I’m Dr. Cynthia Clark, acupuncture physician, applied clinical nutritionist, Creator of Energy Evolution and President of Longevity Wellness here in Bradenton, Florida.

Reasons that a person might be drawn to coffee is because they’re looking for more energy. But the question is, “Why do they need more energy?” What is out of balance in the first place?

So I want to share with you Oriental medicine perspective on why a person might need more energy and it’s called “kidney yang deficiency”. So basically the part of our body, the organ system that’s really responsible for helping to tailor all other meridians, all other energy systems that feeds all of those is our kidneys and if our kidneys are depleted, then we’re going to wind up feeling tired.

By the way, the functional medicine way of saying this is we talk about adrenal fatigue because the adrenals sit right on top of the kidneys. “Renal” is the word that means kidney and “a” or “ad” is Latin for to or towards.

So adrenals are these tiny glands that sit right on top of the kidneys. OK. So we’ve got our kidney yang deficiency. Ah, I wake up in the morning and I just don’t feel like getting out of bed. I lay there for like 30 minutes trying to talk myself into it and then finally, I get up and dear God, please give me a cup of coffee because I’m exhausted.

So that’s a sign of need for supporting the kidneys and in the other video, we talked about why coffee might not be the best choice for you. Let’s talk about how to fix it, what to do instead.

So you might be kidney yang deficient if you have a cold body, if you’re running cold, if you’re pale, if you have a puffy face, if you have weak knees and a weak low back. That’s because the kidney channel runs right through those areas. Of course the kidneys are in the low back. So if you’re feeling that low back pain, it might well be an organ deficiency rather than a strained muscle and honestly I see that about 50 percent of the time in the low back pain that I treat.

You might have a discharge. There might be a problem with fertility or women. You might have clear vaginal discharge or you might have edema, swelling of the body.

Emotions tied to kidney yang deficiency are going to be lack of will, a lack of “oomph,” a lack of moxie. Like it will feel like you’ve lost your mojo. It might be difficult to be active. You know that you will feel better if you just exercised and dear God, that’s so hard to do and you might not feel productive and you might be indecisive. Just difficulty executing on different aspects of life.

So recommendations here are to avoid fruits because this can overtax the digestive system and overtax the kidneys. Avoid raw foods and avoid excessive salt.

Again it’s more difficult to digest raw foods because the environment of the gut is about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and it’s a soupy, gooey mess. So raw foods take energy to transmute them to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a super gooey mess.

But what do you do? Here are some foods that you can eat. If you are experiencing the symptoms of kidney yang deficiency, walnuts and almonds, cinnamon and cloves, some of my favorite, fenugreek, anise, onion, quinoa, lamb because it is so rich in essence, especially something like osso buco that’s made with a lamb shank and eat the marrow out of the middle. Also salmon, trout, black pepper corn and then two of my favorites are nutmeg and I especially love this as an essential oil.

So it’s very easy for me to add to a cup of tea or to a meal that I’m making and that helps to strengthen the kidneys and the adrenal glands and it’s delicious and it can be used for both sweet and savory. So you might just think of nutmeg in your eggnog. But it is just as delicious on a dish that you make like a meat dish that you make.

Then finally one of my favorite herbs for this is horny goat weed and in Chinese medicine, this is known as yin yang huo. In Western, we call it horny goat weed. It is both used to support the sexual systems. So it’s known as being an aphrodisiac a bit but really what it’s doing here is it’s strengthening the reproductive system and the kidneys and the adrenal glands.

So it’s very powerful to help bring you back into balance. So the next time that you start to think about having a cup of coffee because you just don’t feel like you can get going in the morning, then maybe try some foods to help shift that and of course, we would be happy to help.

I’m Dr. Cynthia Clark with Longevity Wellness and that’s good medicine.