"A Healthy Kidney Diet Also Promotes Adrenal Gland Health"

The Winter is Kidney time. So a healthy kidney diet must reflect the conditions of the season. Winter is a time for quiet reflection, introspection, for heightened receptiveness. Like the deciduous trees that shade their leaves, winter is not really a time of death, just storage and replenishment. From a diet perspective then, you need to acclimate the body for colder temperatures and conditions.

The Kidneys in Chinese medicine, represent the ROOTS of the body because the Kidney-Adrenals are the source of Yin and Yang energy in the body. You're born with Yin and Yang from your body, but you have to keep replenishing it with a healthy food, including a healthy Kidney diet along with the other diets I've included in Eating Healthy. You just have to balance the different sets, but pay attention to cooking methods and the cooling effects of other foods, for instance, from the Heart section.

For example, instead of eating a raw salad everyday, it would be a better idea to select other bitter deep greens that you add to the soups and stews of winter. This is what I mean by balance. This is what I do, too.

A person with healthy, vital Kidneys is active and calm, courageous and gentle, and has good will power to accomplish a lot without too much stress. The emotions that affect the Kidneys are fear, worry, shame, and guilt. Holding on to these emotions creates havoc in the urinary system, such as urinary infections and incontinence.

A healthy Kidney diet includes foods that calm and nourish the Kidney System:

• Micro algae
• Fish
• Minimal amounts of organic animal parts including the liver, brain, and bone marrow. Best, if organic.
• Barley or wheat grass
• Dark foods with a salty taste including seaweed, millet, wheat, black sesame seeds, black soybeans, black beans, chestnuts, mulberries, raspberries, strawberries, walnuts.

If you feel too much heat in the body, then add tofu, string bean, kudzu root, watermelon and other melons, blackberry, blueberry, potato, spirulina, chlorella, sardine, crab, clams, eggs, pork and cheese. Now, not a lot of pork. It’s only for therapeutic use. Eat the animal products in small amounts, so that you don’t over heat the Liver at the same time.

On the other hand, please avoid these foods for heat conditions: avoid coffee, alcohol, tobacco, lamb, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and other hot spices. These foods generate more heat in your body. You don’t want to add to the heat. You may have noticed people who have red faces who are smokers or drinkers. Often they do both together. These are just two ways to add pathological heat to the body.

You know you have too much heat in your body, when you can walk around in the cold winter (in colder climates) with just a light jacket or if you don't like the heat in tropical climates, for instance. Protocol that includes a healthy Kidney diet can help you tip the scale to more balance.

If you feel cold in your body, the following foods will warm you up:

• Cloves, fenugreek seeds, fennel seeds, anise, black peppercorn, dried ginger, cinnamon, walnuts, everything from the onion family, quinoa
• Also chicken, lamb, trout, and salmon.

For cold conditions, avoid cooling foods and fruit, too much raw foods, too much salt. Use seaweeds sparingly.

You know you're on the cold side, if you have a pale bright complexion and you feel cold even during the hot summer months. This too isn't as uncommon as you think. I notice that a lot of people of Scottish descent often have this in their families. It comes from depleted Kidney Yang reserves. Part of the solution is a good and healthy Kidney diet.

When you’re feeling warmer or cooler, you can back off eating too many of the foods that are getting you into balance. When you're feeling just right, at the right body temperature - that is, you feel reasonably cold in the winter and reasonably warm in the hot sun of summer, then you're probably at a normal internal temperature.

If there was a lot of heat in your body and you’re starting to feel cooler, start backing off on too many cooling foods. You could be moving off to the other side of imbalance.

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