Yin and yang of the flu

An understanding of yin and yang can be very helpful for preventing the flu as well as for flu treatment - especially if you want to treat the flu naturally without the use of harmful drugs and vaccines.

Macrobiotics has made the yin yang theory very easy to understand. For a while, just forget about words like yin or yang and think in terms of expansion and contraction. A few examples will make this clearer.

If you pour water or oil on a flat surface, the water or oil will spread outwards. We say the water or oil has "expanding energy". If you break open an egg and pour it out, even though the egg is liquid, it does not expand outwards. Instead, you can almost visualise a "contracting force" holding the egg together and preventing it from spreading.

Or consider tropical fruits... they are soft, watery and often have a strong smell - that is, the smell spreads far and wide. These are again expanding qualities. In contrast, temperate fruits like apples and pears are more harm and firm and they do not have a strong smell.

Everything - every food, person or phenomena - can be seen to be either expanding or contracting. In the macrobiotic theory of yin and yang - which is different from the traditional Chinese version of this theory - expanding energy is called yin and contracting energy is called yang.

Flu symptoms

If we look at the flu, we can also analyse it in terms of yin and yang. Let's look at the common flu symptoms:

• Runny nose. This is watery mucus flowing out of the body. It is an expanding or yin symptom.
  
  
• Sneezing / coughing. Again, this is an expanding force as the body dispels the sneeze / cough outwards.
  
  
• Sore throat is obviously an expanded condition too. Your throat is swollen!
  
  
• High fever. In terms of yin and yang, a fever may not be obvious at first. But what happens here is that heat is leaving the body. The body is hot to the touch. But quite often, especially in the case of very high fever, the person feels cold inside. So heat is moving outwards or expending. Again, this is a yin symptom.
  
  
• Headache / Giddiness. A headache may not obviously be expanding or contracting, but giddiness is clearer. The mind is unable to focus and stay fixed, but is expanded and wavy. And if you think about it, the headache that you get with a flu also has a swollen or expanded feeling.
  
  
• Fatigue. Those new to yin yang theory may not immediately understand fatigue in these terms. But think about what is required for your muscles to work. It is tautness or contracting power. If your muscles are soft and relaxed, you don't feel like moving. That's what's happening when you feel fatigued. You don't feel like moving because your muscles are in an expanded state. This is yet another yin symptom.

All these and more tell us that, in the theory of yin and yang, the flu is considered a yin disease. The condition of a person who has the flu is, in many ways, "expanded".

Yin and yang at the cellular level

This state of expandedness goes all the way down to the cellular level. When you have the flu, your cells are expanded.

In fact, this is why you get "attacked" by the flu virus in the first place. On its own, the flu virus - and other types of viruses - are harmless. They just exist but they cannot grow and multiply. Viruses need to enter your cells before they can be activated; before they can cause any harm.

How do viruses enter your cells?

Well, your cell walls have tiny holes for nutrients to enter and for toxins to be discharged. Imagine what happens when the cells expand and become larger? Well, those tiny holes become larger as well. Up to a point, they will become large enough to let viruses in.

When you understand yin and yang at the cellular level, then you will know how to avoid the flu - avoid becoming too yin or "expanded" in the first place.

This does not mean you should only eat yang foods and make your body very yang or contracted. If you do, you might avoid the flu but develop other, yang-type health problems instead. The key to health, as always, is balance.

Yin and yang health check

Here are some simple ways to check your condition in terms of yin and yang, whether you are too expanded or contracted:

• Examine the palms of your hand. First, consider the color. Your palm should be about the same color as the inside of your wrist. Red patches mean that the blood vessels beneath the skin have expanded to the point that they start to become visible. If you are slightly yin / expanded, your fingertips might be reddish. If you are very yin / expanded, you will have red blotches all over your palm. The texture of your palm is another indication. Is it soft like tofu? Firm? Or hard? Likewise, the grip of your handshake is also an indication of whether you are yin or yang.
  
• Examine your stools. Are they soft (expanded) or hard (contracted)? Do they float or sink? A healthy, balanced condition will give you stools that are well-formed, and floating. And your stools should leave your anus clean, without requiring much wiping or washing. Animals in the wild, incidentally, never need to use toilet paper!
  
  
• Examine your urine. Is it transparent (expanded) or dark in colour (contracted)? Do you urinate many times a day (expanded) or do you hardly urinate (contracted).

And so on. There are many ways to check your condition. And you can learn more about marcobiotics and about yin and yang at www.natural-cancer-cures.com

For now, what we want to know is how to use this understanding of yin and yang to prevent and treat the flu. If you have the flu, or you are the sort of person who catches the flu easily, then your conditon is obviously yin / expanded.

So to prevent the flu, you should minimise your intake of yin foods:

• Avoid sugar
• Avoid food chemicals like MSG, food coloring, etc Basically eat fresh foods, avoid canned or processed foods.
• Avoid drugs, including most pharmaceutical drugs
• Avoid vegetables that are hollow, loosely structured, soft, watery, sticky, slimy, etc. These are mainly tropical vegetables like eggplant, bell peppers, tomato, chilli and various types of gourds. Among leafy vegetables, kangkong - which has a hollow stem - is particularly to be avoided.
• Avoid strong spicy food, especially chilli.
• Avoid tropical fruits that are very large, with strong smell, like durians and jackfruit.
• Avoid milk and dairy products like yoghurt, cream, cheese, etc.

How much water to drink?

Flu patients are usually told to drink plenty of water and this is good advice. When you have the flu, your body is fighting an infection and a lot of toxins are produced in the process. Drinking plenty of water helps flush out these toxins.

But if you do not have the flu and you want to prevent the flu, then it is not a good idea to drink plenty of water. You need to drink enough, but don't go overboard.

Why? In this case, you don't even need the theory of yin and yang to understand the reason. All you need is to understand the process of osmosis, which you would have learned in primary or secondary school science. During osmosis, water always flows from the less salty (more diluted) to the more salty (more concentrated) medium.

Now the fluid in your cells is slightly salty. When you drink plenty of water, you dilute the fluid outside your cells. So your cells will absorb water. What happens next? Your cells expand... and the gaps in the cell membrane enlarge, allowing viruses to enter.

Of course, the theory of yin and yang will also lead you to the same conclusion. Water in yin / expanded. Drinking plenty of water will make your condition yin / expanded and so make you vulnerable to virus attack.

Saturated vs unsaturated fats

As we read in another article about saturated fats, cholesterol and polyunsaturated sats, there is yet another way in which viruses can enter your cells - and cause havoc.

Your cell walls are made primarily of saturated fats and cholesterol. If you avoid these two food substances, and take polyunsaturated fats instead, your cell walls weaken and make it easier for viruses to enter.

In terms of yin and yang, we see that:

• Saturated fats, being more concentrated, are more yang / contracted.
• Polyunsaturated fats, being more liquid, are more yin / expanded.

So once again, we arrive at the same conclusion - an excess of yin foods will make the body more vulnerable to diseases like the flu.

A yin and yang 'test'

To end off, here is a test question for you... Are viruses yin or yang?

Well, if you know the nature of virues, you should know the answer. Viruses are very small, compact organisms, about 1/100th the size of bacteria. So viruses are extremely yang / contracted.

So what is happening here? Well, according to yin yang theory, opposites attract. Yin attracts yang, and vice versa. It means that when your body condition is yin, you attract viruses, which are yang.

So it is that viruses make you sick? Or is it that you become sick first? You become too yin. And when that happens, you attract viruses?

This is food for thought, for it again questions the widely accepted germ theory of disease.