American Thanksgiving is coming up, and you know what that means: food stagnation!
Let's talk a little bit about what to do when you eat too much...
Too Much Turkey...
Food Stagnation (食滞 shí zhì) is a condition that arises when the Spleen and Stomach cannot handle the amount of food eaten or the kind of food ingested.
Basically, you ate too much and the food got stuck.
(My Chinese teacher would always use Lunar New Year as an example for Food Stagnation. This is a time of year when Chinese people would eat too many dumplings. But in America, I think Thanksgiving dinner is a perfect example of food stagnation.)
This can lead to symptoms like fullness and distention of the abdomen (like you need to loosen your belt), belching, acid regurgitation, nausea and vomiting (just the sight of more pie makes you sick), or abnormal stool (constipation or diarrhea).
Luckily we have herbs for that!
We have an entire category of Herbs that Relieve Food Stagnation, but the most convenient one is probably Shan Zha (hawthorn berry).
Shan Zha is easy to find at an Asian grocery store, and it's pretty easy to just boil into a tea.
If you want to stock up on an herbal formula, consider Bao He Wan (preserve harmony pill). This contains pretty much all of the herbs from the Food Stagnation category, then adds in Er Chen Tang to deal with nausea.
But another option is to add it into your cooking! Mayway has a recipe for Cranberry and Hawthorn Sauce.
(They also have a recipe for Apple Goji Berry Pie if you need to tonify yin and blood this time of year.)
For acupuncture, think about points like REN-12, REN-10, ST-25, REN-6, and ST-36.
Also remember that Inner-Neiting is an empirical point for food stagnation (opposite ST-44).
Hope you have a great thanksgiving!
