Traditional Chinese medicines are considered by many as complementary wellness herbal remedies, but that doesn’t mean that they complement everything already in your lifestyle. Your diet has a major impact on the efficacy of Chinese medicine, and there are four foods in particular that practitioners warn against if you want your herbal remedy to have any impact on your wellbeing.
Firstly, got milk? Usually, milk is a nourishing beverage which strengthens bones and aids digestion, but if you’re taking warm yang treatments, you shouldn’t drink milk. Warm yang treatments, such as kidney qi pills, strengthening soups or aconite pills, are given to drive out dampness when you have flu or phlegm in your throat, or if you have diarrhoea, and so you should not consume milk as this exacerbates your problem, and lowers the effect of warm yang treatments.
If you are taking bitter herbs for cooling purposes, such as daoyi powder, blemish fading soup and “silver” qiao powder, you should not eat chillies. Chilli peppers can, when eaten in excess, cause you to experience dizziness, toothache and sore throat, as well as causing any haemorrhoids you have to flare up. Therefore, chillies will cancel out the cooling effect of your bitter herb treatment.
The bitter nature and cool flavour of turnips help your body to decrease problems caused by excessive heat. Turnips help your body to cool and clot your blood, improves your bowel movements and any problems you might have urinating and gets rids of phlegm. In Chinese herbal medicine, turnips are used to reduce hot qi, so if you are taking any treatments to strengthen your qi, such as the “four gentlemen” soup of ginseng, atractylodes, poria and licorice; ginseng yang-rong pills; or the “circulation” sheng mai drink made from ginseng, ophiopogon and schisandra, do not eat turnips at the same time.
Finally, sticky or glutinous rice is used to warm your spleen and stomach, nourish your qi and reduce excess urine. This rice warms your body, which increases your internal temperature and this, in turn, firms your stool. Therefore, if you have constipation, sticky rice can be difficult to digest. Also, if you are taking herbal supplements to nourish and moisten your spleen, such as can ling bai shu powder, don’t eat sticky rice as this food will block the supplements from improving your spleen functions.