Winter is the Season of the Kidney Meridian

In Oriental Medicine we work with the Meridian System.  There are 14 Meridians in the body; they are also called Channels or Pathways.  Pretend you are a Christmas tree.  You have 14 strands of lights; if your lights are on, some are slow moving, some move fast and maybe some of your lights aren’t even on!  These Meridians correspond with body parts.  They are the Kidney, Bladder, Liver, Gall Bladder, Heart, Small Intestine, Pericardium, Triple Warmer, Stomach, Spleen, Lung and Large Intestine.  These Meridians deal with the organs and many other things.  The Meridians also have work with colors, odors, sounds, pulse, flavors, emotions, and time of day and year (seasons).  Your Acupuncture Physician uses these to diagnosis and treat you – very complete and complicated. These Meridians help us formulate a treatment plan also.  In addition we deal with the Qi and Blood System in your body.  Qi is what runs everything and is hard to describe.  It can’t be touched or seen but the lack of Qi or abundance of it is.  When the wind blows you don’t see the wind but you see the effects of it from a gentle breeze moving the trees to a tornado.  Qi moves through our body or it gets stuck.  Being stuck is never good, freely flowing is good.

The Kidney and Bladder Meridians correspond with the winter season.  They work with your kidneys, bladder, joints, feet, nerves, teeth, brain, spine, ears, memory, head hair, and part of the reproduction system. The colors blue/black is involved in the Kidney/Bladder Meridian as are the flavor of salt, the time of day is 3-7 p.m.  The emotion is anxiety and fear. The Bladder Meridian starts around your eyes and moves down your back, down the back of your legs onto the outside of your foot to your little toe.  The Kidney Meridian starts on the bottom of your foot right after the pad below your toes, almost to the arch (called Kidney 1), up the inside of your leg, up your torso close to your belly button, up to your clavicle area and stops.

The cold, dark and sometimes damp season is bad for our joints and back problems.  There are more earaches in the winter also.  Cold weather causes some people to urinate more frequently.  Cold and damp makes Qi get stuck and that causes stiffness, aches, and pains. We call this “stagnation.”  Rubbing your back, using moist heat and Acupuncture all help release your Qi so it can move freely.   Rubbing the inside of your ankles up the inside of your legs and the back of your legs will also help move Qi.  Those are parts of the Kidney/Bladder Meridians.

Here are some tips to help you through the winter season.  Place your hands on your back just below your waist.  Your kidneys are here. Gently run this area up toward your back muscles.  Keep this area warm day and night. Your spine is made up of “joints.”  Cold and damp affects your back.  Do this daily – more than once if you have aches and pains there.  Remember it’s your body and it’s ok to touch it!  While you are rubbing you are activating Acupuncture points that will help “tonify” your Kidney /Bladder Meridian – and that’s always a good thing. Rubbing the meridians (see above) will help you, too.  I feel the most important Acupoints on the body is the first one on the Kidney Meridian (K1), see the written description of the location  2 paragraphs up..  You can rub this one by placing the big toe of the opposite foot on it and rub.  You can do both feet.  You can rub these spots for 30 seconds at a time.  Early evening is a great time for this because it’s the strongest time of day for the Kidney and Bladder Meridians. Hot showers and moist heat packs are beneficial. 

During the winter season we tend to crave hot soups and beverages. Over thousands of years our bodies and brains have figured out what helps us to survive.  In Oriental Medicine foods have an energetic property.  Foods can be cold in nature but served hot like tea or tomatoes.  Or they can be hot or warm in nature and served cold like wine and green onions. For more information please refer to my book, Sensitivities: The subtle cause of suffering, the Hidden cause of disease or Unleashing the Power of Food by FaXiang Hou.

Coffee is warm in nature and tea is cold.  It is better to drink a hot cup of coffee (decaf, too) to warm you up if you have a chill.  Ginger tea is warm (it’s not black tea) and is a good choice.

Food also has flavors.  In the winter we must need more salt because that is the flavor of the Kidney Meridian.  All foods have some salt in them and use extra salt in reason. A food does not have to taste salty to be salty in nature. Some winter foods are crabs, artichokes, barley, clams, millet, oysters, and seaweed.  Other good winter foods are cinnamon, watermelon, lettuce, onions, black sesame seeds, caraway, chestnuts, carrots, chicken eggs yolks, dill seeds, kidney beans, mangos, string beans, mangos, star fruit, tangerines, walnuts, and sweet potatoes.

Eating these foods, herbs, nuts, and seeds can strengthen the Kidney/Bladder Meridians.  Try to eat a variety of the foods daily.  Eating the same foods day in and day out can trigger a sensitivity reaction.  Cooking the food is better than raw food if at all possible if you have a weakened system.

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	Debra Pardee Gaffney C.C.P.A., A.P. Volusia Center for Complementary Medicine 339 E. New York Ave., DeLand, FL 32724 (386) 734-4126