Imagine if simply choosing warm food and drink could help:
• depression
• anxiety
• insomnia
• gas
• bloating
• promote healthy gut bacteria (say bye-bye to expensive probiotics)
• painful periods…
All these benefits, without biohacking gadgets, expensive supplements and exotic superfoods!
This powerful tweak is something that we all can access today – something that Chinese Medicine has been talking about for several millennia. And that is…warm food and drinks.
So simple, and yet so profound in it’s effects and benefits. And, so empowering – because each mouthful can move us towards ever-greater health.
A new study from the British Journal of Nutrition confirms what Chinese Medicine has known for well over 5,000 years.
In this episode, we look through the lens of Chinese Medicine to learn why this works, and how you can apply it for yourself.
Nourishing our spark of life – and our Spleens – with cooked and warm food and drink is a foundation for health*.
Our digestive tract is lined with muscles that help to process our food. We know that warming up our muscles can help them to work more efficiently – and that a cold, cramped and contracted muscle not only aches, but doesn’t deliver the same power.
Our digestions are no different!
Each time we choose something warmer than body temperature, we are protecting our Yang.
Another way that we can understand why choosing warm food and drinks is so deeply healing is by looking through the lens of structured water**
Certain wavelengths, like natural light and infrared, prompt the molecules in water to move and arrange themselves in a structured or coherent manner (I think that this explains why it feels so deeply nourishing to get sun on our skin!). Infrared wavelengths are easy to identify as they are present where there is heat! This is why moxa, infrared heat lamps and healing touch (all living beings emit infrared frequencies) can feel so great! And this is also why we abhor cold things, ice packs and ice baths in Chinese Medicine.
We can harness the power of infrared frequency to help structure our body water every time we choose to eat or drink something warm. Think of it as an instant power boost, delivered directly to our interior. Potent stuff! As we now know, the more organised and coherent our body water, the more Qi (charge or potential) it can hold, which means better vitality, function and health for body-mind-soul!
Listen in to learn how following the simple, proven principles of nourishing your spark of life, can support you in feeling vibrant, energised, radiant and clear.
* and because of this, it is one of the Foundation Rituals in my course, the Radiant Energy Reset – a real solution for those ready to ditch the fads & feel clear, energised and in control again. Backed by ancient wisdom, not wellness trends.
** everything that we do in Chinese Medicine is about bringing structure, coherence and charge to the water within us (we are roughly 99% water by molecular count)
LEARN MORE about the RADIANT ENERGY RESET RESEARCH PAPERSCold and hot consumption and health outcomes among US Asian and White populations
Visceral hypersensitivity following cold water intake in subjects with irritable bowel syndrome
Welcome
Hi everyone, welcome to the Balanced Natural Health podcast where we share insights from the ancient science and timeless wisdom of Chinese medicine. Information from the old natural ways of healing can support us in leading more beautiful, more vibrant and more vital lives today. In this podcast I share simple, natural and accessible tips that you can incorporate into your everyday life for more vibrant health and wellness. I’m so glad you’re here.
Episode Intro
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to episode 46 of the podcast. I’m Dr. Maz, and in today’s episode, I would like to talk about a recent study in the British Journal of Nutrition that talks about just one thing, one simple thing that can have profound effects for anxiety, depression, insomnia, as well as many aspects of gut health, including easing, gas, flatulence, bloating.
And in another study, this one thing was also shown to have a positive impact on IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, and also regulating our gut bacteria, our gut microbiome, and all of this without expensive probiotic and prebiotic supplements. And I love this because this one thing is rooted so firmly in Chinese medicine. It’s literally one of the foundational practices of Chinese medicine.
“And this research and this recent study just shows what Chinese medicine has known for 5,000 years. And I love it also because it shows us that Chinese medicine has so much to offer that is relevant in this day without us needing to go fund new research because it is all already there. So what is this magical one thing that has all of these powerful impacts on gut health and mental health?
And I will also add before I give you the answer that in another study, this same thing was shown to improve cognitive decline. So to slow cognitive decline, improve cognitive function, and was also shown to improve the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. So it slowed the progression, and it had an impact on the onset and development of Alzheimer’s disease.
So so many broad impacts and also menstrual health and period pains. And this one thing is not a expensive biohacking toy. It’s not the latest superfood.
It’s not some expensive supplement regime. Or hardcore detox or diet protocol. It is simply warm food and drinks.
Something that I’ve been talking about my whole clinical life. And something that I’ve seen have such profound effects with all of the hundreds of people I’ve worked with over the years. So I have seen this one simple change.
In addition to everything that the recent research mentioned, I’ve seen it change things like asthma, hay fever, chronic allergies, digestive issues, weight gain and weight imbalances. The list goes on and on. So to help bring home how and why this is powerful, I’d like to touch on one of our foundational concepts of where health and vitality stems from in Chinese medicine.
And that is the spleen and stomach systems. So in Chinese medicine, the spleen and stomach are considered the source of vitality and energy, our daily energy. And because of this, they are assigned to the earth element.
So in Chinese medicine and in a lot of classical Chinese thought, we categorize the earth and the world around us into the five elements. So it helps us make sense of the natural world. And in the body, we have organ systems that are related to the earth element because their health and their optimal functioning is foundational to the rest of our health.
So when our earth element and when our spleen and stomach are functioning well, then everything else stems from there. They are literally the root and the foundation for all of the blossoming of our beautiful whole body, mind and soul health from there. And I find it interesting because in Chinese medicine, we have understood for millennia the connection between the gut and the brain.
And this is something that modern research is catching up to. So in one of these studies that I mentioned, they looked at the impact or researchers looked at the impact of just two weeks of cold water consumption in rats. So rats were given freezing cold water as opposed to body temperature or warm water.
And the effects were studied on the rat brain. And what was noticed just in that very short period of time is that they started to develop amyloid lesions or what is also known as amyloid plaque, so plaque deposits on the brain. Now in Chinese Medicine, we very much link the brain with the stomach as well because they are both considered hollow organs.
One of my teachers actually shared that in many Chinese traditional hospitals, when people come into hospital in acute situations with say traumatic brain injury then one of the things, the first lines or first ports of call that they will do to alleviate pressure on the brain is to induce a bowel movement. So they will give laxatives or try to flush out a bowel motion to remove pressure on the brain. So to return that hollow state to the brain and the stomach.
In many cases, that can improve already cognition and consciousness, conscious awareness just from that one little intervention. So we can see that really strong correlation in both modern research and traditional medicine, ancient wisdom, classical Chinese medicine, that connection between the gut and the brain. And in Chinese medicine, we’re very much about nurturing always our spark of life, looking after our digestive fire, so looking after the health of our digestive organs, our spleen and stomach, making sure that they are well functioning, that they have a nice cooking fire to digest all the food that we take in.
And how effective this digestive fire is at digesting the food that we take in, will also impact the state of any inflammation in the body. So in Chinese medicine, there’s some correlation between what we call inflammation and “what we call damp. And looking after our little digestive fire, our spleen and stomach organ systems is important to cut off damp and inflammation at the root.
So to this end, we eat cooked and warm food and drinks because they don’t tax that precious digestive fire in our spleen and stomach, in our earth element. So we think of our digestive organs as a cooking pot. And if they have a nice strong fire underneath the cooking pot, then things get well metabolized.
We don’t have any accumulations of toxins. We don’t have accumulations of damp and inflammation. And the other way that I like to explain this is that we all know that keeping a muscle warm and warmed up and supple can improve its function.
So this is why we might do warm ups or we might not go straight into hardcore exercise in cold conditions so that we don’t damage the muscles and also so that we can get the most out of our system. And our digestions are no different. So our digestions also desire to be warm and supple because when we take in food and drinks that are warm, then it keeps “the muscles lining the digestive tract functioning well.
So it allows our stomach lining to release all of the precious acids and enzymes that help to unlock the goodness in the food. It can help to massage the food and move it through the digestive tract. Whereas, if we have cold food, cold drinks, raw food, then it can freeze down that beautiful function and can still that important process.
So it can impair that important process of digestion, metabolism and breaking down. And another perspective I’d like to offer on my understanding of why cooked and warm food and drinks are so important for health is through the lens of structured water or coherent and organized water. So I’ve talked about this in other episodes, and this is an area of exciting discovery and research.
But actually, this is something that Chinese Medicine has long acknowledged for thousands of years. And in my opinion and in my perspective, Chinese Medicine is all about charging up the water in our bodies and creating structure and coherence to the water in our bodies, so that Qi, so that energy, can flow efficiently, information can go to where it’s needed, blood and “fluids can go to where they are needed as well. And everything that we do in Chinese Medicine is about charging up the water in our bodies.
Because when we look at human beings by molecular count, we are about 99% water molecularly. By weight, it’s about 60%, it’s less, but still a very large amount. But by molecular count, yeah, up around the 99% mark.
So the quality of that water and how the water molecules are arranged, are they arranged in a neat and ordered way that facilitates communication and charge holding? Or are they discoherent and in disarray? So messages and important transmitters and other information might get stuck or snagged.
So in Chinese Medicine, it’s all about supporting flow and charge and chi. And this is why we revere the spark of life, why we revere warmth, why we abhor cold, why we don’t jump in ice baths, and why all of our practices are about improving flow circulation through warmth and movement. So we don’t put ice on injuries, we don’t jump in ice baths, and we don’t drink cold drinks and eat raw food and cold food because it impairs the flow within our “digestive tract and within our internal organs as well.
And back to structured and coherent water. One of the most powerful ways to bring organization to our water molecules, whether inside or outside of the body, is through certain wavelengths and certain frequencies of light and also warmth, so infrared heat, body heat, sunlight, warm food and drink. When the water comes into contact with heat or when it’s acted upon by heat, then the molecules within the water start to arrange themselves in a more structured, coherent and harmonious way, which then supports the holding of charge and the carrying of information and the movement of chi and blood, so flow of chi and blood in the body.
So one simple way that we can charge up our chi, charge up our bodies each and every day with each and every mouthful is to choose things that are warmer than body temperature, warmer than our mouths and making sure that then everything that we put in is actually adding to our sum total of yang, our sum total of that digestive fire, that spark of life, that charge, rather than taking away from it, because when we drink drinks “from the fridge or eat ice cream and foods that are raw and therefore harder to digest, we drain that precious fire. And there’s a lot of researchers that attribute who we are as humans and our development of our human brain and human achievement, whether for better or worse throughout history, to the fact that humans have harnessed fire to cook their foods and therefore make their food more digestible, to make the nutrients and energy within it more bioavailable. And to reduce the amount of energy that it takes to digest the food, which leaves more energy than for brain function and other pursuits.
So when we eat raw food and cold food, we are directly draining our mental and other capacities as well, which is why from a Chinese medicine perspective, I’m not surprised to see that connection between cold drinks and cognitive decline, amyloid plaque and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Because in Chinese medicine, we say that the spleen organ system, which is part of the earth element, the spleen organ system is responsible for digesting not only the food and drink, the material nourishment that we take in, but it’s also responsible for digesting and “making sense of the world around us, the information that we take in, the data that we consume, the things that we learn. So if we find that we are having cognitive issues, or even just feeling brain fogged or overwhelmed memory, having trouble remembering or focusing, then this is very often a spleen issue that I have seen improve when people took extra nurturing and care for their spleen and stomach by choosing cooked and warm food and drink.
So I love this study so much because it highlights once again the power and the continuing relevance of this ancient medicine, Chinese medicine in today’s world. And I love how simple it makes it. Like we don’t need to spend money on expensive gadgets, on superfoods, on supplements.
We don’t need to have hardcore detoxes or harsh protocols. We just need to eat the way that mom and nature has guided us and that the ancients have observed over millennia as being supportive to human health. And it’s so simple.
I think sometimes as modern humans, we’re looking for the shiny solution. And this is probably not so glamorous, but yet it works as these studies have shown. There “was also another study that looked at the effects of just one cup of cold water.
So a single drink at zero degrees Celsius, so out of the fridge or just below fridge temperature, and a 37 degrees Celsius, so body temperature drink. So just one single cup of cold water given to people with IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, had instant effects on their visceral sensation, their organ reactions, and was promoting hyper reactivity and diarrhea. So such a simple thing can have such profound effects, because then if we’re not absorbing nutrients, if we’re having a quick transit time through the bowels, we’re not absorbing all of that goodness, we’re depleting our energy.
And so this is why something so simple can have such a direct impact on our energy levels, our vitality, how well we bounce back from life’s challenges, life’s ups and downs, injuries or illnesses, diseases, and so on. Yet another study looked at spasms of the oesophagus, so people having issues swallowing. So the oesophagus is the tube that connects our throat to our stomach, and this area can be affected by spasms, by pain.
It’s also an area sometimes affected by reflux or similar “conditions. It can present sometimes also as chest pain, and this study looked at the simple practice of just hot water swallows to soften that spasm, because spasm is a lack of movement, it’s a contraction, it’s a coldness, and so warming up that area brought instant relief, it relieved chest pain, and also by extension, it improved function further down the digestive tract, which will have a knock on effect to esophageal function too. And the final area in which the temperature of what we take into our bodies can have a really profound effect, and I mean, there are so many, this is just really a top line list, but the other area is in circulation of the blood, lymphatic fluid, and other important vital substances, and also the microcirculation.
So not only do we have large veins and arteries throughout our body, but we also have microcirculation and tiny, tiny capillaries that are so tiny that only a single blood cell squeezes through. And these are all throughout our body, and how open and flowing they are affects how well various organs and tissues are nourished, how they repair, how they age through all the decades of “our life. And one way that we can ensure this is by ensuring warmth and flow.
So when we have cold things internally, it can constrict that microcirculation, it can affect how tissues are nourished. And this was shown to also have an impact on period pain and ovarian and uterine function. So cold exposure had a big impact there.
As well as another study that I looked at, that showed the impact of cold drinks on raising blood pressure. Because again, it contracts and it inhibits flow. So in Chinese Medicine, we have a famous saying that says that where there is flow, there is no pain and where there is pain, there is no flow.
So flow and movement is really important in order to allow all of those vital substances, chi and blood, information, neurotransmitters of all kinds to move through the body. And where that’s inhibited, that’s where we have pain. And that’s why we always use heat to heal from injuries.
I’ve talked in a old episode, I think it was episode 7, busting the myths of applying ice to injuries. And the doctor that came up with that idea is now on a big “recall mission to have that change. But unfortunately, it has become so disseminated through the mainstream medical system that it’s going to take a little bit to overturn.
But we are reminding people about that all the time in Chinese medicine, that putting cold on injuries can slow recovery because it inhibits flow. So then the tissues don’t get all of those vital substances coming through to move out cellular debris to bring in fresh information, fresh cells, fresh nutrition to grow healthy tissue. And there have been numerous studies that have compared cold application versus heat application for recovery, say from, I think it was knee surgery and various other injuries.
So in Chinese medicine, we are all about nourishing the yang, keeping our body warm and flowing. Because as one of my teachers famously said, the difference between a live body and a freshly dead one is the body temperature. It’s the yang.
That yang is the charge, the energy, the spark of life that is behind all of our vitality, wellness and ability to heal and respond to life in all of its forms. So maybe you’re doing this already. Maybe you’re choosing every mouthful to be “nourishing to your spark of life, nourishing to your body, structuring your water.
And with every mouthful, we can be adding energy and adding chi to our body. So maybe you’re already doing this and feeling the benefits. And if you’re not, I invite you to try this for two to three weeks to commit to this 100% because as we learned from that one study I shared, just one single drink of cold water could already induce negative effects and symptoms, which are just messages from the body that it’s not loving what we’re doing.
So I invite you, if you’re curious, if this resonates with you, to try this for two to three weeks. And observe the profound changes that I suspect you will discover. And to help you in implementing this, you can get a thermal flask to fill up with hot water before you leave the house.
So this is what I’ve done. If I was working away from home, I’d fill up several flasks of herbal teas, say ginger or other nourishing herbs to nourish my digestive fire. And also I used to heat up my food and put it in a little thermal flask for the day so that I could just pop that open at lunchtime and have a warm soup or stew.
I have found that more like thick stews and things that have a little bit of liquid in them would hold their heat better so you can tinker with what works for you. And just these simple things can have such profound effects. And this is one of the foundation rituals in my radiant energy reset.
So in my radiant energy reset, we share simple ways. So no harsh protocols, no detoxes, no crazy diets, no expensive superfoods and other crazy biohacking stuff. Just simple, natural and time tested rituals from Chinese Medicine that we use to nourish life, to feel radiant, to feel amazing at every stage of life, and to reverse these symptoms or body messages, like the ones that we’ve discussed here that came up in these studies.
So things like anxiety, depression, insomnia, it can also be hormonal imbalances, weight imbalances, inflammation, phlegm. All of these can stem from an imbalance in the earth element, in the spleen and stomach. And this is what I address in the Radiant Energy Reset.
So in addition to the “Cooked and Warm Food and Drink, we have five other foundation rituals, and you are guided through how to implement that through a 28-day guided journal. And there’s a really beautiful book where I talk about all of these lovely, simple concepts and help you tailor them to your life, and some beautiful video modules as well to make that more accessible. So if you’re interested in that, there’s more information in the show notes on my website and also on my socials.
And if this has resonated with you or sparked an interest, please feel free to share with others who might benefit as well, because this is such a simple thing that we can all access, and yet it can have such profound benefits. So thank you so much for joining me today, and wishing you all the very best of health, and look forward to seeing you next time.
POWERED BY BLUBRRY
