Flu Shot or Not to Flu Shot
To get a flu shot, or not to get a flu shot . . . this is indeed a loaded question. We live more and more in fear of disease and viruses.
In the end, it is a personal choice, and I do hope that the government or the general state of health lets it be a personal choice.
There have been, in my opinion, some very troubling questions and associations between neurological disorders (Guillain Barre Syndrome) and vaccines. It does not help that vaccine pharmaceutical companies are seeking to be exempt from lawsuits. What do we know at this point about the effects of vaccines year after year? We do know that, very often, the flu strains change so that the vaccines might not be effective. I remember the dismay of my mother a couple of years ago when she got the flu instead of her flu shot.
On the other hand, people have such weakened immune systems and some viruses are so aggressive (like the Avian Flu) that it is easy to understand the fear, especially among elderly people, for those living or working in confined spaces like schools, prisons or nursing homes, and their desire to get some protection.
However, no matter what our choice is, wouldn't it make sense to first find out why our systems are so weakened, why there is more and more resistance to antibiotics and new strains of viruses appearing? The danger with repeated vaccinations is that our immune systems get weaker and weaker and that we might get even more exposed to a different type of virus. Vaccination is not a guarantee that we will not get sick. Already, there are many questions about the side effects of vaccines, and, as time goes on, we might discover, like we often do ten years or twenty years later, that the road taken is not a safe one. So, no matter what our choice, we do need, individually and collectively, to strengthen our immune system, and that is where Chinese medicine comes in.
The Effect of Fall on Lung and Colon Energy
In Chinese medicine, the Fall season, with its shimmering leaves of yellow, red, and gold, is associated with Lung and Colon energy. As you can see, the words Lung and Colon are capitalized because the understanding of organs in Chinese medicine is different from the understanding of organ in Western medicine. Lung in Chinese medicine, for example, includes the skin, nose, tonsils, sinus, as well as the white blood cells, and the protective functions of the Lung, which overlaps with the Western concept of immune system. The association between a specific organ system and a season means that there is an intrinsic affinity between the two. For example, when we use the word Fall for Autumn, we unconsciously express the awareness that Autumn is a descending energy. When we inhale, there is the same descending energy in our intake of air and oxygen. The out breath is more the release of CO2, which we do not need. By the same token, our colon also absorbs nutrients during the descending movement of the peristalsis. From the nose and mouth to the anus, there is literally a descending movement.
How We Get Runny Noses
During the season that is associated with organs, systems are both recharged and more fragile. The recharging of our lungs lies in the expelling of any excess mucus with the colder and contracting energy, so we might notice the runny nose when we get into the colder air. This is normal. However, at this time of year, our body will be fragilized if we take cold drinks and ice cream, for example. It is a time when we need to go with the flow of seasons and not hang on to the clothes, lifestyle, or foods of the summer.
Fall, a Time to Get in Touch with Our Grief
Emotionally, Chinese medicine links sadness and grief as the emotions linked to Fall. Sadness and grief share the descending energy of the Fall. They make our shoulders slump, and they sometimes feel heavy to bear. Some of it, just like the expelling of mucus is normal. We are entering the Yin time of the year, of reflection. The in-breath and out-breath of the lungs also play the rhythm of life and death. There is naturally in Autumn a sense of nostalgia, of getting reacquainted with darkness, the unconscious and the powerful emotions of loss, letting go, and death. It is no surprise that in many cultures, including ours, we find celebrations like Halloween or All Saints Day in the Catholic tradition. Halloween, for all its mundane commercialization has retained some of the themes of confronting the dark forces of the night in the guise of witches and ghosts. What can we do to support our lungs, colon, and Fall energy?
On the Physical Plane:
Switching to seasonal foods and letting go of the summery fruit and vegetables. The tailgate market is always a great way to keep in touch with what is seasonal in our area.
Strengthen our lungs with herbal treatments, acupuncture, and exercise that involves deep breathing. Chinese medicine offers wonderful tools to strengthen immunity and lungs with techniques such as moxa and cupping. In my practice, cupping is one of my favorite tools in this season. It is wonderfully relaxing, it releases deep toxins and mucus from tissues, stimulates circulation, and expels deep cold from muscles and the various aches and pains associated with it. It is great for lower back pain and neck pain, for example. I remember that, as a kid, my parents used this technique together with mustard plasters when we had the flu or cold. That was before the advent of antibiotics. To this day, it is one of my favorite and most effective methods to release a cold.
Include gentle herbal remedies to support the Lung such as chrysanthemum, astragalus and pearl barley tea to dissolve mucous and strengthen your Lung.
Let's get the scarves and warmer cloths ready. I noticed when living in China and Japan that people paid great attention to such details. They would gently move me away from a drafty window, playfully close the upper button of my sweater, giving me a scarf when the weather cooled down in the evening if I had forgotten to take one. It made me aware that people seemed to be more attuned to climate factors as a possible cause of disease and spontaneously took the necessary precautions to protect themselves. I sometimes cringe when some of my young (and not so young) patients come with wet hair on a cold morning or when my students sit in the classroom with wet clothes. I have learned to take Wind, Damp, and Cold seriously, not in an obsessive way, but with respect for their power and properties.
On the Emotional and Spiritual Plane:
The descending energy of lungs and large intestine makes it the great season to get organized and back to basics. It is a good time to let go of what is unnecessary to reflect on patterns that clog our lives and take steps to transform them.
The Fall is a good season to reconnect with our ancestors, offer prayers for them and their well being in the spirit world, asking for forgiveness and offering forgiveness for all the hurts and pain inflicted by or to our ancestors.
The nostalgia of the Fall also invites us to fully mourn and feel our grief in order to be able to transmute it. We often have unfinished business of grief and mourning. In our impatient modern world, we are often hurried into getting back to business after a funeral is over or after any trauma. A good illustration of this is the way our media quickly switch from one tragedy to another and how little follow-up there usually is after the initial sensational shock. What do we know about people from Chernobyl or Fukushima today? How much do we know about the trauma that war veterans carry with them? Just like the role of the Colon is to complete the descending movement and its discharge, we need to go fully through the process of grief and loss.
The Fall is also a time of beautiful colors and soft light. It illustrates the beauty, grace, and wisdom that come with aging and letting go. The Fall is therefore a great time to honor our elders, to listen to old stories and see the beauty that comes through hardship and time.
The Fall season invites us to quietness and introspection. It invites us to focus on our breath, to sit for meditation and prayer. Those practices tend to come naturally at this time of year, and it is good to go with the flow.
In summary, the Fall season is one that brings to the fore the excess mucus we carry in our body, nose and lungs as well as the excess auric mucus that clogs our emotional and spiritual body. On a physical level, it comes from foods such as excess dairy, sugar, meat, and foods without fiber that clog our lungs and colon. The beauty of the Chinese medicine tradition lies in the fact that body and mind are totally unified. When we work on cleansing the mucus of our body, we are also cleansing the mucus in our thoughts and emotions. Vice versa, when we cleanse our emotional body, honor our grief and generational traumas, we also strengthen our lungs.
Take a Stroll in Nature!
Reflect on nature, watching the trees and vegetation, inhaling the musty smells of fallen leaves in forests during our walks are all ways to connect with processes within our body. The Chinese medicine point of view also invites us to see that we are deeply interconnected with nature and developed a concept of a true ecology of the body well before the word ecology existed.
Brisk walks in the crisp autumn air are a great way to get our blood moving and get rid of excess. In the fall, we need to do what the trees are doing: get rid of what is unnecessary, take more time for rest and meditation, go inward and center our energy. Good warm soups, good light spices like ginger, and aromatic herbs to open our nose and help us breathe -- aromatherapy is great in the fall! nothing like peppermint essential oil to clear a foggy head!
There are many classes and events about health around town. There is a monthly macrobiotic potluck to help you discover and appreciate healthy food. There are also plenty of Chinese Medicine practitioners (I am one of them) and various modalities to guide you on the way to health, recommend healing foods and herbal remedies for your condition and immune system, clear those nagging sinus problems and allergies that indicate a compromised immune system.
Fall is a great time to study and deepen your knowledge of your own body.
The article below on Fall Colds was posted at Chef Didier's blog on October 20th. To see Chef Didier's earlier blog articles, please visit his blog site at Changing Seasons.
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Flu Shot or Not?
I never questioned my mother as to why I had to be vaccinated. There was this and that to prevent this and that; I did not look forward to them. Vaccines are a huge subject, and flu shots are among the latest kids on the block. The haunting question remains: do we really need them?
I still get colds every once in a while. I used to think, when I was younger and not so much into health, that having a cold was a sign of weakness, something to bury deep into my body and to never show up again, I mean never!!! . . . I was not going to let that cold put me down! And I pushed and pushed toward a long and slow recovery, exhausting my immune system.
I would get sick again, of course, going through the same process of not listening to the warnings. Eventually, going that road, you might consider a flu shot, as your body's resistance gets exhausted, or you might take some other drugs and cold medicines to do the same thing, bury the cold deep into your body to never resurface again. Don't we like to do that with all diseases, finding the miracle drug or the miracle cure?
Yet, while we are accustomed to take all kinds of drugs, we see that more and more people are dying of diseases, cancers, heart attacks, flu etc. . . . And we are becoming weaker, more dependent everyday on the new pills and vaccines that will solve all problems, so we do not have to change our ways!!
From birth, a lot of us are taught not to express our emotions, our feelings. We keep them inside well hidden, and every time they show up, we bury them a little deeper, looking at it as a sign of weakness, shame.
Later on, we continue doing the same thing, accumulating layers and layers of repressed feelings that will eventually define who we are. We treat sickness and disease the same way, burying and burying till they get us buried, never fully alive, never showing any sign of weakness.
We have learned through psychoanalysis that repressed feelings must come to the surface, be expressed fully before we can hope to live a normal happy life.
Energetically, Chinese Medicine has treated diseases using the clever method of yin and yang, contraction and expansion to understand diseases, and the flu is not an exception . . . Soooo! the question still remains, flu shots or not? Well, it all depends on you, what kind of health you wish to achieve (both mental and physical).
I have made my choice. I no longer regard a cold as a sign of weakness, but an opportunity to expand my awareness, clear my body of accumulated phlegm, recharge and hopefully learn a thing or two about my buried emotions; and I know that the flu shot is not the solution. I choose health over disease, expression over repression, liberty over dependence. . . .
Getting a Cold is Your Body's Way of Cleaning House
Getting a cold is nothing more than an expression of the body wanting to clear itself of accumulated toxins, mucus, and excesses of all kinds. If we are in tune with our body and have a good strong immune system, we will facilitate this process by helping the phlegm to move upward and out of the body.
From that perspective, resting is the first order of things, allowing the immune system to do its thing. Then we need to avoid foods that keep the energy down and stuck.
Healing a Cold with Diet
Our immune system is directly related to the quality of our blood, to the oxygenation of our lungs and, therefore, to our food and lifestyle. We need to strengthen our lung system, take care of our elimination so that toxins do not get trapped in our body.
The easy part is that the culprits, when it comes to disease, are always the same: dairy products (especially for lung), sugar, fried foods and meat that create fat, Damp conditions and excess mucous.
All junk food should be eliminated, while steps need to be taken to insure proper elimination. The lung and large intestine are related in an external/internal relationship, so insuring good daily bowel movements is a must. Herbal remedies and acupuncture are very helpful in that respect while transitioning to a healthier and fiber-rich diet.
So, for helping our body to heal from a cold, we need to avoid heavy foods like fried foods, grains or oils; drying foods like breads and crackers; mucus-forming foods like dairy or refined sugar; contracting foods like very salty ones; and cold foods, like salads and raw vegetables.
We need to favor foods that are light, moistening and get the energy moving upward, like miso soup (light on the miso!) with vegetable broth and scallions, steamed greens. We might even do a short fast to help the process with plenty of herbal tea. We need to eat light, using pungent vegetables like onions, scallions, daikons, ginger . . . all the ones that open your nose. Mustard plaster on the chest is an old folk remedy for cough.
Fall fruit like apples and pears are also good. Cook them whole or make a juice from cooking the fruit. The commercial juices are usually too concentrated and sugary, so if you use them, cut them with 1/2 water.
You might also help with simple medicine like kuzu drinks, ginger bath, and Chinese herbs to strengthen your immune system.
Fall Recipes to Strenthen Your Immune System
Simple Miso Soup to Help Energy Moving UP:
-1 cup diced daikon (and carrots, optional)
-2 cups of water
-1 tsp of wakame
-1 or 2 tsp of miso ( I like a combo of white and rice miso, but feel free to experiment with others)
*Place the veggies, wakame and water in a pot, bring to a boil and simmer 10- 15 mn or till the vegetables are tender.
*Use some of the hot broth to dissolve the miso. Add back into the pot (do not bring back to a boil to make sure you keep the enzymes alive).
Serve hot and sprinkle with some scallions.
* You can add some ginger to that, or strain the vegetables and just drink the broth . . .
Steamed or Poached Pears
Place a whole ripe pear (washed) in a pot of boiling water or in a steam basket over boiling water. Do not get the skin off (they should preferably be organic and local). Let them cook till they are soft, but not falling apart (10 to 15 minutes). Check with the tip of a knife - it should be tender to the touch. Let cool just enough so that it does not burn your tongue and enjoy!! It should be sweet, soft and soothing to the throat and inflamed lungs and bronchi.
24.06.2010. 15:00
