by Setareh Moafi, Ph.D., L.Ac.
It’s often said in Chinese Medicine that your Kidneys comprise your most essential organ system.
The Kidneys house your essential energy, known as Jing Qi, as well as your willpower, or Zhi, which together lay the foundation for a healthy, long life.
The Kidney system also plays an important role in supporting your digestion and its fortitude is a major player in maintaining a healthy metabolism. This is because your Kidney Yang supports both of the primary organs of digestion in Chinese Medicine — your Spleen and your Stomach.
Healthy Digestion for a Healthy Metabolism
Metabolism is the biochemical process that enables organisms to transform chemical energy stored in molecules into energy that can be used for cellular processes. Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the number of calories your body burns to maintain vital body functions such as heart rate, brain function and breathing.
When your metabolism is impeded, a cascade of imbalances can occur, including the interruption of basic functions including sleep and digestion.
Improving your digestion is one of the fastest ways to boost your metabolism — healthy digestion leads to nutrient absorption from food for the formation of energy.
Digestion involves two distinct parts:
Mechanical digestion by chewing, grinding, churning and mixing that takes place in the mouth and the stomach.
Chemical digestion that uses enzymes, bile acids in order to break down food material into a form that can be absorbed, then assimilated into the tissues of the body. Most chemical digestion takes place in the small intestine. Many of the digestive enzymes that act in the small intestine are secreted by the pancreas and liver and enter the small intestine via the pancreatic duct.
From a Chinese Medicine point of view, the primary organs of digestion are your Spleen and Stomach, both of which are supported by your Kidney Qi.
Your Stomach is your ‘cooking pot’ — Stomach Fire creates the acids to break down and digest proteins.
Your Spleen Qi, on the hand, needs more of an alkaline environment for the production of pancreatic enzymes to break down carbohydrates.
Warm, cooked foods including soups are easy to digest and therefore minimize the taxation on your digestive system, in particular your Spleen Qi.
Warm, Yang energy increases circulation throughout your body and supports digestion. It’s therefore important to eat warm, cooked foods, especially in the wintertime and in colder temperatures in general.
The primary function of Spleen Qi is to transform and transport both your food and your thoughts.
Each time you consume something cold such as an iced drink or ice cream, the Spleen Qi expends even more energy to transform that food into energy.
The harder the Spleen has to work, the more it becomes taxed and its potential ability to transform and transport food (as well as your thoughts) becomes inhibited, resulting in the accumulation of dampness, phlegm and what can be recognized as a fungal terrain.
Eventually, this leads to weight gain and poor metabolic function, as well as excessive worry or overthinking resulting from the Spleen’s correlation with your mental faculty, known as Yi.
Strong Kidney Yang is essential to support your Stomach Fire and Spleen Qi to aid digestion; healthy digestion plus healthy food is what provides your body with nutrition.
Contrary to common trends that encourage eating salads in order to lose weight, Chinese Medicine encourages instead eating warm, cooked foods including soups and stews to keep the Kidney Yang and Spleen Qi vital and therefore maintain a healthy metabolism.
Warm Your Core to Boost Your Metabolism
The kidneys are bean-shaped organs that are located against the back muscles in the upper abdominal area. On top of each kidney lie the adrenal glands, which produce a number of different steroid hormones that regulate many functions to maintain healthy metabolism and brain function.
The adrenals are commonly known as the ‘stress glands’ because they respond to acute stress, but if episodes of stress become chronic, long lasting or recurring, they can drive the body into metabolic crises.
Since the adrenal glands produce hormones that help regulate your metabolism, immune system, blood pressure, and stress response, it’s important to reduce taxation on them and the Kidney system as a whole.
Besides managing your stress and eating more warm, cooked foods, it’s also important to keep your core temperature warm to support a healthy metabolism.
This is naturally more important during the colder months in Autumn and Winter, but it’s important to pay attention to this overall, especially if you’re dealing with chronic fatigue, adrenal exhaustion or illness.
The core of your body, known as the Dan Tian in Chinese and Hara in Japanese, stores the essential energy of your body. Too much cold stagnates the energy in this region, inhibiting it from circulating throughout the rest of your body.
It’s important to cultivate this core energy through practices including Yoga and Qi Gong, as well as to keep this area of your body warm in general.
Moxibustion — the application of heat from warming herbs including mugwort along specific points and areas of the body — is an exceptional way to bring warmth to your Kidneys and to the core of your body.
Your Acupuncturist may do moxibustion on specific points that support your metabolism. You can also place a moxa heat pack directly on your lower abdomen and lower back to help nourish your Kidney energy and increase your core temperature, especially during the colder months.
Far infrared saunas are another way to warm your core temperature and support your Kidneys. The many benefits of the longer wavelength infrared waves that are thermal include improved circulation, better sleep, pain reduction, detoxification, and increased metabolism.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the gentle heat induction from far infrared rays helps you increase blood circulation. As your body increases sweat production to cool itself, your heart works harder to pump blood at a greater rate to boost circulation and therefore support your metabolism.
Conclusion
A healthy metabolism supports you to feel vital and energetic while supporting all of the basic functions of your body, including your heart rate, gut health, brain function, and breathing.
The fundamental way to to support your metabolism is to maintain the health of your Kidney energy.
The Kidneys are more than just an individual organ in Chinese Medicine as they also correspond to your reproductive system, adrenal glands, auditory system, your skeletal structure and your brain. Important hormones that support your body’s ability to regenerate, such as DHEA, testosterone, progesterone and estrogen all relate to your Kidneys health.
Two of the easiest ways to support this process is to eat mostly warm, cooked foods and drinks as well as that you keep the core of your body strong, supple and warm.
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Setareh Moafi, Ph.D., L.Ac. is Co-Owner and Director of A Center for Natural Healing in Santa Clara, California, a health and wellness clinic she runs with her husband, Salvador Cefalu, M.S., L.Ac., that specializes in Classical Chinese Medicine and Traditional Japanese Acupuncture. Dr. Moafi offers clinical services and transformational courses that blend the ancient practices of Classical Chinese Medicine and Yoga. Learn more at www.setarehmoafi.com and www.acenterfornaturalhealing.com.
