Keep Your Heart Strong and Healthy with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by: Melissa Sokulski
Tags: Chinese medicine, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Traditional Chinese Medicine offers ways to keep the Heart healthy and strong, even when a person does not have typical symptoms of heart disease.

Heart health is fundamental to whole body health. Many people have a family history of heart disease, high cholesterol and/or high blood pressure. The standard American diet contributes to high rates of heart disease in this country. Some people have symptoms correlating to heart conditions: heart palpitations, heart pain, shortness of breath, and fatigue after light exertion. Hypothyroid conditions can also put us at risk for heart disease.

Yet many people do not know if they have heart weakness. With Chinese Medicine, one does not need to already have symptoms of heart disease for heart weakness to be detected and corrected.

Historically physicians in China were paid to keep people well; when people became sick it meant the physicians did not do their jobs.

Practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine consider all symptoms: sometimes even insomnia or anxiety can be indicative of a weakness of heart energy. They also look at the tongue (the heart reflects at the tip, and the color of the tongue indicates the state of the blood in the body), and feel the pulse (the first position on the left side reflects heart energy). When a weakness is felt in any meridian, needles are placed to help the body balance the energy and correct the weakness.

There are also powerful Chinese herbal formulas which can help the energy and blood of the heart meridian and whole body. A trained acupuncturist or herbalist can help choose the correct formula.

Some common formulas to build heart energy are:

• Si Wu Wan: to boost the body's blood
  
• Ba Zhen Tang: to help the whole body's qi(energy) and blood
  
• Gui Pi Tang, when the energy and blood of the Heart and Spleen are affected
  
• An Mian Tang: when the Heart weakness shows up as insomnia
  

Other remedies can also help the heart. Hawthorne Tea and CoQ10 are two important supplements to take.

Leafy green vegetables also play an important role in heart health. Chlorophyll, found in dark green leafy vegetables (the pigment which gives plants their green color), is excellent to build our blood. The molecule of chlorophyll is almost identical to a molecule of hemoglobin; except, instead of iron at its center, chlorophyll has Magnesium, which is highly beneficial to the heart. Swiss chard, collard greens, and kale are high in chlorophyll, as are wild edibles such as dandelion greens and lambs quarters.

Ways to get more greens into your diet include:

• Salads
  
• Green Smoothies
  
• Green Juices
  
• Blended Salads or Energy Soups
  

Recipe for Green Juice:

Feed the following vegetables and fruits through a juicer for a delicious, green, heart-healthy juice:

• 3 stalks celery
  
• 1 small cucumber
  
• 1 handful parsley
  
• 1 large apple
  
• 1/4 organic lemon, with peel
  

References:

Bensky, Dan and Barolet, Randall. Chinese Herbal Medicine, Formulas and Strategies. Eastland Press, Inc. Seattle, WA. 1990.

Balch, Phyllis. Prescription for Nutritional Healing, Fourth Edition.Avery Trade. 2006.

Maciocia, Giovanni. The Foundations of Chinese Medicine. Churchill Livingstone, 1997.

Murray, Michael. Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements. Prima Publishing. Rocklin, Ca. 1996.

About the author

Melissa Sokulski is an acupuncturist, herbalist, and founder of the website Food Under Foot, a website devoted entirely to wild edible plants. The website offers plant descriptions, photographs, videos, recipes and more. Her new workbook, Wild Plant Ally, offers an exciting, hands-on way to learn about wild edible plants.
Melissa also runs The Birch Center for Health in Pittsburgh, PA, providing the best in complementary health care: acupuncture, therapeutic massage and herbal medicine.