Overweight and obesity in children is an epidemic in North America and internationally. Approximately 22 million children under 5 years of age are overweight across the world. In the United States, the number of overweight children and adolescents has doubled in the last two to three decades, and similar doubling rates are being observed worldwide, including in developing countries and regions where an increase in Westernization of behavioral and dietary lifestyles is evident. Health problems associated with obesity and overweight are similar in children as in the adult population. Elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, and a higher prevalence of factors associated with insulin resistance and type2 diabetes appear frequently in the overweight and obese pediatric population.
In some populations, type 2 diabetes is now the dominant form of diabetes in children and adolescents. Disturbingly, obesity in childhood, particularly in adolescence, is a key predictor for obesity in adulthood. Moreover, morbidity and mortality in the adult population is increased in individuals who were overweight in adolescence, even if they lose the extra weight during adulthood. Although the cause of obesity in children is similar to that of adults (i.e., more energy in vs. energy utilized), emerging data suggest associations between the influence of maternal and fetal factors during intrauterine growth and growth during the first year of life, on risk of later development of adult obesity and its health problems. In addition, recent data suggest that varying biological responses in different racial/ethnic groups differently contribute to overweight, obesity, and their health problems. Although differences in gene-nutrient interactions may contribute, the role of varying cultural and socioeconomic variables still needs to be determined to understand these disparities.
Novel approaches in the prevention and treatment of childhood overweight and obesity are urgently required. With the strong evidence that a lifecycle perspective is important in obesity development and its consequences, consideration must be focused on prevention of obesity in women of child-bearing age, excessive weight gain during pregnancy, and the role of breast-feeding in reducing later obesity in children and adults. Consideration must be given to family behavior patterns, diet after weaning, and the use of new methods of information dissemination to help reduce the impact of childhood obesity in our country.
Obesity in Chinese Medical Theory
In contrast to most modern medical theories behind weight gain, Chinese Medicine has a slightly different view to why people become obese.
The central premise is that it’s rarely how much you eat but rather these two factors that cause obesity:
- What you eat.
- How efficient your body is at metabolizing the food you take in.
Yes, the third factor is poor eating, but we believe that both eating too much or too little in this case has the same effect of damaging the body’s ability to properly digest food, resulting then in the accumulation of untransformed food in the form of “dampness” which accumulates “in the space between the muscles and the skin”. Before we discuss what types of food will “make you fat”, it is more important to discuss the second reason for weight gain – the efficiency with which your body metabolizes or as we say “transforms” that food into useful substances in the body instead of fat.
How your digestion works in Chinese Medicine
In TCM we say that digestion is a process of warm transformation. This means that your body requires heat in order to digest the food that is taken in. Remember that if the food is not digested properly this accumulates as phlegm and or dampness in the body which is what we call the actual fat that accumulates. This heat is in turn provided by the general heat of the body which we say is stored in the kidneys. Chinese Medical scholars liken this to the fire that has to burn under a pot in order for the food in the pot to get cooked. But that is not all, the digestion itself has to be strong, this is similar to the ability of the pancreas to secrete the pancreatic enzymes responsible for digestion in sufficient quantities to enable this. So thus far we have identified a weak digestion as well as not enough heat from the kidneys as contributors to obesity.
There are two less common “patterns” involving a predisposition to “dampness” in the body which is often hereditary, and also a condition called “Liver qi stagnation”, where the accumulation of fat in the body is secondary to a poor circulation problem. We will soothe your conscience in telling you that it’s not entirely your fault, yes that ice-cream is not the best thing for you and neither is that chocolate bar but it’s how you digest or whether you can that will really determine whether it will make you fat or not.
The Chinese Medical books say that if your digestion is strong you can go many days without eating, and you can eat a lot without having a problem. After digesting the food it has to be transported properly to the various parts of the body, in fact even before digesting the food it has to be transported or moved properly through the digestive system, as I mentioned a couple of sentences ago, one type of obesity is due to improper movement and hence stagnation of food.
What foods make you fat
For each person depending on what their underlying pattern is, the list of foods to avoid will be different and I will discuss those in more detail in the ensuing articles, however there are some general tips that I will mention below:
- As we mentioned above, digestion is a process of warm transformation, any food or practice that will, so to say, “douse the fire”, will make digestion difficult and hence also make it easier to put on weight, examples of this include drinking cold water or drinks while or soon after eating and also having too much ice-cream. These are examples of food whose temperature is cold, but there are also foods whose nature is cold that should be avoided, examples of these include raw salads, now I know this is going to stir some controversy but facts are facts and I don’t care how much nutrients are in those raw salads, if you can’t digest it, it doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that some cases of obesity present with what we call stomach heat at the same time as there is a weak digestion and such patients will have a craving for all of the above.
- Grains, yes grains. Ancient Chinese Medical Literature mentions that excessive eating of grains (which would correspond to all carbs in our age) will make a person overweight. In this respect the Chinese theory would correspond with a low or reduced carb diet for weight loss but as mentioned before it really does depend on the individual pattern.
- Too much sweets. Sounds familiar? Here is the theory, Chinese Medicine states that the sweet flavor will actually benefit the digestion, in moderation. When taken in excess however it starts to have the opposite effect. This is also true with synthetic and refined sugars which are overly sweet and damage the digestive ability. Sugars also cause another problem though, they create heat in the stomach at the same time that they weaken the digestion and any Chinese Medicine practitioner would tell you that this is a characteristic of diabetes.
In conclusion we summarize the main points below and give some advice on what you can implement now:
- Don’t blame yourself for your weight problem, it’s often more related to your digestive ability than how much you eat
- Don’t douse the fire, hold off on the ice-cream and cold drinks especially during or after a meal
- Cut down on carbohydrates (don’t go Atkins on me now, fruits are no problem, just limit the bread and rice)
- Avoid sweets, chocolates and sweetened drinks
The general Chinese Medical reasons for weight problems can be summarized as follows:-
- Eating the wrong types of foods, especially grains (carbohydrate rich) and also foods that are cold or oversweet such as ice-cream and artificially sweetened products such as chocolates and candy.
- Poor metabolism or functioning of the organs that deal with digestion
We want to explore this further and explain the specific body types and patterns that make each person’s weight loss problem different to the next and hence necessitate an individually tailored approach to treatment.
You must have already experienced cases where a diet or weight loss supplement worked wonders for one person but didn’t work at all for someone else. You must have also heard of people who lose weight so easily with exercise and others who just can’t seem to get it off!! Why is this? Doctors and other allopathic practitioners battle with this because of an inherent flaw in the current scientific reasoning that all human beings are basically the same and function the same way. Well…I can’t blame them, after all, we all look the same, two eyes, two ears, the same organs, the same basic structure, so how can people be different?
The fact is, we are not all the same, we may look the same and have the same basic physiology but just as people have different personalities, each of us has a slightly different way that our body does things, just as some are good at math and others at sports, so too are certain physiological processes better in some and not others. Medical research will eventually “discover” this fact just as science now acknowledges different personality types.
In the meantime we can learn from and appreciate the insight of the founders of Chinese Medical theory who long ago realized that there are 5 basic body types and each of these were predisposed to certain physiological strengths and weaknesses which determined very often the types of illnesses they would be afflicted with and also the method of treatment that would be most effective as well as the optimum lifestyle factors for each type including diet, exercise, meditation routines etc.
These 5 basic body types were termed Fire, Water, Metal, Earth and Wood and the first step in establishing an effective weight loss program from a Chinese Medicine perspective would be to know which of these types you fall into.
Fire types – Are normally short, the jolly, always laughing and joking type, often have a reddish tinge to the face, walk fast and are generous in nature. This type tends to suffer from heart ailments with a predisposition to conditions involving a high heart rate, this is due to either liver or heart fire. Fire types are also prone to gout issues but overall tend to have good health. If a fire type is overweight it is not as serious as the other types but the most common reason would be an increased metabolism and resultant high appetite combined with an unhealthy diet, cold drinks, overly rich and sweet foods, carbs etc. This leads to a combination of what we call in Chinese Medicine spleen vacuity and stomach heat/fire. For fire types the treatment focus is on strengthening the spleen (or digestive) function and reducing heat in order to control appetite.
Water types – Water types have the most difficulty with weight issues because as the name implies they tend to accumulate water. This arises due to a weakness of the kidney function in metabolizing water which then results in the deposition of water throughout the body in the form of what we call damp accumulation in Chinese Medicine. A water type is identified as having a generalized weight problem often with swelling of the ankles, generally they tend to have low stamina, are timid and sentimental, suffer from salt cravings and often have hearing disorders. The Chinese medicine approach is to use a diet and herbal regimen that eliminate excess dampness and strengthen the body’s water metabolizing functions, often warm or hot medicinals are used which is in contrast to those used for a fire type constitution.
Metal types – Metal types are the one constitution that are not prone to weight gain, being people who are well organized, almost perfectionist in nature, they do however tend to develop skin and lung conditions if not well such as psoriasis, asthma etc. In such a person weight gain is a poor sign and if sudden can often mean a cancerous growth rather than true weight gain.
Earth types – Earth types are normally the chubby type, always had a little extra around the waist types, normally cheerful and carefree though can be obsesses if there is an associated phlegmatic condition, they normally crave sweets and chocolates and are prone to diabetes. They also often have a yellowish complexion. The treatment in this case is to strengthen the digestive organs with herbs and also going on a bland diet.
Wood types- Wood types are normally muscular and sinewy in nature and if they are afflicted with weight gain it is often more serious than for any other type. Wood types are usually angry, impatient, idealistic workaholics and often suffer from hypertension, eye disorders, headaches, neck and shoulder tension and rheumatism. For cases of obesity in wood types the treatment is address stagnation as it is thought that weight loss in such cases is due to an accumulation of qi which due to stress especially is not flowing properly causing the accumulation of qi and in turn other substances such as damp and phlegm to build up. Often wood types will only develop weight gain around the waist.
As you can see from the above, we are not all the same and no single weight loss program or diet or supplement is going to work for every person every time. Instead, obesity, from a Chinese Medicine perspective has to be treated individually based on both a person’s constitutional body type as well as the presenting patterns.
About the author: ChineseHerbalAdviser
