think of stresses, you know, even overeating would be a stress on your system because now your body has to deal with these extra calories. So thinking about what are the things we might be doing, you know, to our bodies, to ourselves, that cause our bodies to stress, cause us to have to, you know, improvise or adapt, and then it can throw you off balance like we've been talking about. So it's like just what I'm hearing is the more we can kind of eat in a very balanced way. Now, if the virus comes along, it's coming at you when you're more in a balanced state, so you're more able to respond. And then you could add some extra immune, supportive ways of eating, but you're more starting off in a balanced place versus starting at a compromised place. Then you're more vulnerable to whatever comes along.

Yeah. And it doesn't override, you know, all the public health recommendations of wearing a mask and, you know, washing your hands and keeping things.

This is in addition to that.

Yeah, in addition. Because we've seen even people who were, quote, healthy getting incredibly sick or even dying from COVID So. But Chinese medicine has been used effectively, I think, to help minimize effects. But you got to catch it, like, right in the beginning. And there are some Chinese herbal formulas that people. Different ones, that different practitioners are using. They've had some research in China on that, too. So, you know, it's a tricky time. But the most important thing is to just keep ourselves feeling as well as we can. You know, when we first got on, you said, how you doing? I said, I'm hanging in. You know, and we want to hang in as best we can and be as resilient as we can in our immune system, in our digestive system, you know, in our mental emotional state. So, you know, there are lots of kind of like, you have to. All roads lead to Mecca. Right. You have to just use all your resources and supports that you can.

Yeah, I love that. And just the idea that having a, you know, say if. If someone listening has been. Is. Is intrigued just by what we've been talking about. But if, say, you've been wanting to Explore more with foods and different foods and different combinations in a way that's healing. Then your book, I think, is really perfect because you, you have just a very gentle and simple way of getting to the details. So it's like, I think a reader will feel very accepted and supported in this process in your book. So thank you so much. And it's available, I suppose, online, anywhere people would usually get it.

Yeah, it's available on Amazon. And I think if you kind of look at it and go, oh, God, I don't know, you don't even have to read the book. If you just go to the recipes.

All the seasons and you can just learn to make these recipes in different ways and see what you're attracted to. I also have a chapter where I talk about different conditions, like anywhere from colds and flu to insomnia to PMS, etc. Certain recipes that I recommend for you there. And then there's a whole chapter on condiments. So those little special things like we talked about fermented foods, where you can just add these little flavorings to therapeutic but yummy and add them to your. To your meal.

That makes it more interesting because people sometimes will just be like, oh, my gosh, I'm so tired of having the same, eating the same thing all the time. But when you can add a different spice or different condiment or something, then all of a sudden it seems like totally different and new.

Exactly. And if you're cooking for a family, not everybody in your family is going to eat the same. So if you have a bunch of different condiments and a couple choices, people can mix and match to their taste preference. You know, So I always tell moms, one meal, don't cook. Be cooking four meals for four people. You know, one meal. You know what I mean? It's hard enough, but yeah, you can get the book on Amazon. And I'm, you know, I, I love to talk to people or if they have questions, they can contact me@lngearlnaturalhealth.com I am in Portland, Oregon, where actually the sky is blue today. So that's really great.

Not raining today. It's pearlnaturalhealth.com, right? Is your website.

Yes, pearlnaturalhealth.com yeah.

And you know, I'm originally from Portland, so we kind of traded places because now I'm in New York. You grew up in Portland?

Oh, wow.

Yes, I was born there and grew up in the Northwest.

Wow. No, we did try places.

I miss home. I don't know if you missed home, but I miss. I miss New York.

Yeah, I do. I do. I love to come back and visit. It's. It's, you know, but that's the thing. There's, you know, there's something about that feeling of home. I'm sure you reflected on that, too. You know, what. What goes into that. And I think with this pandemic, people have been at home more. And so I found for myself, it's more of a chance to reflect on that, what is being at home. And I think food is a lot of that, like which foods you have available, which food you choose. And of course, the people around you also gives you that sense of home. But there is, I think, also the part of the nature, like that's the difference, I suppose, between New York and the Pacific Northwest is the experience of nature outside, too. You were alluding to the rain in.

The Pacific north.

The dampness. Right.

Yeah. But there's a lot of gorgeousness in New York, you know, I mean, I miss the smell of the deciduous forest, you know.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. And to see the. Go through the fall with all the leaves changing and, you know, in the Northwest, it's much more evergreen, which in some ways I like, because then we get more green in the winter. But here you get much more of that season change. The fall, you're experiencing the color. The winter, you're experiencing the cold and the snow and the ice. You know, so it's this. I've really come to appreciate that experience of season change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing with us today. And I think it's really brilliant the work you're doing to. To bring forward this ancient knowledge and wisdom of food as medicine, especially what was studied in Chinese medicine and bringing it into our Western culture. So thank you for everything that you do.

Oh, thank you. It's always great to speak with a naturopathic colleague.

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