When you’re cold, you’re dead

How your green smoothie might be contributing to your infertility.

In our clinic, we like to break down Traditional Chinese Medicine concepts into basic terms.

We like you to be informed and educated on how your dietary and lifestyle choices have possibly contributed to the position you find yourself in today. We only have a limited time with you in each appointment so it’s vital that we explain complex Chinese medicine concepts in easily understood, straightforward terms.

One concept we explain repeatedly is the concept of warmth.

So let’s look at that in detail.

A living body is warm.

A dead body is cold.

When you come to our clinic wanting to be treated for fertility issues, what is it that you are actually asking for?

A baby.

But what is a baby?

A baby is a life.

A baby starts off as 2 cells. 2 seeds (egg and sperm).

When an egg and sperm fertilise, you get a ball of cells that are alive. But it doesn’t look human.

Think about it. When you get a positive pregnancy test your baby is only 14 days old (roughly). The heart doesn’t begin beating until the 18^th day.

It doesn’t even look “human” until well into the second trimester. Before that, well….it kind of looks like an…alien…

But the whole time, from the very first day of fertilisation, it is alive. It is life.

Before it is a “baby” it is a life.

And that is what we focus on in our treatments for you. Life.

And how it is we can get as much life as possible into your eggs and sperm.

So back to a living body is warm. A dead body is cold.

Every day you eat food. Why? Some would say you eat food for “nutrients”. Which is true. But let’s look at the broader concept of why we eat food. We eat food to stay alive. A bottle of multi vitamins has “nutrients”, but you can’t live off just multi vitamins. Multi vitamins are not vital to survival.

Food is vital to survival. Food contains life.

In Chinese medicine we call this life, “Qi”.

If you are struggling, or have been struggling, to fall pregnant, or stay pregnant, it’s vital that we look at ways you can maximise how well your body is able to obtain life/Qi from your food. We want your body to be able to easily, and efficiently, maximise the amount of life/Qi extraction from the food you eat. We want the process of digestion to be easy, so that not too much energy is being spent on the process of breaking your food down.

We want your body to use as little energy as possible in the digestion of your food, in order to maximise the amount of return of energy it gets from the food you eat.

We can also explain it in terms of thermodynamics.

Your body is 36.5-37°C

Think about how hot that is.

All your internal organs function, and are kept alive, at this temperature.

(Even embryos, in an IVF clinic, are kept alive at this temperature. All the incubators that house growing embryos remain a constant temperature of 37°C).

One of the laws of thermodynamics is that energy moves from something that is hot to something that is cold.

So now let’s talk about your green smoothie.…

You’ve probably heard that a green smoothie is really good for you. You’ve heard that your green smoothie contains a lot of nutrients and vitamins.

Is your green smoothie warm or cold?

I’m going to hazard a guess and say that it’s cold. (Spinach, kale, cucumber, coconut water from the fridge and half a frozen banana, some frozen berries and some ice cubes from the freezer).

When you drink your smoothie your body actually has to break it down in order to digest it. It has to digest it to get to the nutrients – or life – within it in.

But your green smoothie is about 3°C.

Your stomach is 37°C.

Thermodynamics states that energy moves from hot to cold. So where is energy being transferred when you drink your green smoothie?

First your body is having to expend a lot of energy to warm up your green smoothie to 37°C. Then it has to use more energy to actually break it down to digest it. Your body has to cook your food so it can digest it properly. And it’s just used twice as much energy to do it.

Where does this energy come from? If you cook something in the kitchen you have a power source you can use. Kettle, toaster, stove, oven.

When you cook something inside you, the energy expenditure comes from you. But you don’t have an infinite “power source” to plug into to do the cooking.

This becomes depleting over time.

It’s depleting because you’re not “just” having a green smoothie. Our Western style diet is predominantly cold and raw foods, because they’re the fastest, easiest, convenient foods to eat when we try to be healthy.

Warmth aids circulation. Our bodies stay alive by the adequate circulation of blood to every cell and tissue. Your eggs, sperm and uterus are no different. In fact, they probably require more circulation than you give credit too.

Nothing circulates in a cold frozen body. Nothing stays alive when it’s frozen. That why IVF clinics freeze embryos. They literally “snap freeze” your embryos in an effort to halt their growth. When they transfer a frozen embryo they have to warm the embryo back up to 37°C.

You can treat your body kindly and maximise the amount of life/Qi you are obtaining from your food by doing away with your green smoothies (and other cold meals and drinks) and opting instead for cooked breakfasts – omelettes, eggs, porridge etc. and cooked/warm meals in general.

If your goal is to fall pregnant, or stay pregnant, you want to minimise the amount of energy expenditure for digestion so that you can maximise the amount of life/Qi/energy absorption into your body and into your eggs and sperm. There are no Chinese herbs or acupuncture herbs that can improve a cold, raw diet if you are not willing to change.

Food is your first medicine. Make it work for you.

To find out more info, or book in an appointment to find out more, contact us today.