Healthy diets based on Yin and Yang

More and more healthy diets are constantly popping up. But which one should you choose?

Today we’re suggesting a very special detox diet based on an age-old principle of traditional Chinese medicine: a diet based on Yin and Yang.

What is the Yin and Yang diet?

In traditional Chinese medicine, food is an essential tool to boost our health. So foods are thought of as medicines, and there are yin foods and yang foods.

All foods have different benefits that work together to nourish our mind, body, and spirit.

But it is also true that some foods do more to promote imbalance in our body, which ultimately manifests in the form of disease.

A diet based on yin foods and yang foods seeks to select foods based on their energy in order to cure people or prevent them from contracting diseases.

Fundamentals of the Yin and Yang diet

In traditional Chinese medicine, whether or not a food is beneficial is based on your body’s response to it. That is why the quality of the food is more important than the quantity, unlike how we tend to think in the Western world.

In Eastern cultures, and especially in Chinese culture, foods are described based on characteristics such as flavor, temperature and their effect on us.

In this culture, everything in the universe is governed by the complementation and interaction of opposing energies, or in other words, the Yin and the Yang. And these forces are of course also present in the food we eat.

Yang foods are dense, heavy or hot, with high sodium content. And Yin foods are contracting, light and cold, and rich in potassium.

This classification refers to what is physiologically known as the “sodium-potassium pump,” a cellular mechanism that uses these two minerals to regulate cell function and thus our blood pressure, neurological functioning, etc.

If we find a balance between these two elements we can live a less toxic and stressed life with the detox diet.

What do you eat?

The diet is based on whole grains, lots of vegetables and legumes, seaweed and soups. It is important to always choose seasonal foods, as they not only taste better but also have a higher content of beneficial nutrients.

You should avoid or reduce ultraprocessed and excessively Yang foods like red meat, eggs, sugar and dairy, to name a few.

When doing this diet, always remember to find a balance between the two types of foods, never overdoing it with either of them.

At SHA Wellness Clinic, we recommend the SHA Essence wellness program, which gives you the opportunity to discover a healthy lifestyle.