According to TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), a happy and comfortable life is, for the large part, the result of carefully adjusting oneself to the prevailing external and internal circumstances – “going with the flow” so to speak. I will write more of the various flows of life that affect us another time, but today I want to talk about the flow of the Spring. Seasons affect us, whether we notice it or not. In the winter, everything is slow and quiet, withdrawn, lying deep within, waiting and recuperating. In the winter nature dies, or hibernates. Spring, on the other hand,...
Course in TCM Dietetics #1: How to Eat Right
Gut health has been in the news frequently this year, since the recent research from doctors Braden Kuo and Allan Goldstein at Massachusetts General Hospital, the US, who found that bacteria in the gut can affect mood, cognition and behaviour and lead problems in these areas – and vice versa. In neurobiological terms, the enteric nervous system that regulates our gut is in constant communication with the other major nerve centre, which is our brain. We might, for example, feel anxious or stressed and experience these as abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea, or “butterflies’. Or we might eat something that makes...
