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Imagine that as you look outside, it begins to rain. Not just ordinary rain—it is raining buckets. People are talking about building arks to save themselves. So much rain falls that everything gets soaked. Ordinary streets become rivers of swirling water. The ground becomes a muddy quagmire. Everywhere it is a damp mess.
Rainy Day Clues
What does rain have to do with your diet making you body feel worse? Your sensitivity to wet weather gives a big clue as to how to strengthen your body through your diet. Most medical practitioners don’t know how to interpret this clue to help you to decrease your pain, increase your energy, and have more hope. My clients didn’t know either. They would bundle up as best they could to ride out their rainy day body aches and fatigue. Where can you find a way to use this clue for better health?
Looking Inside-Out
You have seen weather changes all your life. However, they haven’t always led you to feel more fatigue and pain. In Chinese Medicine, you learn a way to interpret the effects of weather changes that impact your body. Wet weather is also referred to as dampness. In this medical system, dampness is found both outside you and inside you. Internal dampness is characterized by the different ways that moisture and fluids like mucus occur in the body. When you feel more discomfort with wet weather, then you probably have an imbalance in the dampness inside of you. How does knowing about dampness help you to be healthier?
All You Need to Know You Didn’t Learn in Kindergarten
As a child, you learned about good nutrition in school. You were taught about the basic food groups and how eating those foods would keep you healthy. Most health and nutrition experts don’t know that many of these basic healthy foods will throw your fibromyalgia symptoms into a frenzy. Yes, that means more fatigue, more fibro-fog, and more pain. Ouch! You need to know how food directly affects your fibromyalgia symptoms.
Food and Fibromyalgia: A Chinese Perspective
You probably know that eating certain foods leads to a drop in your energy level. For thousands of years, Chinese health experts have studied how different kinds of foods affect the health of your body, organ systems, and muscles. In fact, certain foods actually increase the dampness inside the body. Excess dampness can lead to joint and muscle aches, extreme fatigue, and organs systems that do not work efficiently. Sound like many of the classic symptoms of fibromyalgia? Chinese medicine defines fibromyalgia as a pathological condition of internal dampness. This system of medicine has also defined many foods to avoid that will aggravate the symptoms of fibromyalgia. So what else can dietary changes help with?
Not Only in the Body
You have probably heard of or experienced “fibro-fog.” My clients describe it as confusion, forgetfulness, or the inability to focus on a thought for an extended period of time. In Chinese Medicine, there is a condition that is called dampness misting the mind. Guess what the symptoms are? The same as fibro-fog. By changing your diet, you can also reduce the fog out of your mind that gets in the way of having greater mental clarity. You may be wondering why you are so attached to eating certain kinds of foods that create discomfort and mental fogginess.
Comforting Dampness
How many of you go to food to feel better? If you are like my clients, they use sweets and carbohydrates to try and boost their energy. Some will even eat foods that they crave even though it will make them feel worse later on. Unfortunately, sweets and carbohydrates are in the category of foods that increase internal dampness in the body. Dairy, highly processed food, and oily foods fall in this category. Foods that are raw, cold, or produce mucus are also included in the category of dampness-producing foods. This covers most of the comfort foods that people turn to like pizza, ice cream, cakes, and cookies. You may be wondering how you can make it without the food that you derive your comfort from.
Early Food Training
Many of my clients are not very excited to change their diet. Food is an emotionally charged area of their life in which they have some control over how their body feels. They have many messages around food from their upbringing like: you eat sweets to deal with strong emotions. You use ice cream to reward yourself for when you have been good. When you have been bad, you get sent to bed without your supper or you don’t get dessert. Changing your diet brings up these memories and beliefs around food. Does this mean I can’t have any more treats and goodies?
Cold Turkey—Forever?
Depending upon your internal strength or “constitution,” once you resolve the excess dampness in your body you may be able to reintroduce many of these foods back into your diet. Eliminating these foods now will help to reduce your amount of internal dampness. As you reduce your internal dampness, you will see a reduction in your fibromyalgia discomfort. According to Chinese Medicine, you may be able to restore your ability to eat and digest damp producing foods with much less or no discomfort. So if you eliminate these foods now, what can you eat?
Drying Out From the Inside
After a big rainstorm, nature provides many ways to dry out the waterlogged earth. The sun comes out and warms up the land. You may have foods that you eat now that feel good inside your body and do not aggravate your fibromyalgia symptoms. One of the ways to dry out on the inside is to eat foods that are warming. If you are especially susceptible to cold, warming up on the inside will help you to feel much better. In Chinese medicine, there are many foods and spices that warm your body up on the inside. Cinnamon, ginger, and lean portions of beef and lamb increase internal warmth. Let’s look at other ways of resolving internal dampness through food.
Strengthen Your Body’s Ability to Eliminate Your Excess Dampness
What food do you gravitate toward on a rainy day? If you are like my clients, hot foods are high on their list. In China, they have discovered foods that help your body to eliminate dampness. These include: hulled barley, rye, amaranth, corn, and alfalfa. Barley is fed to patients in hospitals in China with damp disorders. Alfalfa can be eaten as sprouts. Other foods that reduce dampness include Aduki beans, celery, lettuce, turnips, kohlrabi, and seaweed. Herbs and spices that are known for reducing dampness are scallions, white pepper, and all bitter tasting herbs including chamomile and Pau d’ arco. There are some surprises also on the list including raw goat’s milk, mushrooms, and raw honey. I highly recommend getting organic grown and minimally processed food. I also suggest making dietary changes under the guidance of a licensed practitioner of Chinese Medicine that understands how diet can heal the condition of excess dampness.
Damp Foods
When my clients have reduced or eliminated most or all of the foods on the list below, they see improvements in their energy level, decreased pain, and feel more hope for being able to return to performing everyday tasks. I highly recommend consulting with a Chinese Medicine practictioner around eliminating dampness out of your diet.
High fat foods
Fatty meats
Eggs
Dairy products
Cheese
Milk
Ice cream
Yogurt
Butter
Lard
Hydrogenated foods like margarine
Oils
Oily foods
Nuts like peanuts
Seeds
Fried foods
French fries
Fried chicken
Fried fish
Onion rings
Cheesesteak
Carbohydrates
Large amounts of grains and legumes
Bread rolls, loaf
Pasta
Pizza
Cakes
Cookies
Muffins
Sweet foods
Soda
Candy
Chocolate
Desserts
Sweetened drinks
Sweetened foods
Alcohol
Beer
Wine
Hard liquor
Coolers
Excess raw fruits and veggies
Raw fruit
Raw veggies
Foods that are cooling
Watermelon
Cucumber
Mint
Tofu
Highly processed foods
Chemically treated foods
Artificial sweeteners
Foods That Help Resolve Dampness
When my clients increase their intake of foods that help to warm them up and dry them out. Not every client needs warming foods, some actually need cooling foods. These lists are what has worked for helping my clients. Again, I highly recommend consulting with a Chinese Medicine practitioner when seeking to modify your diet to resolve dampness.
Grains
Barley hulled preferably
Rye
Amaranth
Corn
Alfalfa
Legumes
Aduki beans
Vegetables
Celery
Lettuce
Turnips
Kohlrabi
Sea weeds (cooling)
Dairy
Raw goats milk
Sweets
Raw honey
Herbs
Scallions
White pepper
All bitter herbs
Chamomile
Pau d’arco
Cinnamon (warming)
Ginger (warming)
Fungi
Mushrooms
These lists have been drawn from Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford and Materia Medica by Dan Bensky and Andrew Gamble.
Summary
Eating too many foods that increase internal dampness is like having too much rain that creates a muddy quagmire or dampness inside your body. Eating these damp foods can make your fibromyalgia symptoms worse. Using the principles of Chinese Medicine to make better dietary choices, you stop putting excess dampness in your system. You know about foods that warm you up or eliminate dampness. As a result of making these changes in your diet, you get to strengthen you internal ability to dry out the dampness that can reduce your fatigue and daily chronic pain. This can also help reduce mental unclarity or fibro-fog. You actually can feel the difference in as little as a few weeks to a few days.
Gregory Lee is a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, and Master Sufi Healer in Maryland. He is co-founder of the Two Frogs Healing Center in Frederick, Maryland. He has developed a Five Step Fibromyalgia Healing System to help his clients. You can download free articles and other resources on healing fibromyalgia at the website www.twofrogscenter.com/. | 
