TCM Basics 101: Heaty and Cooling
What is Heaty and Cooling?
The term ‘Heaty’ and ‘Cooling’ are Traditional Chinese Medicine terminologies that are used to describe the temperature of the entity, be it a body, food, fruit, herb, vegetable, meat, grain, tea and many others.
‘Heaty’ relates to ‘Yang’ while ‘cooling’ relates to ‘yin’ in a body.
Yang relates to the active and positive principle in nature while Yin relates to the passive, quiet and negative principle in nature.
As I have mentioned in the previous blog post on “What is Heatiness?”, heatiness is when the body is in a state of excessive heat. This is in reference to the human body.
When the terms ‘heaty’ and ‘cooling’ refer to food, heaty food means the food is able to bring heat to the body which can aid in increasing circulation, metabolism and expels coldness. However over consumption of heaty food can result in the actual heat increase in body, hence the body is referred to as having heatiness and can display presentations such as fever, sore throat, acne and ulcers.
On the other hand, ‘cooling’ foods reduce heat in the body. In other words, they can help with clearing inflammation and toxins. However, giving the body too much cooling food can cause circulation to stagnate and give rise to stiff muscles, cold limbs, fatigues.
Is Heaty or Cooling better?
Neither is good. Too much or too little of either is undesirable. It is all about balance between the Yang (heaty) and Yin (cooling) energies.
Read more about Why TCM doctors always advise against cold here.
Which kind of food should I eat more?
It depends on your body constitution. All of us are born with a body type that is either inclined towards the Yang side/Heaty type or the Yin side/Cooling type. It is therefore advisable to seek out a professional Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor to identify for you which kind of body constitution you possess.
Based on your body constitution, you can then opt for foods that are the opposite of your body constitution to strike a balance in your health. For example if you have a Yang/heaty type body constitution, you should opt to take more Yin or cooling foods. If you have a Yin/cooling type body constitution, you should opt to take more Yang or warming foods.
In the upcoming blog post series, we will identify which foods are heaty and cooling based on their different food type categories.
Further Reading:
Everything you need to know about Dampness
Weight Gain from Digestion Induced Dampness
Holistic Treatments for High Functioning Anxiety
The Grass is Not Always Greener on the Other Side
Everything you need to know about Acupuncture
Testimonial for Sleep Improvement
Facial Acupuncture - How to differentiate the real deal from the fakers