Neely Acupuncture - ORIENTAL DIET THERAPY

Your first medicine is your food. It is the gas for the body. The body breaks down the food (metabolism) into it's smallest pieces, and these fuel and make up the cells. The cell function depends on the makeup of the cell. What do you want in your cells?

The clich - "you are what you eat" sums up this approach perfectly. The body is constantly repairing and renewing itself - in fact, in 10 years time you will retain not a single cell of your current body, they will all have been replaced. This applies to your skin, organs, brain, bones and every part of the body. We must realize that the fuel for this process, the very building blocks of the physical body, comes from our food, so we really are what we eat.

Food is the body's fuel. You want it to be clean, pure, and easy to digest. Our food choices are extremely important to physical, mental and spiritual health. With the "advances" in science, our food today is coated and infused with many unnatural substances. We get a build up of unnatural stuff (who knows what) and our health suffers. As one system is upset it affects other processes in the body and the entire balance is off. Persistent abuse can lead to a build up in toxins,a gradually reduced immune system, bad digestion, and other more serious problems, making the body function poorly.

It's best to eat the food nature intended us to eat by opting for locally grown, organic, seasonal produce whenever possible.

By eating a varied diet with some low fat protein (meat), lots of whole grains, seeds, nuts, seasonal fruit and vegetables, you get everything you need for a healthy body and mind. After all, we are a part of the natural world, and have evolved to eat the foods that grow around us. Everything we need is readily available to us without the need to rely on man-made additives and chemicals. The closer you can stay to 'real food', things you get off plants and things that eat plants, the better and easier the body works.

In this medical theory, foods, like everything, have certain qualities and temperatures. This means that the "best" foods will be different for different people depending on their constitution and the stay of their well-being at any given time. A clear presentation of the Chinese energies of food is beyond the scope of this page, your acupuncturist can talk more about this with you.

There are a couple books you can reference for more on foods: - Chinese System of Food Cures, Prevention and Remedies by Henry C. Lu - Healing with Whole Foods: Oriental Traditions & Modern Nutrition by Paul Pitchford

A healthy, balanced diet is one of the most essential parts of obtaining and sustaining good health. As diet is considered one of the major elements of health, Eastern practitioners recommend diet changes if the patient's intake is unbalanced.