Don’t Want to Damage Your Spleen and Stomach? Eat This Way — Doctor Luo Dalun: Dietary Moderation Is the First Step to a Strong Stomach and Spleen

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today let’s talk about Chinese medicine. About what? About how to protect the spleen and stomach. We all know, where does the body’s zheng qi (upright qi) come from? The epidemic is still with us, and many people’s bodies keep having problems — why? Because their zheng qi is insufficient — when zheng qi is insufficient, you easily catch external pathogens. It may not even be the epidemic, it may be an ordinary cold — external pathogens invade easily. And when zheng qi is insufficient, other problems in the body appear too.

Zheng qi insufficient? Look at the spleen and stomach first — why the Tonifying Earth School set its sights on the spleen and stomach

Doctor Luo Dalun pulls the topic back to a core school of Chinese medicine — the Tonifying Earth School (bu tu pai). Why is it called “tonifying earth”? In the Five Elements of Chinese medicine, the spleen and stomach belong to Earth. The doctors of this school, represented by Li Dongyuan, discovered a pattern: almost every kind of bodily imbalance eventually lands on the spleen and stomach.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When the spleen and stomach are injured, the result is that zheng qi becomes even more insufficient, and then all kinds of secondary problems appear — more and more problems. So the spleen and stomach are a core of regulating the body — this is very important. The idea of the Tonifying Earth School is: how do you tune the spleen and stomach up well? Once the spleen and stomach are tuned well, the body recovers by itself, and zheng qi becomes sufficient. How do you protect the spleen and stomach in daily life? There is one very important thing in here — you absolutely must be moderate in eating and drinking, never immoderate.

The one thing the spleen and stomach fear most: dietary indiscretion

The ancients described the causes of disease as “the six excesses from outside, the seven emotions from within” (wai gan liu yin, nei shang qi qing). What is inside the seven emotions? Food, drink, fatigue and overwork (yin shi lao juan) — food and drink come first on the list, along with bad emotions and the rest. And “dietary indiscretion” (yin shi bu jie) is precisely a major factor in injuring the spleen and stomach and eventually making the whole body ill.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does this “bu jie” mean? It’s not the “jie” of cleanliness (jie) — it’s the “jie” of moderation (jie) — eating and drinking without restraint. This includes irregular eating: when mealtime comes, don’t leave yourself hungry and skip the meal, and so on. You must eat regularly — this is very important.

Eating on time is a rhythm — your child cries and won’t eat? You’re the one who wrecked the rhythm

Speaking of regularity in eating, Doctor Luo brings up a real debate he has had with parents: there is a “free-range” school today that says children should eat whenever they feel like it — make the food when the child is hungry, no forcing needed.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some parents have argued with me, saying: our child eats whenever he wants — when the child is hungry I cook for him, and he’s happy when he eats. Go ahead and eat that way — that child’s body will definitely be in a mess, definitely chaotic. There has to be a rhythm, there must be a rhythm — when the time comes, eat.

So what if the child cries and refuses to eat at mealtime? Doctor Luo says it plainly: you are the one who wrecked his rhythm — once the rhythm is disordered, he genuinely isn’t hungry at that hour. Many parents chase their children around feeding them, and this is the root of it.

The same logic applies not just to children — even more so to adults. Some people skip breakfast and then gorge at noon; that’s wrong. Rhythm is crucial — when the time comes and you don’t eat, gastric juice is still secreted, but with no food in the stomach it injures the stomach lining, causing damage that then has to be repaired again and again — and during that repair process problems can arise; in some cases the cells even mutate — and that is cancer. So eating on time matters enormously.

Don’t let your palate chase you around: did the ancients ever eat this stuff?

Besides eating on time, you also need “moderation” (jie zhi). Doctor Luo sighs: we have now entered an era where food is richer than it could possibly be. But think about it — ancient China didn’t have that much to eat — chili peppers only entered China around the Ming dynasty; before that there were no chilies at all, and “mala” spice could only come from Sichuan pepper (ma jiao) and huajiao. In the Spring and Autumn period, you wanted to eat a tomato? There was none — stir-fried tomato and egg is a much later invention.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What the ancients ate was relatively simple. Now our ingredients are plentiful, the whole world’s cuisines are universal, and cooking methods have multiplied — all these methods coming together have tuned everyone’s appetite up extraordinarily high — the threshold has been raised too high. So now people often sit at a meal thinking: what should I eat? Nothing sounds good. Why? Because your threshold has been raised — the chef stir-fries with a big ladle, spoonful after spoonful of seasoning going in. We really don’t need to eat this much gourmet food. Everyone must exercise a little moderation.

The diet of long-lived elders: simpler than you’d expect

How do you moderate? Doctor Luo asks everyone to observe a phenomenon — long-lived elders. Many people say: my grandfather lived long, my grandmother lived long — what were their characteristics? All their lives they liked those few simple things, and they just kept eating them.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some elders like corn — corn paste, corn porridge, a bowl every day, with an egg, with something else; some elders put a little sweet potato in their millet porridge every single day without fail; others beat a raw egg in boiling water every morning, one a day, for their whole lives; or just some greens dipped in sauce. That’s how simple the diet of many long-lived elders is — but they eat healthily, and they stuck with it. I’ve observed it; among the long-lived elders I’ve heard of, not one eats mala xiang guo (Sichuan spicy hotpot) and rich, greasy food every day.

Doctor Luo also tells an interesting example — Switzerland. Swiss people in their eighties and nineties are everywhere. What do they eat?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Swiss elders also eat corn — corn flour, corn paste, mixed with water into a paste, spread out on a plate, and that’s how they eat it — with a few slices of meat, venison or a chicken cutlet, just a small amount. I saw a video of an old man live-streaming — he eats this every day. Relatively simple, no rich and greasy food, no piles of seasonings — but it genuinely helps the body absorb nutrients, and it genuinely helps longevity.

People of tranquil temperament have spleen and stomachs that stay quiet too

Some people say: who can stand that? The moment I step onto the street it’s all gourmet food — I can’t resist. Doctor Luo says there are two sides to this. First, it’s related to temperament — long-lived elders tend to have tranquil temperaments, few extra desires; they sit quietly alone.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This temperament lets them enter a quiet state more easily — they don’t want to eat lots of braised or mala food; they’d rather have some corn paste, sweet potato and millet porridge, a few greens dipped in sauce — they feel that’s just fine, and in fact the body’s nutrition really is sufficient. Their spleen and stomach haven’t been provoked, haven’t received so much stimulation, so they genuinely find their food tasty. Second, in our era, everyone also needs to be clear-headed — it really is time to moderate.

The richness of food we see now is already the extreme limit in Chinese history — the emperors and kings of ancient times, when they wanted something good to eat, what did they have? Want to cook stir-fried tomato and egg — that didn’t exist back then; want something mala — no, because there were no chilies, they could only use things like huajiao. If we can control our desires a little now, and get used to it, it benefits the body.

One spoonful of huajiao down — what you’re actually eating is “medicine”

Why does eating too well actually injure the spleen and stomach instead? Doctor Luo points out a principle of Chinese medicine — medicine and food share one origin (yao shi tong yuan): every ingredient carries a certain medicinal nature, and everything you eat tunes the body.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: A lot of the time, when is the spleen and stomach injured? It’s from eating these things too richly — the body simply can’t absorb them. Do you know what all those seasonings are tuning when they go down? Qi and blood, all of it. Was huajiao (Sichuan pepper) a medicine in the past? Chuan jiao (Sichuan pepper) was always a medicine. You take a spoonful and stir-fry it into your dish — would you say you’re eating medicine? The huajiao, star anise and everything else piled into mala xiang guo — do they have an adjusting effect on the body’s qi and blood? Absolutely! These flavors get stronger and stronger — bitter, spicy, sour, sweet all thrown in — and your qi and blood keep following along: boiling for a moment, calming down the next, hot one moment, cold the next — that does the body no good at all, and especially no good for the spleen and stomach.

So toward appetite, toward desire for food, we should lighten up. Too many people’s spleen and stomach injuries are actually connected to eating chaotically.

“Disease enters through the mouth” is no idle saying: lots of illnesses really are eaten

Doctor Luo says the definition of “gourmet food” today has grown far too broad. The natural sweetness of the old days — the fragrance of rice itself — nobody can appreciate that anymore; without dishes to go with it, people can’t even swallow plain rice.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some friends say, when they go to a temple and eat the vegetarian meals, they used to wonder — how come the more I eat, the more flavorful it is? Actually, if you savor it, the original flavor of food is quite delicious — but now we’ve all eaten ourselves into confusion. Lots of illnesses are eaten. “Disease enters through the mouth” is not an idle saying. Every day I see all kinds of damage in people’s bodies — poor spleen and stomach, all kinds of problems — and when you actually think about it, they’re all connected to today’s whole food environment.

Today’s delicacies already far exceed what the ancients could have accepted — if an ancient person time-traveled to the present, he’d see a world he couldn’t understand at all: what’s this, a tomato? What’s this, a chili? Countless ingredients, all kinds of traditional and modern seasonings that didn’t exist before. Can our bodies really understand this abruptly changed environment?

A reminder before Spring Festival: do subtraction for the spleen and stomach

At this point, Doctor Luo especially reminds everyone: Spring Festival is almost here — be careful, don’t eat everywhere.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Lots of gourmet food now — people eat out every day, they’ve eaten it to the extreme. There was a contact-tracing case in Shenyang before — a patient got infected with COVID, and when the tracing came out, wow, this fellow went from restaurant to restaurant — it was basically a “Shenyang gourmet tourism route”; follow his route and you can’t go wrong: smoked chicken racks, grilled beef… Eating like that is bad. It’s the end of the year, gatherings are starting to multiply, the glass is raised, day after day all kinds of delicacies come up — and this is winter, when qi and blood settle into stillness; if you pile on too much extra burden, the spleen and stomach can’t take it.

So Doctor Luo’s advice is: at Spring Festival you can enjoy some good food, but do a little subtraction — just be appropriate — don’t burden the spleen and stomach during the holiday. Learn from those rural elders, from the long-lived elders on the lifestyle channels: keep it simple — millet porridge with sweet potato every day may look monotonous, but with some greens and some pickled side dishes, the nutrition is never monotonous. Some elders really do live that simply their whole lives, and they live long.

When the spleen and stomach absorb the essence of food with the lightest burden — that is the best state

Why do long-lived elders eat simply, even monotonously? Some say it’s because their economic conditions were poor — no, some city people really do eat millet porridge with sweet potato every day, their whole lives.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does this show? It shows that simple, healthy eating is reasonable. It’s not true that only when our nutrition is guaranteed rich and every flavor is fully satisfied is it good for the spleen and stomach — no. If you can let the spleen and stomach absorb the essence of food (jing wei) they need while carrying the lightest possible burden, that is the greatest success. What do you sacrifice? Possibly your craving — that extravagant longing for aroma and deliciousness. If you’re truly tempted, indulge occasionally — eat a little less, that’s fine. But maintaining moderation is always right.

If you can do a little subtraction in your diet and protect your stomach and intestines — don’t let them endure too many trials — Doctor Luo says this should be the first point of strengthening the spleen and stomach, the most foundational work. Winter is coming, and the New Year is near: good food is nice, but the spleen and stomach matter more — do subtraction, let the body absorb the essence while carrying the lightest burden. That is worth more than any delicacy from mountain or sea.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, today I’m just reminding everyone of this. A lot of what I’ve said is a summary of experience and lessons. Let’s stop here for today. Thank you all very much for listening. Thank you, goodbye.

What to take away

Your zheng qi (upright qi) comes from the spleen and stomach — when the body is out of balance, the problem usually lands there, so tuning up the spleen and stomach is the core of recovery. That is why Li Dongyuan’s Tonifying Earth School (bu tu pai) puts the spleen and stomach first.
Dietary indiscretion (yin shi bu jie) is the thing the spleen and stomach fear most — “jie” means moderation, not cleanliness. Irregular eating, overeating, and rich, stimulating food all count.
Eat on schedule. When mealtime comes and you don’t eat, gastric juice still flows and injures the stomach lining; repeated injury and repair can even lead to cellular mutation — cancer. Children who “eat whenever they want” end up with chaotic rhythms and ruined digestion.
Don’t let your palate chase you around. Chili peppers only reached China around the Ming dynasty; tomatoes didn’t exist in the Spring and Autumn period. Today’s endless ingredients and seasonings have raised everyone’s taste threshold so high that nothing satisfies — moderation resets it.
Long-lived elders eat simply: corn porridge with an egg, millet porridge with sweet potato, greens dipped in sauce, a morning egg beaten in boiling water — in China and Switzerland alike. No centenarian survives on mala xiang guo every day.
Every ingredient is a medicine (yao shi tong yuan): huajiao and chuan jiao were always medicines — a spoonful stir-fried into your dish tunes your qi and blood, whipping it from boiling to calm, hot to cold. Rich seasonings are no friend to the spleen and stomach.
“Disease enters through the mouth” is real — many illnesses really are eaten. Before the Spring Festival, do subtraction: let the spleen and stomach absorb the essence of food while carrying the lightest burden. That is the first and most fundamental step to a strong stomach and spleen.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lecture series (protecting the spleen and stomach — dietary moderation special).