06.15.09

More on juice fasting

Posted in Alternative healing tagged at 12:02 am by kyrias

Alright. Looking back on what I did with my juice fasting — I can see a lot of what I did wrong Chinese medicine-wise.

Yes, yes, I’m on an obsessive binge.

Anyways.

What prompted me to write this post was that Azora mentioned that she tends to get the runs after drinking too much juice. That’s diarrhea for those of you who don’t tend to use euphemisms.

According to Chinese medicine, a lot of fruits are cold in nature — therefore excessive cooling of the stomach can lead to diarrhea and stomach pains.

Good — to — know.

So it’s not that we can’t do juice fasting — we just probably can’t do it the way I’ve been doing it. It’s probably not a problem for people who don’t have problems with poor circulation or “chilly” internal organs though, especially if they’re the sort who usually eat a lot of heating foods. But still.  Next time if I try a juice fast I’ll need to make sure to drink lots of ginger tea with it and play around more with what I’m eating.

So yes, an entire honeydew for breakfast? I’m lucky I wasn’t perched on the toilet all morning.

06.14.09

Why your diet might backfire and gain you more belly fat

Posted in Alternative healing tagged at 12:16 am by kyrias

I know some people who just can’t get rid of that tummy. Most of the time, this is women I’m talking about, and that makes sense considering what I was told regarding warmth and periods and so forth.

Supposedly, when women have “cold” stomachs and so on — they start to accumulate belly fat. This is pretty much true for everyone who has “cold” internal organs except for those women who have starved themselves to the point where their bellies can’t accumulate fat.

Statistically, women are more likely to have this sort of problem because of that monthly blood loss thing. The female tendency to diet doesn’t help things either and whereas males can more or less get away with drinking cold drinks because they don’t bleed from the crotch monthly, females can’t.

According to Chinese medicine, women should be actively seeking to replenish their blood supply after their periods, and we should be building up our blood before the period as well. Supposedly, most women don’t do either and thus they tend to have problems with anemia or poor circulation. Poor circulation and lack of blood, in turn, can lead to cold internal organs.

Without consuming enough “heating” foods and foods that build up the blood, like ginger, red meat, amongst others,  a woman’s health will slowly decline because nothing has been done to rebuild. When you take into consideration that a lot of women will diet at some point in their lives, if not for significant portions of their lives, you can see how their health would decline even faster. Particularly if you consider that may diet foods are very cooling in nature. Most salad materials are cooling in nature and so are many fruits. Some are neutral, but that doesn’t help much when your body actually needs more warmth. At best, your diet isn’t actively sabotaging your health – but why settle for that when you can be healthy instead?

When a woman has good circulation and enough blood, simple exercise and keeping check of calories will allow her to lose that belly fat. If not, then perhaps it can be gotten rid of by excessive dieting – but that’s hardly optimal.

Note: The Chinese doctor told me that it might actually become difficult for women to become pregnant if they have a “cold” body. Makes sense. If your body can’t even nourish itself, it’s unlikely to figure that it can keep a child alive.

11.21.08

D-mannose is good for UTIs, or so I hear.

Posted in Alternative healing tagged at 1:07 am by kyrias

Or perhaps I should say, D-mannose is bad for UTIs, by which I mean they get rid of them.

I got the hint from an E-how article where comments said what alternative therapies they used for UTIs. Supposedly D-mannose is the active compound in cranberries that give them their UTI fighting powers, so taking it direct works better than just taking cranberry supplements.

I’ve been getting more than a hint that one is about to flare up and I know Zora has been oddly plagued by them lately, so I think I’m going to hit up Harvest when I’m off work and see if they have any D-mannose so I can carry out a scientific query with a sample size of one. I’ve been pushing liquids all day, to the tune of 16 oz of tea every hour, but I still feel twinges.

Supposedly if you take a spoonful every day, it will keep your UTIs away. Worth a try, at any rate. I’ll report back on whether it works if I can find any and if I can’t, I suppose I’ll have to settle for cranberry tablets and if even that fails, I suppose buying fresh cranberries and blenderizing them will work.

Squick.