The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.

—Plato

INTRODUCTION

When I was in the tenth grade, I began to question whether doctors were really the authority on the human body. Thanks to a severe case of mononucleosis, I had missed months of school and slept up to twenty hours a day, but the only advice my doctor could give me and my family was to “ride it out.” No prescription, dietary advice, or supplement to alleviate symptoms or recover faster—I just had to sit and wait to get healthy. My doctor didn’t even recommend vitamin C. Even at fifteen, that didn’t sound right. I had also recently given up meat, but I had no clue about how to be a vegetarian, and there weren’t many resources back then to guide me. Like most teenagers, I was still eating junk food, just without any meat. I had no idea how to do it right. Again, my doctor seemed to be no help. I decided to be proactive and learn about health and wellness on my own, which eventually led me to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

I’ve always been open to different cultures and ways of thinking, thanks to learning other languages and the foreign exchange students my family hosted in our home while I was growing up. The world came to us in the form of guests from Germany, France, Belgium, and El Salvador. A girl from Iran stayed with us for an entire year. The student who made the biggest and most lasting impression on me was a graduate student from China named Shen. One day my younger sister had a cut that just wouldn’t stop bleeding. Shen went to his room, returned with a mysterious powder in a jar, and applied it. Instantly, the flow of blood stopped without toxic chemicals or even a Band-Aid. That was the first time—but certainly not the last—I saw an herbal mixture heal an injury. The memory of how Shen used a natural cure stayed with me and ultimately led me down the path to my career as an herbalist and practitioner of TCM.

TCM uses a combination of acupuncture, herbs, and nutrition to heal patients both inside and out. I began my TCM journey by learning massage and acupuncture before attending medical school at the Emperor’s College of Traditional Oriental Medicine in Santa Monica, California, which teaches a mix of Western and Chinese medicine. Today I have my own private practice as a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist in California. Many of the principles I employ date back thousands of years; others are more recent techniques created by the people who taught me. I’ve also created a few techniques of my own, which I’ve developed both by treating patients and by doing my own research.

Since TCM is just beginning to become mainstream, and there are so many myths out there, I’d like to start with some background to lay the foundation for the theories I will be discussing throughout this book. TCM is a diverse, ancient healing art dating back at least five thousand years. In the late 1990s, a five-thousand-year-old mummy was discovered in the Italian Alps with tattoos of acupuncture points on his body. This discovery suggests that TCM was far-reaching and had been in use long before Marco Polo went to Asia in the late thirteenth century.

The first known written text on Chinese medicine is The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, which dates from approximately 2,500 years ago, around 500 BC. Along with explaining herbs and acupuncture points, this book also discusses philosophy, ecology, astronomy, mathematics, anthropology, and meteorology. It’s considered the ultimate manual on how to live life. Most of what is taught and practiced in Chinese medicine today comes from this source, and many of TCM’s masters have studied it. Of course, there have been countless books written over the centuries from which to study as well.

TCM originally started when people realized there was a direct link between nature’s cycles and the human body’s rhythms and cycles. Thousands of years ago people used to take the time to just sit, observe what was going on around them, and contemplate life. There were no smartphones, tablets, video games, or other distractions to keep people from fully experiencing their world. This contemplation led to the development of all the healing modalities practitioners of Chinese medicine use to this day.

Unlike Western medicine, Chinese medicine treats not only the symptoms but also the root cause of any illness or discomfort. This is why it is so effective. If you just treat the symptoms and ignore why you’re having a problem, the problem will just keep coming back, or it will manifest in other ways. Sleeping pills are a perfect example. They don’t fix insomnia; if you take a pill because you have a hard time falling or staying asleep, the cause will still be there the next night. Sleeping pills don’t help you get a really good night’s sleep; they just knock you out—plus, the next day most people feel in a sort of hangover. Many become so used to having brain fog and drinking caffeine to force themselves awake that they don’t even realize the sleeping pills are the cause of their fatigue and fuzzy head every morning. In addition to not providing the desired result of being truly rested, this course of action doesn’t necessarily relieve the underlying stress, which may manifest in many other ways, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, headaches, and more.

TCM looks at why a person has insomnia and how to heal that. That’s one of the main reasons I chose to study Chinese medicine in the first place. Why not get to the root of the issue and be rid of the illness once and for all? Is it too much caffeine? Side effects from medication? Hormonal imbalances? High stress levels? Food allergies? TCM practitioners treat the cause instead of prescribing pills to mask the symptoms. Ultimately, the goal is to prevent the sleepless nights from coming back, but balancing your hormones or reducing your stress levels will improve your overall health, not just your sleep. Of course, Western medicine has its benefits when it comes to emergencies, surgery, and broken bones, but, unfortunately, there’s not much emphasis on prevention or getting to the cause of an illness. As nutrition, holistic medicine, and TCM become more popular, medical schools are getting on board. Half of all medical schools—including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA—are now teaching classes on alternative medicine, showing that the medical establishment has grown to accept the value of holistic approaches.

TCM also stems from the idea that our emotions and physical body are inextricably linked. According to TCM, there are five emotions (anger, heartache, sadness, fear, and worry) that lead to physical ailments when suppressed. Simply put, when you keep these feelings inside, your body will become sick on the outside. But TCM goes a step further, linking each emotion to an organ of the body and showing how, by eating specific foods (and avoiding others), you can resolve emotional wounds and their physical manifestations.

If you are new to Eastern medicine and/or TCM, this may sound far-fetched. But I’ve seen, time and time again, that when emotions aren’t dealt with in a healthy manner, they can have negative consequences on the physical body. Nearly all the patients who have visited my clinic have been able to trace their physical symptoms to emotional issues and improper eating habits. And regardless of whether they were emotionally ready for change or not, every single one has had results.

Healing can occur through counseling and therapy, meditation and prayer, or acupuncture and herbal supplements, but for all these avenues, the right foods can also help get you on the road to recovery. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve had patients who were heartbroken, angry, and sick at our first visit become happy, satisfied, and healthy by our last, simply by changing their diet.

How You Handle Stress

Everyone has some form of stress in their lives; it’s part of being human. It’s how you handle that stress that is important. TCM can help you manage your stress and become a more carefree, happy-go-lucky person.

Start by thinking about how you feel on a daily basis. Do your moods fluctuate throughout the day? Would you consider yourself a calm, even-keeled person? Or are you more of a worrywart or a rageaholic?

Do any of the following statements sound familiar?

Does one of these statements hit you at your core? If so, it may be what I call your emotional theme. Most people have a theme to their emotional state. Still not sure? Then keep reading. This book should give you some insights as to what your emotional theme is. I’ve included several anecdotes and detailed stories about some of my patients to help you figure it out. Reading other people’s experiences will help you relate your own.

As you go through this book, you’ll see why I consider finding your theme essential for a proper Chinese medicine diagnosis, treatment, and dietary suggestions. If a patient doesn’t seem open to sharing, I don’t press. But nearly everyone gives me at least some hints about their emotions without even realizing it. They’ll mention how they handled a stressful situation at work, how mad they are at their spouse, or how they’ve been sleeping. Even these simple clues give me the answers I’m looking for. If there’s a link to their symptoms, I can deduce what their emotional theme is as well.

“Negative” emotions can be an everyday occurrence. (I put the word negative in quotes because I encourage people not to view any emotion as negative, wrong, or bad. All of them are OK. Feeling is part of being alive.) Just the experience of driving to work every morning can bring a whole host of feelings. Have you heard the term road rage before? Ever experienced it? Well, come to L.A., where I live, and drive on the freeway at 5:30 on a Friday evening. You’ll develop a very deep understanding of the concept.

As a society, we’re taught not to really feel or express our emotions. Be tougher. Boys don’t cry. Don’t be so sensitive. Being angry is bad. You shouldn’t be afraid. Take a pill for that. If you’re still sad, something’s wrong with you. These are all messages we learned from family or friends, school, or movies and TV.

Of course, sometimes we’re in a social or work situation where it would be pretty awkward to cry or yell. Whatever those feelings are, they need to come out at some point. Processing them later on doesn’t usually happen. Ever wonder why you have an emotional outburst for seemingly no reason? It may be from all the times you didn’t let off steam.

By not expressing ourselves fully or completely ignoring emotional discomfort, we can make ourselves sick. This has become an epidemic in Western culture. Stuffing feelings down with cigarettes, shopping, sugar, liquor, sex, caffeine, drugs (legal or illegal), or food is not the ideal way to cope. But, unfortunately, with the amount of pressure most of us are under, this has become the norm. Stuffing our faces with cake and ice cream, racking up credit card debt on things we don’t need, or binging on booze every weekend gives us a quick fix. But none of these takes away the underlying anxiety or pain.

Sometimes suppressing a memory or feeling is the only way a person can handle a situation. For example, abuse victims often do this as a survival tool. The only way many abused children can handle their horrible experiences is to block them out completely. Most abuse survivors forget at least some of their traumatic experiences just to be able to function in everyday life. It’s a coping mechanism that may last for their entire lives.

Your emotions may not be as intense as those of survivors of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, but if you learn to cope by blocking out or suppressing experiences, the damage can last a lifetime. Whether we come from healthy, functional homes or not, we learn how to deal with and express our feelings by watching our parents and siblings. As adults we carry these learned behaviors with us, at least to some extent. When we are uncomfortable or can’t handle an experience or emotion, we consciously or subconsciously don’t allow ourselves to feel it.

Even Western medicine is catching up: Several studies have shown a link between suppressing emotion and disease, as well as shown how expressing negative emotions and releasing tension can lead to physical healing—basically, what I practice in a nutshell. This book will give you tools to process the old emotional garbage through simply modifying your eating habits.

You might have been given some great nutritional advice in the past. Your cholesterol levels and your weight may have dropped. But maybe some of your health concerns just won’t go away. Or that last ten pounds you need to lose refuses to come off. Those sinus headaches keep coming back. Maybe your health issues haven’t been alleviated or even diagnosed with Western medicine. The frustration alone can make you sicker. Why? Holding on to anger or fear can contribute to physical issues. I’m not saying you’re at fault, but if you haven’t dealt with past hurts and let them go, they will eventually make you sick. Choosing the right foods to support your healing process is also key.

My goal with my patients, and this book, is to show you how to use the ancient practice of TCM to heal your body from the inside out. It’s very empowering to be in charge of your own healing, to finally understand what’s going on with your moods and your body and, most importantly, know how to fix it. I will give you the information you need to have the same healing experience my patients have enjoyed, from the basics of TCM to learning which foods you should incorporate into your diet or avoid.

Fix Your Mood with Food has four sections. Part I expands on the information I’ve given in this introduction to explain the fundamentals of TCM. Part II addresses each of the five emotions, their related organs, and foods that can improve them. I’ll give you the tools you need to work on your unique individual issues, as well as heal occasional imbalances in your emotional and physical well-being. Don’t worry; this isn’t a diet book. I’m not going to tell you to only eat kale and wheatgrass—though those are wonderfully healthy foods to put on your grocery list. But I will show how decadent foods like coconut whipped cream and creamy broccoli soup can be equally as nourishing. After all, healthy doesn’t have to be boring or bland; it can be nutritious and delicious.

I’ll also share case studies that illuminate the emotional and physical connection. Though the names and a few minor details have been changed, each case study is the profile of a real person who came to me for help. These experiences were life changing for each and every patient I’ve profiled, and I hope they will inspire you. Part III includes some Western-based nutritional advice that you can use in conjunction with the more holistic Eastern perspective on food given in Part II. This is where I will share some broad ideas about what constitutes a healthy diet and provide specific guidance on what heals and hurts your body. Part IV sums up the information and leads into the Food, Glorious Food section, which lists a wide variety of healthy food choices.

In the end, I hope this book will help you discover, as I have, how Traditional Chinese Medicine—with a little Western medicine thrown in—can empower you to fix a wide variety of emotional and physical ailments simply through the food you eat.