One of my childhood nightmares is returning to haunt me: bloody hemorrhoids. The excessive silent bleeding scares me more than the pain. And it’s embarrassing, literally located “where the sun don’t shine!” (I love the funny American folk saying!)
I don’t want to go to Kaiser. It’s said that Covid-19 has been prioritized over other diseases. It’s not a good feeling to be a neglected second-class patient. Seeking some emotional support, I braved my soul and confessed to my writers’ Zoom friends about my embarrassing problem and secret pain. It warms my heart to hear their sympathy and understanding. Jan even goes out her way to recommend the amazing “bidet,” a keep-it-soothing-and-clean device for hemorrhoid problems.
A veteran of hemorrhoid suffering, I’ve come to realize that my painful problem is more of an internal problem than a nice luxurious external wash-and-clean device could help. My constipation produces rough pebble stones and hard rocks that slice my insides bloody while forcing their way through. And I knew what caused the hard rocks: improper food intake and lack of physical exercises.
It all started with three days in a row of my physical inactiveness from my usual exercises of walking three miles a day, climbing the four flights of stairs to my condo home, often times carrying heavy packages and grocery bags as I do my own cooking.
And the wrong kind of food I was eating helped balloon the problem.
I’ve been eating too much hot-nature foods, besides my usual hot spicy meals. I say meals because, growing up in famine and Mao’s Cultural Revolution with severe food shortages, I’ve never developed the luxurious habit of snacking. And on top of too much hot pepper and spicy foods, as it dawned on me, for the past months since the Covid-19 started, I’ve added to my diet coffee and all kinds of nuts, especially almonds. Determined to stay healthy and keep the virus away from me, I took medical experts’ advice on the intake of Zinc (from almonds) and Vitamin-D (from the sun). So, I’ve been eating a small bowl of mixed nuts for breakfast, mostly almonds.
Feeling smug that I’ve found myself a great solution to stay safe from the evil virus, I completely forgot that coffee and almonds are hot natured food, a big no-no for a hot-natured person like me.
Back in 2017 I went to China to visit my cousin. Among many gifts I brought for her family was a Costco-sized jar of roasted chocolate almonds. Her 11-year-old son was so excited. Amazing authentic American treats are so sweet and tasty! Hiding in his room, the boy devoured it all but a few pieces in a couple of days! His nose promptly started bleeding. His dad was livid: “He ate the whole gallon of fire-natured chocolate almonds!”
The ancient Chinese herbal medicine theory believes food is a precious life source, a blessing from Heaven. All foods are life savers. No food is bad (not including the modern day man-made/artificially processed fatty, salty and sugary foods.)
Like it does with our body system, the Chinese world categorizes foods into hot/warm natured and cool natured. Every other Chinese person has some rough ideas about what food is hot natured or cool natured. Hot peppers are evidently the number one culprit for causing inflammation. Beef and lamb are hot natured. Pork and fish are cool natured. Most nuts are hot-natured, especially almonds. If we want to keep ourselves healthy, Yin-Yang ☯️ balance needs to be maintained. Hot natured people should eat more cool natured foods, and vice versa.
So, food can be a double-edged sword. Just like too much of a good thing is not good for you, too much of good food will cause damage to our health, too, because it overloads our systems and knocks us off the Yin Yang 陰陽☯️ balance.
I’m as hot/warm natured as can be. Palm of my hands and soles of my feet are always toasty hot/warm even in cold weather. And I need a cold wash/shower after my walking/jogging when my face and feet feel like on fire even in December cold weather like now. Dry hot weather irritates me and makes my head feel like being baked in the oven. My nose used to bleed a lot growing in northern China’s dry hot mountain climate.
It’s heavenly living in San Francisco’s refreshing air, beautiful fog and all-year-round cool/cold breeze. It soothes my mood and keeps my head clear. But I’m still supposed to stay away from hot and spicy food, which I relish. The Cantonese style bland food stirs up no appetite in me. Tasteless food gives me heartburns. It’s equally bad! Suddenly I understand why alcohol is addictive – just like my hot spicy food. Oh, well, hemorrhoid be damned. I need to live a little.
But in the severe case of constipation, I have to lay off, well, sort of, my beloved hot and spicy food. It takes me two weeks to stop the rock-hard constipation. First, I religiously drink a full glass of water the first thing in the morning. Then I double down on eating extra vegetables and other cool natured foods: rough leafed kale, deep green broccoli, high fibered celery, cool natured cucumber, all types of fruits, tofu, eggs, watermelon, intestine-smoothing honey and bananas, anti-inflammation chrosansamum tea with GoJi berries, time-consuming-to-cook-but good-for-you five-whole-grain soup, constipation-be-gone sesame seeds (black sesame seeds are also hair-nurturing.)
Light olive-oil stir fry or steamed or boiled, I love eating my green vegetables crispy fresh, not overcooked mush, which have no more value, as the fiber and vitamins have been destroyed. A bowlful at a time, I make them my main dish.
And, as much as I don’t like to take chemical medicine pills, I have to admit that I did take the orange colored clear “soften stool” pills for emergency.
I am grateful to live in my food paradise America, where I can afford to eat such delicious luxurious foods at will and take the medicine whenever needed without costing me arm-and-leg, as it’s still the case to the masses of peasantry in China I escaped from.
Now the scary bleeding has finally stopped as the constipation is gone. I just need to continue to apply the hemorrhoid ointment to heal the external wound, diligently wash and keep it clean. That is, until next time when it unexpectedly breaks out again. A dreadful thought. But it’s my lifelong roller coaster reality.
What about the Zinc-rich delicious but hot-natured roasted almonds and fragrant coffee with tasty cream? Would I still plan to eat any more of them?
You bet. Not right now, but soon. And when I do, it will be in much less quantity, following the golden rule: moderation.
Too much of any good things are not good for you.
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