Stroke and Diet (Part one)

After a stroke you may find that you need to make some changes to what you eat.You may be advised to change the types of foods you eat to be lower in cholesterol and/or salt to reduce your chances of having another stroke. You may be told that it is important to eat a variety of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, grains and lean protein to get enough nutrition for your body. However, some may find that their body isn’t improving even though they followed through those tips or some may have already kept “A Healthy Diet” as such even before the stroke. Why is it?


In general, there is nothing wrong with those tips. While, from a TCM (traditional Chinese Medicine) prospective, it can be defined more specifically and accurately. In TCM, your body is your diet. The food you take in has its own nature: cold-cool, warm-heat and mild. Your body maintains a balanced harmony through the food you eat. Therefore it is imperative to know the nature of food and balance your diet, avoiding excessive coldness or heat.


The nature of food is far from the temperature. Take river crab as an example, it is seen as cold-cool in nature even though it is served as a hot dish. Having too much of it in a long term will increase the cold Qi (Qi is energy carried by blood) of your body, which causes stagnation and decreases the flow of Qi (Blood). For a blockage stroke, it can be very harmful.


Whether it is to prevent a stroke or to achieve post stroke recovery, it is essential to know the nature of food. We will discuss it in categories in our next post.