Zhonglibaren, Book 2, Chapter 2, Our Ancestor’s Secret Recipes Are Everywhere, Section 8, pg. 49
Many friends have chronic diseases with various symptoms. They usually feel not even a single comfortable spot from head to toe in the body. Their problems are neither serious nor dangerous, but rather lingering ones that never get truly healed. The symptoms are better at one time, and worse at another, and always unbearably troublesome. What these friends really need as soon as possible is to increase qi and blood and maintain a reserve of them, because only when there is enough qi and blood in the body can a person resist various diseases.
What is the fastest and most effective way to increase and store qi and blood? According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the stomach and spleen are what the human body relies on after birth - they are the sources of qi and blood. The stomach and spleen must be kept in good condition, if we want to have enough qi and blood. There are people who cannot digest food well and feel uncomfortably full after eating only a small amount of food. There are also people who can eat, but cannot absorb nutrients; the food they eat causes diarrhea, constipation, produces phlegm instead of minute particles and essential nutrients, or produces lumpy tissues instead of qi and blood. The root of the problems for both conditions is the malfunction of the stomach and spleen. Therefore, for these people, the most important step in strengthening the body constituents is to improve and promote the functions of stomach and spleen.
It is not difficult to imagine that if the stomach and spleen of a person cannot digest grains and vegetables, it will be even harder for them to handle herbs [1].
Some people take kidney-nourishing herbs to strengthen their weakened kidneys [2]. However, these herbs are usually difficult to digest, in addition to having strong odors and tastes. Thus, they often become a burden to the stomach and spleen instead of having the expected result of nourishing the kidney. Eventually, these nourishing herbs could become stagnant and difficult to eliminate, and so become toxic to the body. The phrase in TCM “too weak to be nourished”, partly means that the stomach and spleen are too weak to digest and absorb. There are people with strong fire in their hearts and livers [3] who use cold [4] herbs for a long time to quench the heat and remove toxins. They do not realize that cold herbs are the most hurtful to the stomach and spleen, and long term usage of cold herbs to quench fire is like using the family’s own farm field as a battle field to fight with an enemy. At the end, even if they are not defeated by the enemy, they could still die from food shortage. We need to always keep a reserve of qi and blood. In a battle, we have nothing to be afraid of, when we have enough food supply. In the fight with diseases, the only thing we need to worry is when we lose the ability to gain more fresh qi and blood. Many patients lost their last chance to fight off diseases because they could not eat and absorb nutrients. In life, we will have money to use, as long as we are able to make money, and we can persist to the final victory. Similarly, in the battle with diseases, we need qi and blood and we should protect our ability to make and keep them. (to be continued)
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