TCM - Health In Late Summer

Round Vegetables Such As Cabbage Harmonize The Digestion

As promised in two previous posts on Traditional Chinese Medicine, Health In The Spring and Tips for Summer Health, I am re-visiting the subject of Traditional Chinese Medicine in each of the five seasons of the year.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  In TCM there are five seasons of the year.  Right now we are in a relatively little known season, which begins August 1st and ends September 19th, and is called Late Summer.

I love Paul Pitchford's description of this little known season in his magnificent tome "Healing With Whole Foods - Oriental Traditions and Modern Nutrition."

"Late Summer, a short and relatively unrecognized "season," is approximately the last month of summer and the middle of the Chinese year.  It is the point of transition from yang to yin, between the expansive growth phases of spring and summer and the inward, cooler, more mysterious fall and winter seasons.  A pleasant, tranquil, and flourishing season, it is as if time stops here and activity becomes effortless, dreamlike.  Unity, harmony, and the middle way are summoned between the extremes."

The season of Late Summer is governed by the earth element and the related organs are the spleen-pancreas and stomach.  These are the organs that in TCM are most responsible for digestion and the distribution of nutrients throughout the body.  In order to attune to this seasons it is important to choose foods that strengthen and promote digestion and that represent the center.  Mild, golden, round, and sweet foods most harmonize with Late Summer. These are foods such as millet, corn, onions, carrots, cabbage, garbanzo beans, squash, string beans, yams, sweet potatoes, sweet rice, rice and peas.  A small amount of the pungent flavor, such as onion, leek, ginger, cinnamon, and fennel help strengthen digestion and are beneficial at this time of year.  Beneficial animal foods are small amounts of tuna, halibut, anchovy, humanely-raised beef, chicken, turkey, lamb and grass-fed butter. 

If one's digestion is weak it is important to chew food very well and to take food in small and easily digestible portions.  In fact, even though I am a huge fan of whole, raw foods, this is the time of year when one may want to begin to add more moderately well-cooked foods into the diet. 

According to TCM it is particularly important to restrict the amount of raw and cooling food one eats, such as raw vegetables and fruit, (especially citrus), sprouts, cereal grasses, tomato, spinach Swiss chard, millet, amaranth, sea vegetables, blue-green algae, very sweet food, dairy products, and vinegar, if one has weak digestion.  When the digestion is weak it is important to "stoke the digestive fire" by eating mild, golden, round foods such as those mentioned above and to eat those foods with a little bit of the spicy pungent flavor, such as onion, leek, ginger, cinnamon, and fennel, to aid digestion.