Eating for a healthy Gut in Chinese medicine: Spleen Qi 101 | The House of Acupuncture (2024)

In this article we look at what the spleen is in Chinese medicine, and 5 great ways to promote the health of your digestion according to Chinse medical wisdom.

1. The Food choices
2. The way we eat
3. The way we cook
4. Other lifestyle choices
5. Noticing our habits

In Chinese medicine our gut health relates directly to the Spleen. It is the central aspect of the digestive process and in many ways the central aspect of our overall health and wellbeing. There was a school of thought in Chinese medicine saying when the Spleen is healthy then all other diseases are kept away.

As well as governing digestion the Spleen and builds nutrition for the body in the form of Blood and energy.

In biomedicine, the Spleen might be understood as relating to organs such as the stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, and pancreas.

Some biomedical body functions comparable to the Spleen function include gut hormons and enzyme production (eg insulin, ghrelin, gastric acids) and microbiome health. In health, the Spleen is thought to prevent such conditions such as leaky gut, SIBO, Irritable bowel, gastritis, inflammatory bowel, etc.

General Spleen related symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, chronic tiredness, poor appetite or strong appetite, weight gain, sweet cravings, abdominal bloating, soft bowel movements or constipation. Some health concerns that are explained under a “Spleen qi deficiency” Chinese medicine diagnosis Include anaemia, Irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, functional dyspepsia, Crohn’s disease, reflux or GERD, adrenal fatigue, fibromyalgia, amenorrhea, chronic fatigue and weight management, haemorrhoids, prolapses, and even varicose veins!

Because the Spleen is involved with making Blood, women tend to be more susceptible to developing Spleen energy deficiencies. Each month, during menstruation there is blood loss, causing the Spleen to work harder to substitute the deficiency. Because of this, women are often seen in clinic for diseases of digestion (bloating and difficulty tolerating foods, etc). Because the menstrual cycle and women’s hormones are directly related to Spleen Blood quality and nourishment, working with the Spleen through diet can strongly support women’s health concerns such as menstrual cycle complaints, PMS, period pain, endometriosis, and PCOS.

For the athlete, the spleen is directly related to the bulk and quality of muscle tissue. Ensuring healthy Spleen energy through diet and acupuncture can assist in muscle health as observed by Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

Spleen function is especially affected (both positively and negatively) by diet. Diet can be a great healing tool for Spleen energy disorders.

To support the Spleen, increase…

• Choosing the correct type of foods to eat to keep the Spleen “warm” (for the Spleen warm is health-promoting).
• Use a rice cooker and learn to use rice as a staple. Rice is a low inflammatory food for the gut, white rice is better than brown if your gut function is not strong. Make your own sticky rice balls for lunch.

Root veggies are also very supportive,
they can be roasted off and used as a side to lots of dishes and kept in the fridge for snacks if made into a roast veggie salad with goat’s feta, sundried tomatoes, and warming spices like cinnamon, black pepper and oil and vinegar. Baked potatoes are also great for the same reasons.

• Add spices to your meals, spices warm the digestion/spleen and make a lot of difficult to digest foods easier on the gut. Traditionally all cultures used the aid of spices in cooking for health and digestibility of food. Good Spleen supporting spices include – turmeric, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, chili, paprika, basil, oregano, star anise, cumin, coriander, mixed spice, clove, mustard, sage, nutmeg, fennel, dill, etc. If you tend to run hot (you can chat to your Chinese medicine practitioners about the symptoms of body Heat) or find tolerating spicy food difficult, trust this and only take the spices that are milder from the list to add to meals as digestive aids.
• Adding ginger to black tea, or making homemade turmeric latte or spiced chai can also get spices into the body warm the gut outside of mealtime. Ginger tea, fennel seed tea and honey, and liquorice tea are all great for the Spleen Qi.
• “Superfoods” are just foods. Don’t feel you need to pay a lot of money for superfoods to be healthy. Simple (bland), cooked food, consisting mostly of veggies and grain with some meat, eaten regularly creates immeasurable health for the Spleen.

Here are some specific foods that especially support the spleen and can be increased alongside your general diet.

Carrot, pumpkin, squash, almond, beef, cherry, chicken, chickpea, coconut, date, eel, egg, fig, ginseng, grapes, ham, lentils, liquorice, mackerel, microalgae, millet, buckwheat, oats, millet, potato, quinoa, rice, sage, sardine, sweet potato, shiitake mushroom, tempeh, trout, venison, yam, turkey, leek, onion, pine nut, shrimp, cabbage, fennel, bone broths especially chicken, lamb, sesame seeds, walnuts, raw honey.

Decrease…

• Cut out the main spleen damaging foods (See the guide on damp heat foods). Mainly Bread, pasta, milk, cheese, sugary foods, ice cream, greasy/fatty foods, processed food, alcohol and smoothies. (as a side – for people that can tolerate it, traditionally fermented sourdough is much more easily digestible and can be ok in moderation (great on Sunday morning!) and goat’s milk and cheese have more warming energetics and are also okay as cow product substitute. An easy substitute for pasta is thick rice noodles (the type used for Pad Thai) with pasta sauce and being rice they are the most supportive grain for the Spleen.

Avoid green tea, iced drinks, beer, fermented drinks such as kefir and sour-milk products.

• Don’t eat too much fruit. Fruit is best eaten in the season it is falling from the tree. And a little on either side of this. Fruit is cooling for the digestion hence eating too much gives the symptoms of a weak spleen as diarrhea. Berries are okay. Dried dates and raisins are ok also in moderation. The citrus and melons are the most cooling and bananas are the “dampest” forming (hardest on digestion)
• If you notice that you eat something that causes fatigue, mucous to form in your throat or your nose to run, that causes even the mildest bloat or stuck sensation in your stomach or causes loose bowel motions. That is your body’s way of letting you know that your gut is struggling with it. It is not a small symptom, it is a very loud indicator from your body to avoid that food or drink in the future.

• Eat regular meals. If intermittent fasting is your thing, it is better to fast (stop eating) during the afternoon (the time of day when the digestion is most at risk of damage by food) and start eating again in the morning, when the Spleen is the strongest.
• For people not fasting, eating more food toward the beginning of the day than at the end can improve spleen function for the same reasons. while completely avoiding eating after 6-7 pm is ideal.
• Eating in a relaxed environment and making some time after eating to stay in ‘rest and digest’ to adequately support the digestion (15 mins).
• Eating food slowly and chewing well. The saying here is to “Eat your drinks and drink your food”. In addition, bringing mindfulness to eating promotes satiation, digestive stimulation, and promotes total pleasure in eating!
• Eat to 80%, that is stop eating just before you start to feel noticeably full. And if you can’t do this, definitely try and not eat after you feel full.
• Avoid drinking large amounts of water with the meal and avoiding drinking chilled or cold drinks in general.

• Cooking food is very important in chinese medicine for promoting health within the Spleen. Avoid raw foods (for people with weak digestion this is all year round, for people with stronger digestion, raw foods are tolerated mostly in the hot months of summer).
• Regular cooking of slow cooks, soups, or broths.
• Increasing steaming/boiling, light stir-frying, and baking in winter, while avoiding deep frying or shallow frying.

• The Spleen can be negatively affected by prolonged study or intense thinking such as worry or anxiety, while meditation and deep relaxation, qi gong, tai qi and yoga are useful to improve spleen function.
• Taking regular light exercise, acupuncture/moxibustion and abdominal cupping in the clinic, and at home, abdominal self-massage.
• Saying grace or cultivating gratitude for the food you eat (this may seem outdated, but engaging joy and gratitude while eating is a method of nourishment and self-love and vegas nerve support, it has its roots in the joy of living, and feeds into the basic aspects living well; gratitude is good for health for many reasons). Eating with others where possible is another heart-cultivating Spleen supporting lifestyle method.
• Take a good quality probiotic. Drop into a health store or quality pharmacy and talk to a naturopath about which one is best for you.

• Avoid grocery shopping when hungry. This is the time we have the most control over what we eat because it’s the time we choose what’s available to us later on at home when we feel hungry. If you have trouble making time to shop properly, look into your priorities or use online shopping.
• Learn 3-5 recipes that you can cook well (that you actually like eating), that support your spleen. Then when you are in a rush or have little time and energy you have good go-to’s.
• Identify what meals you have trouble with. Whatever that meal or snack time is, give some careful consideration to how you might deal with the problem.

If it’s a poor appetite at breakfast you can take a walk around the block before eating to increase cortisol and drop blood sugars so that your appetite improves, or eat the evening meal, the day before, much earlier so you wake with some hunger.

At lunch, if you know you’re going to grab on the go and go for any old thing, research five food places that offer healthy Spleen supportive options (again, that you actually like!) to drop into or order from.

For dinner, If you are busy or too tired in the evening to cook, get handy with slow cooks and soups. They are easy to prepare and extremely supportive to the Spleen; all the goodness Is readily available with very little strain on the digestion. Also, these meals generally are made with a lot of veggies, which we know are the most supportive foods for a healthy micro-biome. You may also like to meal prep on the weekend.

• Ensure you eat enough to see you through! Calories-in vs. calories-out is a somewhat outdated understanding of weight management. We now understand gut hormones and enzymes, women’s hormones, microbiome health, inflammation, stress hormones, and blood sugar levels, sleep quality, and nutrient levels are involved in weight management. Don’t bother starving yourself, this will not support your health or hormonal regulation.

It has been found that if you eat breakfast you can eat more calories during the day and weigh less than someone who skips breakfast and eats fewer calories during the day.

Chinese medicine acupuncture has a great deal to offer in support of conditions pertaining to digestion and also to the health concerns that digestive issues have their reach over.

For more information on Chinese dietary wisdom take a look at this great website​and make an appointment today to get on track to support your health using acupuncture treatments for the Spleen.

References

Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine, Vol. 2. MacLean & Lyttleton. University of Western Sydney: Australia. 2002.

Helping ourselves. Daverick Leggett. Meridian Press:1994

Please remember that this is not a substitute for medical advice and that a correct diagnosis is required for Chinese medicine food dietetics to be therapeutically applied.