Curb Your Food Cravings with Acupuncture

It's a challenge to eat healthy when there is junk food readily available. It only takes a single glimpse or thought of a sweet treat or salty, savory snack for a ravenous craving to kick in.

Over time, these binges, if not controlled, can lead to weight gain, fatigue, muddled thinking, and moodiness, to name a few.

A balanced meal, according to according acupuncture and Oriental medicine, consists of foods that represent all five tastes—sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent. Each taste corresponds with a specific organ channel. By understanding their connection, you can move toward maintaining a healthy appetite.

The five tastes are:

Pungent
Associated with the Lung and Large Intestine pungent tastes include the dry, hot taste found in garlic, ginger, and onions needed to help the lungs properly circulate energy throughout the whole body.

Sweet
Sweet tastes are associated with the stomach and spleen. Fruits, sweet potatoes, and some vegetables like carrots aid in digestion and reduce the toxicity of all foods.

Sour
Liver and Gall Bladder are associated with sour tastes. Sour foods, like pickles or vinegar, help your body metabolize fats better.

Bitter
The bitter taste found in dark chocolate, radish, and bitter gourd removes excess heat from the Heart and Small Intestine helping them function better and pacify negative emotions. 

Salty
The salty taste associated with the Kidney and Bladder has a big impact on moistening hard bowels and regulating their movements. 

Curbing your cravings takes knowing which system is out of whack. If there is an intense hankering for sweet and salty, this implicates the Spleen, Stomach, Kidney, and Urinary Bladder. The desire for rich, fatty foods can be traced back to the Liver and Gall Bladder.

Since the Spleen and Stomach are associated with obsession, which can certainly be the case in an inability to restrain oneself from devouring all cookies and chips in the kitchen, these are usually the culprit behind every craving. An acupuncture treatment typically includes points to help bolster a sluggish Spleen and other lagging organs.

To learn more about using food as medicine and how to address your food cravings call for an appointment today!

Trevor Noel