Ice Cream, Don't Do It

Here's a fun factoid: ice cream makes you sick. It's true.

Well, I should say that it made me more sick than I was before.

I had started to come down with something on Monday evening, starting with a sore throat and heaviness in the head. I blasted myself with herbs, and upon waking I was feeling better. By the end of my shift at noon, however, my sinuses were completely congested, and it felt as though it was clogged through to my ears.

I went home and nursed myself, taking a different set of herbs for my congestion. I even stayed home and canceled my shift, not wanting to infect anyone else with my evil qi. By the afternoon, I was feeling so much better that, despite better judgment, I decided to celebrate with some ice cream. Two spoonfuls, to be exact.

Before the ice cream, I had no sore throat, no headache, no congestion, and no runny nose. After the ice cream, within minutes, my nose clogged up and I was back to wiping snot off my face and I had to drink hot tea to combat the coldness I started to feel. It's as if the ice cream canceled out all of the herbs I've taken and the sleep I've gotten in the last two days.

So next time you think of having ice cream, just don't do it... Unless it's Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, in which case it might be worth it.

Hunger is the Best Sauce

A story on fasting from the L.A. Times, which predictably covers it as a diet trend. Fasting has been used throughout history, usually for health, religious and spiritual reasons. For instance, Jesus Christ fasted for 40 days, and Siddhartha Gautama, before becoming Buddha, took up the life of the ascetic, eating very little each day (about three grains of rice per day, according to legend).

In TCM, fasting is an important tool which can be used to let the digestive system rest and recover, especially when there are Damp and Phlegm conditions in the Middle Jiao.