2009-03-09 13:10:35
Do you drink ice water... or have drinks straight out of the fridge?
There's a saying in Chinese medicine that goes: "Above all else, protect your digestion." By "digestion", they mean processing of both FOOD and FLUID.
Think about this...
If you aren't processing foods properly, you aren't turning food into BLOOD and ENERGY ("Qi," as the Chinese call it) for your organs to function properly - so your organs are literally "fatigued" and can't perform their jobs well.
Your heart can't function. Your lungs can't function. Your kidneys, bladder, liver, gall bladder, stomach and intestines are all "fatigued" and can't do their job.
And, your immune system doesn't have the energy to protect you from cancer, colds, flu, radiation, etc.
And that's just the problems with not processing foods. If you're not processing fluids properly...
...fluid collects in your tissues (Chinese medicine calls this condition "Dampness".)
This fluid ultimately congeals, and becomes a condition called "Phlegm" (this includes, but is not the same as, having phlegm or mucus.)
This "Phlegm" leads to obesity, depression, urinary infections, dementia, seizures, cysts and tumors, sinus headaches, allergies, all breathing problems like sinusitis, asthma, COPD, and a host of other problems.
Furthermore... the processing of food and fluids includes elimination... so you will have problems with constipation, diarrhea and urination.
If you look through my website you'll see that
all the diseases listed there have improper eating as one of the main causes of that condition.
In some cases, the problems come directly from the food itself. But, in most cases, the problem comes from how the food negatively affects your digestion, with the weakened digestion then leading to the disease condition.
So, how do cold drinks damage your ability to process food and fluids?
Here's a simple analogy...
When you put water on the stove, it moves faster... there's more activity.
When you put water in the freezer, it slows down (freezes)... there's less activity.
Cold decreases activity. Heat increases activity.
Chinese medicine describes the act of digestion as a warm process. Energy (and life itself) is warm. When we are dead, we're stone cold dead...
It has been shown through thousands of years of observation in China that, if we drink chilled or cold liquids, we decrease our digestive activity.
We hurt this warm process of digestion (cold negates heat).
FIRST OF ALL, this causes food and liquid to be digested poorly. Similar to when your car can't completely combust fuel, food isn't digested properly and you're left with a "sludge" (which, in Chinese Medicine, is called "Stagnant food" and/or "Phlegm".)
That "sludge" is often the root cause of problems such as a weak immune system, weight gain, fatigue, cysts, allergies, sinusitis and certain types of headaches.
SECONDLY, warming up the cold fluids consumes energy (heat), leaving you with a net loss of energy.
THIRD, your weakened digestion now can't produce good quality energy from the food you eat, leaving you with less energy for your organs to function properly...
...do you get the picture? You can (and will) end up with nearly every disease imaginable.
What to do about this?
You might be lucky enough to have strong digestion and not feel too affected by cold drinks. Consider yourself blessed. But, if you're already in a somewhat weakened state...
...drinking COLD drinks might be one of the "straw's" that breaks the camels back. Here's my advice:
If you have ice water with your meals, stop.
If you drink your drinks cold from the refrigerator, stop.
Drink no more than a teacup of room temperature or warm water (or green tea) with your meals.
If you eat at restaurants, tell the waiter "No ice, please!"
One the biggest offenders is the ice water you get out at the restaurant. Just before eating a big meal, you put out your "digestive fire" (read that as DAMAGE your digestion) with that freezing cold water. Big mistake!
Iced drinks really aren't good for anybody. Nature didn't intend for us to frequently drink cold or frozen liquids. Refrigerators and freezers are extremely recent in terms of the history of human diet.
Not to mention, there's just not a lot of refrigerators out there in nature!