HEALING TRADITIONS
Food Therapy - Ancient, and In Vogue
By Mark Isaac Thyss, Garden of Healing®
One of the promising “new” treatments found today, and indeed much in vogue in America, is acupuncture. Yet, it is one of the oldest therapies known to the healing arts. Chinese physicians have been practicing it for at least 2,500 years.
Without a doubt, the oldest Eastern healing traditions are native to China and India, and are rooted in the dominant philosophical systems and ancient religions of those countries - Taoism in China and Hinduism in India.
While in dispute is the time when these practices started, what is not is their long and reliable history.
Acupuncture is considered a wide-spectrum weapon against many of the illnesses that beset humankind, and this fuels it’s popularity. While often hard to understand, it’s acupuncture’s results that are worth investigating.
Once bitten, or piqued, most patients swear by acupuncture’s effectiveness.
Most people think of needles when they ponder an acupuncture treatment, but this healing tradition is not without its foods used for their healing properties, as in Chinese Food therapy.
In China, ginseng has an ancient reputation as a concentration of the vital force, or Chi.
Let us not forget Ginseng’s use by Native Americans. Aromatic American Ginseng found in the North American woodlands was historically used to treat dozens of medical problems by Native Amercians.Â
Chinese Food Therapy is the application of medicinal food dishes, using select food ingredients and herbs, to derive the necessary nutrients to treat health conditions. This knowledge is the product of accumulated generational experience of monitoring and refining recipes for their benefits to health.
Food therapy is a modality of Traditional Chinese Medicine, also known as Chinese Nutrition therapy. It is particularly popular among Cantonese people who enjoy slow-cooked soups. During the Chau dynasty (16 BC), food therapy was established as a specialist field. The state even had food specialists serving the emperor in the imperial court. It was during the Tang dynasty (608-906 AD) that food therapy became popular and the classic books on the subject were published.
Calculating how many plants the Chinese use in healing is difficult. 5000 in number is probably a reasonable place to start. Some of these plants are used whole and some divided into component parts - roots, stems, leaves, even the flowers and seeds. Each part may be used for a different purpose. Locally grown vegetation is deemed to be the most efficacious, many of them grown throughout China’s vast southern provinces. Some are cultivated, but it is said that the best ones grow wild.
Ginseng refers to species within Panax, a genus of 11 species of slow-growing perennial plants with fleshy roots.
Panax species constitute the proverbial panacea, from the Greek, Πανάκεια, Panakeia, meaning “cure-all”. Panacea was the goddess of cures in Greek mythology.
Panacea was said to have a potion with which she healed the ill, and this brought about the concept of the panacea.
Chinese healers believe some herbs have affinities for certain organs, but this notion is only a starting point for herbal medicine’s complexities.
The most widely used medicinal herb in Asia, if not the world, is ginseng. In the West, we might think ginseng more of a food than an herb, as we most often use it in cooking.
Ginseng is a gnarled root with seemingly limitless benefits, and is now used to treat almost every affliction known to humanity. Indeed, ginseng’s botanical name, Panax pseudoginseng, translates as “remedy for all”.
Throughout Chinese history, health care was not left to the state, but rather the responsibility of every ordinary citizen. People used their own resources to find cures when they became sick, which meant that most people could not afford to be sick. This is why preventive health care is so popular in China.
Four pillars of health - lifestyle, diet, exercise and mind.
Of the four pillars of health - lifestyle, diet, exercise and mind - diet is most important. In the East, food is considered the primary cause of sickness, as well as a starting point for health and healing. Food plays a center role in Chinese culture. Cooking good food for family members is a lifelong profession for most women, and children are brought up with some knowledge of the nature of their everyday foods.
In the East, the patient is not merely a body, but an integral amalgam of body, mind and spirit, all equally important, all interacting constantly - and, at best, harmoniously. In the West, we term this notion “holistic health”.
Ginseng is only one of the many “foods as medicine” brought to us from China and India, and ginseng is an ideal food, or herb, to begin learning about and working with Chinese Food Therapy.
Let us not forget Ginseng’s use by Native Americans. Aromatic American Ginseng found in the North American woodlands was historically used to treat dozens of medical problems by Native Amercians.Â
Ginseng was used both internally and externally to relieve pain and fever, to treat wounds and skin sores, to ease vomiting, and to increase the effectiveness of other remedies. In this way, Ginseng is not exclusive to Eastern methods of healing.
With upwards of 5000 Chinese plants used for healing, to start with ginseng, it’s only one down and 4999-plus foods to go.
© 2007 Garden of Healing®. All rights reserved.
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