Title : Traditional dietetic treatment - From Hippocrates to China
Abstract:
Objectives: To study the difference of the effect of foods described in the complete works of Hippocrates in ancient Greek, Ayurveda in Southern Asia, science of nutrition of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in East Asia and suggest the new viewpoint of the future diet study.
Methods: Compare the indices to evaluate the effects of foods described in the complete works of Hippocrates, Ayurveda and the TCM.
Results: In these three medicines, the common index to evaluate the effects of the foods is chill/warm.
Discussion: In traditional medicine, the chill/warm is a broad general index to express subjective feeling, presence of inflammation, mental excitement as well as increase or decrease of physical temperature. In this study, we do not compare the effect of foods except the chill/ warm. The similarity in these three medicines is that three or four elements are used to explain diseases. Four fluids in the medicine of Hippocrates, three do as in Ayurveda and qui-blood-fluid in TCM were used as elements which describe the mechanisms of diseases. We will compare the effects of foods except the chill/warm in the near future.
