How could you use food to overcome Acid Reflux?

Have you ever wanted to use foods to heal the problems in your body? I do. They’re the least expensive, the most readily available and I can get them at the grocery store.

So what if you have acid reflux or heartburn? How do you use foods to overcome a problem that seems to be caused by eating food? The way that we get to the solution comes through the lens of Oriental medicine and specifically food as medicine.

So traditionally, an Oriental medicine food is part of the therapy along with water, appropriate breathing and exercise. When we talk about acid reflux, one of the ways that we describe this in Oriental medicine is dampness invading the spleen. It sounds quite a bit like a war-like move, doesn’t it? And it can feel that way to the spleen. It is commonly known in Oriental medicine that Americans tend to be a bit unkind to our spleens. It is said that the easiest diagnosis to ever give an American is spleen qi deficiency because it’s about 99 percent likely to be true.

So what does that mean, spleen qi deficiency? It means that our digestive system has eroded. It has gotten weaker and it has happened – well, one way of looking at it is we’ve accidentally been beating up on it a little bit. How do we do that?

We do that by feeding it foods that are hard for it to digest, for the spleen to digest. Here’s what I mean. Damp foods are specifically difficult for the spleen to digest. What are damp foods? Damp foods are those that are thick, that are rich, that are heavy.

So you can think of them and they’re kind of honestly snotty. It could be a way to describe this. You can think of them as things like rich dairy, butter. You can think of them as even nut butters. It can be very damp. You can think of them as coffee, especially a coffee with cream and sugar because the coffee has a dampness to it. If you ever have a really good cup of coffee and you look at the top and you see this beautiful oil on the top, that tells you that it’s a very high quality cup of coffee. It’s also damp.

By the way, drinking lower quality coffee does not alleviate the dampness. It’s just less observable in the oils on top. Then of course the cream, whether it is whole milk, cream, or half and half or Coffee-Mate. Those are the dampest of all of the different substances that you can put in your coffee.

So what do we do? I want to walk you through this. First let’s talk about symptoms of that dampness invading the spleen. The person who experiences that might feel heaviness in their body and their legs. They might have edema. So that waterlike swelling particularly in the ankles. They might have joint pain. They might have sticky stools or be bloated. They might get tired easily or nauseous or yeast infections.

They might even be a person that tends to avoid eating. So maybe they’re limiting the number of meals that they have in a given day. So this might be a person that’s drawn to intermittent fasting.

There’s nothing wrong with intermittent fasting and it can be a great adjunct to modality to the spleen that is deficient, but better to also heal the spleen.

What are the emotions associated with dampness invading the spleen? Wow, there are emotions involved with this and they are overthinking, overanalyzing, ruminating and worry.

So if you are noticing yourself experiencing those a bit more than you usually do, then you might take a look at what foods might help you. So foods to avoid are cold and raw foods. Now why would that be if the damp foods are what’s causing the problem in the first place?

The reason for that is cold, raw foods are more difficult to digest. They take more energy from the body. Here’s what I mean. The environment of the belly is about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and it’s a soupy, gooey mess and that means that the foods that are the easiest for you to digest are about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and there is soupy, gooey mess.

So the foods that are soups are going to be the easiest to digest. Raw, cold foods are most digestible by people who have very strong digestive systems.

Now what do we do? Here are some foods that you can eat to assist with this process. Amaranth, corn, make sure it’s organic, adzuki beans, celery, lettuce, scallions. So you can put that celery in a great soup. You can wilt the lettuce and that’s a technique, a cooking technique where you just throw it in the pan for a couple of minutes. It actually makes a really delicious solid.

Pumpkin, alfalfa, turnips and a tiny amount of raw honey and chamomile. All of these things can help relax and soothe the spleen. By the way, when I say a tiny amount of honey, I don’t mean four tablespoons a day. I mean just a little drop in your chamomile tea.

Thank you for attending to your digestive system. Thank you for paying attention to your body and tuning into it. Thank you for using good medicine to heal yourself. I’m Dr. Cynthia Clark with Longevity Wellness.