Ep 596: Aging Through the Lens of Chinese Medicine: Yin Energy, Diet & Vitality

Introduction to Aging Symptoms 0:00

Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast, where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, fit physiques, or life. Hey, health junkies. On this episode of the health fix podcast, you get me, Dr. Janine Krauss. Today, I'm going to be talking about symptoms of aging. noticing that your skin looks a little bit drier all over, or you're noticing some fine lines and wrinkles and you look in the mirror and your like, who is that looking back at me?

Yes. Maybe you are noticing your aging fast, your feeling like your joints are sore, you just achier than normal, getting out of bed and feeling a bit stiffer. that energy isn't there, you're not sleeping as soundly as you used to, waking up multiple times a night, maybe you gotta run to the bathroom. If this sounds like you, this podcast is for you. So, interesting concept, and I'm gonna be talking about aging through the lens of Chinese medicine in this Podcast because I find it fascinating. So every seven years, we go through an energetic change.

We go to a transformation of sorts. And what's fascinating is For women, the age of 49 is a 7 year cycle. And every 7 years these physiologic changes happen, energy shifts, different types of things are going on in the body every seven years. 49, of course, is a big one because it's coming on 50, the big 5-0. And whether you've already hit the Big 5 0 or you're into the 6-O or just hit 40, here's the thing, every seven years, there's a transformation. So we can take advantage of this and we could see it in like a really cool light.

And as of the time of recording in the podcast, I am 48 years old. I'm thinking about, okay, seven years, we've got some change. What's also fascinating is in 2025, moving into 2026, We finished a nine-year cycle. And a nine-year cycle is a cycle of transformation and change as well when it comes to your environment, what's going on in the world,

Seven-Year Cycles and Chinese Medicine Aging 2:23

things of that nature. So if you're tracking with a seven- year change coming up on being 49, and we just went through 2025, And you feeling like you are aging faster than ever before, I feel you. There's a lot going. Know that. It's happening. And that's okay. So with this transition of getting older, what does getting old to Chinese medicine mean? Like how does it kind of play out? Well, one of the big things is something called Yin energy. So we have yang, which is fiery energy, and we've yin which has cooling energy And the cooling energy is what we start to decline on as we get older, men and women.

But in particular, we talk a lot about menopause and perimenopausal and really this drying out of our tissues, right? The eyes start get dry, sometimes the hair gets dry. Sometimes the skin, like I mentioned, dries. We get wrinkles with that drying. You get that creepy look. And we also talk about night sweats and insomnia, and these are all yin deficiency components. Especially when you're thinking about hot flashes, this internal heat coming up, that is your body not being able to cool you. And what's even more fun to think about is this balance of ying and yang.

As we get older, our kidney-chi declines. So kidney chi is, we're born with something called Jing-Chi. Jing Chi is like our reserves. The kidney Chi, is our batteries. What we can build up, what we store in a day, What can conserve. And if we've been living a fast lifestyle, We've go, go do, do fill up the schedule. Well, the kidney Qi will decline because your batteries decline. If someone comes in to me and says, doc, I'm really tired, i'm gonna be like, okay, what's draining your batteries? I ask myself the same thing.

And some days I will notice now as I am getting older, that I do get a little tireder, a lil faster. And what that is, getting tired or faster means we've depleted our kidney-chi a little bit. The good news is we can replenish it. And so kidney chi, being our batteries, it comes with an element, the organs come with elements in Chinese medicine and water is the element of kidneys. What goes with kidneychi is heartchi. So the elements of the heart, fire. Well, fire is yang, right? The heart is a yang energy, the kidneys yin energy.

If we're depleting our water and our fluid, our ying, we can't put water out on fires. So what happens as we get older? Well of course we are going to have maybe some hot flashes, maybe we will have some night sweats, and we'll feel warmer. We're going to dry out a little bit, but we could also have more anxiety. We can also more insomnia. Insomnia is a manifestation of not enough cooling energy putting out fires. And it's literally the fires in the brain, brain inflammation. I've talked about this before, and what's really even like next level interesting is inflammation, you hear lots of folks buzzwords, inflamaging, inflammation in All of that, what is that?

That is the body drying out, it's heated up. Inflammation, we think about like we bump our hand on something, It turns red and it swells, right? that's inflammation and whether there's normal inflammation to help us heal, but then the chronic inflammation, that is deficiency of cooling fluid energy coming to an area to put out the fire. So the Fire keeps smoldering. Now, if we even take it to the next level from there, chronic yin deficiency is a manifestation that happens with diabetes. Diabetes in the ancient Chinese texts, it's thirsting and wasting disease.

Well, If you're thirsty, you are missing fluids. If your muscles are wasting, your body is wasting. You are having heat created within your bodies.

Yin Deficiency, Kidney Qi, and Inflammation 6:34

That's wild to think. And so what is like the foundation of inflammation that everybody's talking about? What is the thing that causes Parkinson's, Alzheimer's dementia, anything you could stink and blame on it? Elevated blood sugar, sticky blood, having too high of sugar in your blood. Insulin resistance. All of that is contributing to inflammation, inflammation. And the Chinese like figured this out thousands of years ago. Why are we just talking about it now? I don't know, but here I am. And I'm wanting to bridge this gap between Western medicine's version of aging and ancient thought process on aging.

It's very similar. But the cool part about Chinese medicine that I love so much that we tend to try to complicate and we don' have to. Yin, cooling. Yang, fire. You're aging faster because you're depleting your cooling energy. But not only that, you are cooling fluid energy, what comes with fluid? Circulation. So you can sum up aging as poor circulation and lots of heat in the body. And you could reduce both of those things. by doing a lot of things that you already know, but a couple things I'm gonna talk about today that that can really help out.

And one of them I am gonna call myself out on because I have talked a lots about peptides. I absolutely love them. They're game changers if you have your diet and nutrition down, meaning you're eating clean. But here's the thing about eating healthy, following the trends of what's healthy. Right now, I'm realizing something big. And for a lot of people, this is something we need to think about. Everyone's talking like protein, protein. We need protein! And different gurus will give you different amounts of protein Well, in my journey of just kind of being N of one and experimenting with things, I've realized that I don't need copious amounts of protein like I thought I did.

In fact, my body is less inflamed when I do not have these copius amounts. And when I say copies, I'm talking about 40 grams per meal. So 120 to 150 grams of protein a day would be what one would think of in terms of someone who weightless, someone in the body stature of mind, Someone that weighs somewhere between 130 and 140 pounds. But here's the crazy thing. So since I have microdosed turzapetide and cycled it, I've noticed that when I eat less, i actually really do feel better. And a lot of folks can argue this and say that, oh, well, you know, if your metabolism was truly fired up, You could eat more.

Maybe. But here's the thing. What if I'm fine eating what I am, not losing muscle and I feel good? We have to be questioning these kind of things, because there are so many guidelines with which we are told, oh, wait, you're doing it wrong. You need more protein, or oh wait you are doing this wrong, and you need to eat more. And I'm guilty of telling people this and confusing my own self. But what if you were okay? Like, what you feel good in terms of how you eat? What if when you overeat, and let's say meat proteins, let say animal proteins.

What if you overeat animal protein and you don't feel good? This is something to really consider and this is what I discovered. It's also one of the big things that a lot of folks are talking about when we go into perimenopause, menopaus, andropause if we will, we need more fiber. Fiber is a Yin type of food. Beans are Yin foods and kidney beans and black beans in particular are kidney boosting. So not only is it Yin, we're boosting our batteries with the fibrous foods. And for a lot of us, We've avoided these foods because they're high in carbs.

But in reality, they have a decent amount of protein. And so something spiked, I guess, from me doing the standard process 21-day cleanse. I realized that, hey, wait a minute here. Actually feel better eating less animal protein and some plant-based protein. Now, a lot of you might be thinking, well, duh, lot a people tout this, that's correct. But if you look at what everyone, you know, not everyone but if look what a lots of folks are talking about right now, they're talking we need high protein, we mean high-protein.

And for a of people that interpreted as meat protein or chicken or fish or bison. Then when we look and we're like, wait a minute, some of us don't do well on that much. of animal protein. Some of us do better with like a little bit more plant-based protein in there, especially if you're not getting in fiber. So it's something to think about. And I know that there are gurus out there. They base their whole concept of how to eat during perimenopause and beyond on this concept with beans. I'm not anti-beans.

Just calling myself out on that. Like I got into a loop of more animal-based protein. When I did the standard process 21-day cleanse, I realized, oh, i feel better when I don't do as much. And I also notice with trisepatide, when I don't do as much protein because I'm not as hungry, I feel better. Now, chicken or egg is my less protein helping me de-inflame? Maybe. Is it less food as a whole helping deinflate? Probably. So at the end of the day, I'm finding it fascinating in terms of unique intricacies here.

Rethinking Protein and Supporting Yin with Food 12:40

Now, where do I take this protein concept with Chinese medicine? Well, what I wanted to really talk about is the concept of yin and what ying cooling fluid energy is and where we get it. Now, beans, as I mentioned before, legumes, lentils, a lot of people think of soybeans when we think something that can support estrogen, or we can think in a negative terms of like, oh, I don't want soybean because it may be processed or something of that nature. Now organic tofu can be actually beneficial for some folks.

Always want to know how we process our estrogens and things of the nature, but legume as a whole, If you can get a hold of some and you compressor cook them, it'll make it a lot easier for you to digest them because that's another big caveat that I hear from a lotta folks is we can't digest beans well. And that is true. As busy, stressed out humans, sometimes it's hard to get those suckers in and the lectins. Oh, they're so hard those proteins on the outside of the beans. Here's the thing, you can buy sprouted beans these days.

You can make this more digestible for you. And you titrate up the amount that you eat. Start with a tablespoon. Then the next day another tablespoon and maybe in three days try two tablespoons. Tablespoon and a half. Teach your gut microbiome to tolerate them. Don't hit it hard with like two cups of beans and expect your body to it tolerate that. They're not known as the musical fruit for nothing. And they are harder to digest, especially the fiber. That's why we need to train our microbiomes. But the point is here is I'm going to fully admit that I've overlooked the concept again a little bit in terms of food.

I went straight for the peptides and straight to the fancy things. Sure, if I look at proteins fragments being peptides, right, and hormone replacement therapy being hormones, are these yin or they yang? Well, it kind of depends on what's going on here. Now, some people will argue that proteins are yang and hormones are more ying. But at the end of the day, I think we want to step back from complicating all of this and really think about like, okay, Peptides and hormones for aging and working on things are like high level.

We want to get our food dialed in a little bit better. And this comes a bit from a lot of folks who aren't tolerating hormones well and then they try peptides, and they don't tolerate peptide well, then we go back to digestion and there's some issues there. So we want to be thinking, what kind of foods can help support us? Well, I mentioned the legumes, but also another food that's kind have been not as cool on the cool list is potatoes, are the potatoes and sweet potatoes. I know some people tout them, potatoes in particular, they're on a list of autoimmune paleo and auto immune wellness, you know, things to avoid because they are in night shape.

Chinese medicine doesn't talk necessarily about nightshades. They talk about eating in excess, they talk watching portions, things of that nature. What I'm gonna say is, if you've never noticed that you have an issue with potatoes, eating some here and there is probably not the end of the world. It just becomes a problem, I think, for anyone on anything when we're eating something on repeat. But things that grow in the ground, roots, tubers, these kind of things are yin foods. So like I'd mentioned, sweet potatoes, yams, potatoes.

We may be thinking we need to avoid carbs, but what if it's more the processed stuff, not the actual closest to nature things? And I wanna call folks out on that because I have a lot of folks who, when they think of carbs, they thing of all of them, but they tend to forget about the roots and the tubers. Now, kohlrabi and rutabaga, these are also great tuber that can help nourish you. And we just kind of skim over them. Even celery root is lovely in a soup and it's incredibly nourishing food. Another big yin food that maybe folks aren't talking about as much would be, and in terms of root veggies, would things like beets, kutsu.

I don't even know if I say that right, so if you wanna correct me on that, by all means, go for it. But these are roots that you can, I mean, beet's easy to find, Kutsuu is a little bit different, but things that we wanna think about. I don't think anyone ever ended up getting diabetes because they ate to me beets or bananas or tomatoes or, you know, even fruits for that nature or for manner. So I really do want you to take a moment and think about these different foods. The other biggies like sea wheat.

Chlorella, spirulina, these microalgae are incredible yin boosting foods. I had the owner of EnergyBits on probably over a year or two ago now, but Energy Bits are INCREDIBLE. Chlorella and spirullina based little bits of micro algae that are in incredible for your ying. They have lots of minerals in them as well, and it's also why green drinks like AG1 and different ones out there are so popular. They do boost your yin cooling and just vital energy. Now, another group of area is ancient grains and seeds.

These are being kind of, let's say, out of vogue for a little bit, they were cool for awhile, but like millet, barley, quinoa, amaranth, black sesame seeds. Black sesame in particular are incredible for kidney boosting. Rice, barley, And barley gets a bad rap because it's a gluten-based grain. In Chinese medicine, even wheat and wheat germ are considered nutritive. But here's the thing, I do believe that the hybridization and manipulation basically of the modern wheat has caused troubles for us.

in addition to glyphosate, the chemical helped to, well, dumped on them to help them be harvested. I don't think that's doing anyone any favors. but if you can find a farm, that's never used chemicals in the growing of their wheat, and they're using ancient wheat or old school wheats, if you will. There's a company just outside of my by my dad's house in Racine, Wisconsin area called Anarchy Acres. And I love what they are doing, like growing on land that has never been used as a a farmland and they're growing the wheat, they are harvesting it themselves, milling it, it's amazing stuff.

So you want to support folks that are using wheat grains that were from the 1900s, early 1900's, that's what they were doing from Wisconsin based grains.

Best Yin Foods: Roots, Grains, Fruits, and Sea Vegetables 19:48

It's super cool. And so if you look at Chinese theory, wheat and wheat germ, great yin boosting foods, but we've kind of avoided them. And millet, that guy gets a bad rap for making trouble for the thyroid and you would have to eat so much to cause trouble. So we're missing out on some really good fibrous grains and seeds, quinoa, amaranth, those guys are more like seeds than they are grains. But hey, there's some incredible ways to be able to use these things. And last but not least, one of my biggest, biggest aha moments I had over the last two weeks is talking with a friend in Oregon who was looking for a remedy to help her lungs because she had gotten a nasty bug and was coughing quite a bit.

And it was just a dry, nagging cough. Asian pears, you could saute them and like eat and drink the sauteed juice. So you just saute it in water and she was like, oh my gosh, that actually helped my cough. And so here's the crazy thing. Asian Pears are one of the most nutritive yin foods. Now she didn't even use an Asian pear, she used a regular pear. Same thing, persimmons, grapes, berries, bananas, watermelon and pomegranates are all known to help during perimenopause and beyond. Pomegranates in particular are amazing for hot flashes.

And I will be honest, I haven't recommended them as much because, well... Yeah, I just forget. And it's sad that I've kind of gone a little bit off of my roots with food because I absolutely love talking about Chinese medicine and food properties. I even just had a patient last week message me on an article about drinking around three to four ounces of pomegranate juice, obviously no sugar in it, a day for a couple of years to help some folks to lower their plucking in their arteries. Like these were folks who had demonstrated placking in their arteries and it helped.

And it's like, wait, pomegranate is an incredible antioxidant and its a yin supporting berry. Well, it is not really a berry The little seeds look like berries. I think that's where my brain went on that. So forgive me. Um, but nevertheless, pomegranate is high in antioxidants and that makes sense. And it's really cool that that would be something that will help the arteries. This kind of research gets buried all the time. Like I get it. Drinking pommegranates juice every day for three years could probably be annoying and maybe it is expensive.

But I don't know. For me it like that versus taking a pill. I'd rather drink my medicine. So, interestingly enough, high antioxidant, like some antioxidate-rich fruits and and vegetables really are the ones that have more yin in them and so something to really pay attention to and protein sources now one of the one's that are great for kidney energy are more of your like oysters and sardines and clams so i don't i'll be honest i am so midwest that the idea of crunching on sardeens with their bones oh i can't do it um but hey for those of you that are are down with that they're a great yin and kidney boosting source clams i can't do it either oh i've tried having lived in the pacific northwest but boy if those get any amount of seaweed stuck in them or sand i cant do i know restaurants don't have it like that but ive had some at some friends houses and oh so gross and then there's oysters Oysters can be great, too, if you're down with that sort of thing.

They're also really rich in zinc, which is great for balancing hormones as well. So something to think about. Of course, we have to talk about copper if we're going to do the oyster. A little bit of almonds to offset it with some oysters. Almonds are rich in copper. So are meat sources and things like liver and those sorts of things if you can find a clean animal in that department. But I digress. Point here is not that I had overlooked the animal sources. I was more thinking about pears, persimmons, grapes, berries.

Stuff that you just don't think of on an everyday basis is something that can help with the cooling energy and the circulation in the body and putting out fires in your body. Same thing goes with like the seaweeds, the chlorella, and spirulina. So don t ignore these things. Think about how you could add them in. There used to be a company that I don' t know if they're still around, but they had a fun little like sprinkle of spirula. They were from Hawaii and it tasted good as like sea salt and pepper and the spirulina and you could sprinkle it on top of food it was yummy.

Same thing goes for not forgetting about the the ancient grains like the millet the quinoa the amaranth those kind of things they can be incredibly helpful so you know you might be thinking at this point well what's What's the dosage of these things and should I get them sprouted? Absolutely, I do think sprouting your grains or seeds is incredibly useful. I also think like your beans as well getting them sprouted.I didn't highlight these and I really need to. Mung beans, by the way. amazing source of fiber and yin.

And in fact, they are one of the greatest type of beans out there when it comes to overall perimenopausal and menopause and beyond kind of health. The reason being is because they're great for ying, but they also drain damp. Dampness in the Chinese medicine is extra weight, extra puffiness if your lymphatic system is bogged down. mung beans are amazing for that. And then the other side of it is aronia berry. These berries live in like St. Louis in the wild, which is crazy. But aronia berry is something that the Chinese use quite a bit.

I also had a gal on the podcast who has a Chinese medicine-based drink company. Of course, I can't remember the name of that right now to save my life. at DrJCrossND.com and I'll link to that podcast. But she had a drink with aronia berry and mung beans in it. And it didn't taste like just straight berry or munk bean. I mean, it was actually really good. It tasted much like, well, a little sweeter version of pomegranate. Hmm. Aronia berries have also been found to be incredibly beneficial for your circulation.

And side note, in Chinese medicine, if anything has the color of like blue, purple, or red, it is touted to be really good for your circulation, so your vessels. And if it has more of a color a dark blue or a black, It is good your kidney energy. Where did this come from? The idea is because the colors that go with the elements. You could probably blow lots of different holes in that kind of rationale. But like I said before, I have seen people regain energy and vitality by incorporating these certain foods into their life.

And while mung beans are still green in color and kidney beans, they're still red in the color. Black beans aren't black and they are touted to help. with the kidneys just as much as the old kidney bean. So what's the point here? There's different colors on these things. Those colors are really the antioxidants and you can't go wrong with antioxidants. That's where I really stand on all of this to not try to have you thinking about different rabbit holes in terms of what colors or foods are going to do what for you.

But think about is if the food has a color and it's a natural color, it is not a dye. you are going to get an antioxidant out of that and it can help your body big time. So when it does come to yin foods, yes, I am a big fan of finding them sprouted and a lot of companies have the grains sprout of these days and beans sprout at these things and you can find that from Thrive Market online to even grocery stores all over the US. You just have to look in the different departments and see what they have.

Or, often than not, you're going to find it more on the West Coast than you do in the Midwest. So if you are in Midwest and you've perused your grocery stores and can't find sprouted things, go to Thrive Market. Go to Amazon, and find Sprouted Grains. You'll find everything from sprout rice to sprout millet and quinoa and all the things.

Sprouted Foods, Digestion, and Portion Size 28:38

So why am I so big on sprouting? Because your digestive system does better when things are sprouted. And back in ancient times, they would sprout these grains and things before they did eat them. In modern lifestyle, it's kind of a pain in the butt when you read the label. It's like, wash the beans and then soak them for a certain amount of time and you're like I'm just going to cook these and hope everything goes well. It's better if you buy them sprouted because then they're kind of pre-digested for you.

Of course, taking care of your gut is a big deal and that's one of the ways and and That's really what we want to be thinking about through the lens of Chinese medicine But also what you hear every day from folks talking about, you know, Taking care Of your got you do want To make sure that you are paying attention to one portions that serve you and so back to what I was mentioning before about me realizing I Was eating way more protein than my body really wanted or could handle and And this may be why some people do gain weight when they're trying to eat more protein and eat healthier.

Their body just simply can't digest that food. Now, you've probably heard me in previous podcasts, if you have been listening for a while, we'll take some digestive enzymes to help you out. Okay, You could. Absolutely. But let's look at this here. Do you wanna be taking supplements before every single meal? I don't know about you all, but I'm gonna be 100% honest. I am getting sick of taking a lot of supplements. And if I have to take something before each meal, that's getting to be annoying now.

If I look it, if can slow down on the portion that I eat, is that a bad thing? As long as my meals are nutrient-dense, if my portions are less, is that a bad thing? I don't think so. I look at my dad, who's gonna be 90 this year, and he eats small portions. And if I'm making food for him, he's going to be eating a lot better than when he eat on his own when left to his devices. But if you look the Blue Zones, you can look how meals structured. As you know, you're looking at, say, an Asian style meal, or you are looking even meals in Sardinia, which is considered one of the Blue Zone areas, they're very balanced in terms of grains, legumes, veggies, and proteins.

And this is why I think the Mediterranean diet really is a nice, well-rounded diet. It's got a lot of antioxidants, got lots of oils coming from fish, which is another yin-boosting food. Its got grains, it has tubers. And so the truth is like, yeah, if I look at Mediterranean diet, It does fit the yins supporting the cooling, the blood flow, all of that for your body. The key kicker here is how much do you really need? And this is where I've loved using terms of appetite as a teacher to help me to regulate my portions and be like, whoa, girl, you're eating way too much.

And I really think now, looking at everything, I was probably eating like a portion to a proportion and a half too much for myself now. I've also noticed that the less you beat up on your gut, and the Chinese will talk about this too, stopping eating when you're about 80% full. And for a lot of people, they look at me like deer in the headlights, like what, what? I don't know how to feel full, You might have to teach yourself and that's where I would say things like turns up as I can come in and help you as a teacher.

Now, granted, I said in this podcast, we've got to go back to basics. And yes, agree that we do need to look at the food that eat and kind of slow down a little bit. But if you're having trouble with the foot noise and slowing down to really pay attention to what you are eating isn't happening. Maybe terzapotide, maybe retratatide. Maybe KPV might be useful to help just slow the brain down a little bit so that you can look at and assess the situation. At the end of the day, I do think smaller amounts of food may be the secret here.

And just smaller, well-rounded more balanced meals, maybe even more the kicker because we're feeding our beneficial bacteria. Now another thing about potatoes, they're yin food, but you can also make them in the style that you're going to make potato salad and that creates resistant starch, which is something that your beneficial, bacteria really love to use to eat, to grow your good bacteria, Now plantain flower or ripe banana peels, yes, they're actually edible and nutritious. You can throw them into smoothies and things of that nature as long as you got a good blender.

Interesting, right? And you can feed your beneficial bacteria with these things. Targeting your beneficial bacteria in ways that maybe you haven't thought about before using foods that are more yen boosting because remember I said bananas are a yen food potatoes yen, food hmm something to this here all right now Another side note to food is in one of the things that you know We're always told like oh sugar is bad avoid sugar avoid processed foods avoid chocolate in excess avoid excessive fruit why I Bacteria and yeast can live off of excessive amounts of these things.

But here's the other kicker on it. Too much chocolate can be yang-inducing, fire- inducing. Why? Because there's caffeine in it! I've often noticed that if I eat too much of chocolate, like I go on a chocolate bar binge and I'm like, oh this chocolate is so good, I'll eat the whole bar, well I often get a headache. And I don't know about you all, I've heard from other patients that that can be the case or stomach ache or things of that nature. But I have also noticed when someone relies on chocolate, because it's like their favorite thing and they eat it every night, sometimes it is harder to get weight off.

And, and I think about the caffeine and the yang fireiness. I also think of the sugar in it. Also think being addicted to sugars and maybe even alcohol. These are all yang and hot and fiery things. processed foods are all considered to be fiery and hot and young because they're easy to digest. We burn through them fast, but they also have dyes and stabilizers and things that anything chemical is going to considered young in the Chinese medicine space. And so just looking at food in general, it makes sense why we would want to eating cleaner, How do we get off the sugar or at least minimize it?

How did we it off? The fake sugars? Those aren't going to be any better. You know, how do, we adjust this? And, and I think it's, it s one of these things where it is one day at a time and we're really taking a good inventory of what's going on. Also taking it through the lens of young because many folks will have poor night's sleep after processed food, after too much meat, and after to much sugar. after too many grains. Take note. If you go out to dinner, what happens that night? You might be in a food coma when you first get home, but then you wake up at two, three in the morning.

Same thing goes with alcohol. So watch these things, take note, it is so incredibly important to take notes. What ends up? What ends up being things that, quote, make us sick and give us illness? Too much sugar, diabetes, right? Or inflammation, joint pain, all yang, too much caffeine, heart racing, things with the nervous system. All heat, hurt, that is a yang organ, All of the hot stuff. So I want to make that connection for you that we want be thinking about how we can keep that balance between the Hot and Fiery and the cool and check.

Sugar, Alcohol, and Heat in the Body 36:38

I know for a long time, my mother-in-law was always like, I'm going to have a glass of wine for dinner. And, you know, because wine was considered good, and a lot of the people in the Blue Zones drink wine and this and that, but how much wine? The whole wine glass? Or just a little bit? Interesting concept. Try it out. See how wine feels good and see how it doesn't if you're a wine drinker. What amount can you drink and not wake up? at night. We're all different. So it's a fun and interesting conversation to think through in terms of what heats you up.

There are so many women in my practice that we've cut out sugar and guess what? They sleep through the night or put sugary things earlier in the day and they sleep to the right. It's wild. Same thing with chocolate. I just mind blowing when we go back to food and so healthy aging really does start at looking at what's going on with the foods as a whole. You really, really do want to pay attention to the basics. And don't skip over them and try to jump to hormones or peptides as a band-aid. We really need to dial down what's going on in our guts.

If we're looking at our gut, we have to look at how the bowels look. If we have dry stools, meaning like little pellets, like rabbit pellet, we're either dehydrated, so we are definitely drying out, or we need more yin cooling foods, more fiber, beans, seeds, grains, maybe spirulina chlorella, because so many people I've given hormones and it hasn't changed their bowels at all. And terzepatide and the peptides that are for weight loss, the GLP-1s or the GLP-3s, even the retratetide, it's not going to help the bowels, unfortunately, in terms of making them more moist for most people.

Some people do have looser bowls on terzepatides, but it is few and far between. So we want to get the gut dialed in. If you're going to be cycling peptides, each time you cycle off the peptide, work on the big time to help you. It's really important. The other biggie with fluid and yin is movement, breath work, and tai chi and qigong and moving slowly in such a slow manner. You think that you're doing it. It's so slow that it's just unnatural. I was recently challenged by my pal Dr. Brianne Grogan to move in a way like an intuitive kind of dance move, but move incredibly slow.

She's like slower than you think you should. It was crazy. I actually went into like a yoga pose or stretching because I realized I don't know how to actually move a fluid manner very slowly unless I'm stretching or doing yoga. I don't know about you all, but something interesting to think about. And so this is why Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Kung Fu, a lot of the different martial arts, exercising martial art, are so popular in Asian countries is because it is helping with circulation. and it's helping with the chi and boosting kidney chi.

So fascinating. And so I really encourage you to play a little bit with seeing how you could just take a moment, just kind of relax out and and see if you can move some body part really slow, just where you're called to. Like maybe you've got aches or pains. You know, for me, it's usually my right hip and my low back. If I can just move really slowly in my hip, and just kind of do like a hip circle, or move just my joint a little bit and move slow. It's fascinating where the body's like, yes, right there, okay, move right at that angle.

And you just kind of move to that point, and then you go a little bit, then a bit more.

Movement, Breath, and Closing Resources 40:58

I don't know, it's fascinating something to change your routine up a litte bit when it comes to mobility. And instead of just banging out like a foam rolling session, consider doing a litle bit of intuitive dance with your body to see where it wants to move and what joints want to moves and in what directions and manners. Fascinating. And you'll have to try it a couple times if you're like me, because I'll be honest, I took like three times before I could really do it. Well, so thanks to Dr. Brian Grogan to really inspire me to do.

So I challenge you all to to it out and see what you think. Do I have a guide that I created kind of basically talking much off of what I've presented today? Because I think it's really important to be able to have an actionable, like, take-home guide from some of my podcasts, because I been told I just spew a lot of information. And some you may be driving, some may you be walking while you're listening to this, and it is a little bit harder to take notes. Let's face it, there's a lot of podcasts to listen to, so trying to go back and listen all the details just isn't going to happen.

So I created a guide, Healthy Aging Through the Wisdom of Chinese Medicine. And so if you are interested in grabbing this guide you can click the link in my podcast notes at drjcrossnd.com or below here if your watching on YouTube or anywhere you got your podcasts and take a look at that. See what you think. I'd love to hear your comments, your thoughts. If there's anything that you found to be incredibly helpful or if you are diving into Chinese medicine, you're like, I really love learning about this topic and I want to learn more.

Let me know. Love talking about Chinese Medicine and especially through the age lens of healthy aging. And also I talk a lot about peptides. Peptides are a volatile industry. And so if I end up not being on Instagram or social media, the best place to stay in touch and figure out what I'm up to is here on the podcast and making sure that you can find out about Masterclasses and things of that nature if you get on my email list you can do that at doctor spelled out jkrausend.com and that way you won't miss out if anything happens just because it is that time where it's a little volatile with the peptides but for now seems that I can stay on Instagram, but you never know.

So anyway, I hope that this has helped you to learn a little more about Chinese medicine and I am here to keep putting things through on that level. And yeah, if you enjoyed this podcast, please help me out by liking and subscribing to the channel and send any great comments or anything else you'd like to Thank you, have a great day whatever you're doing.