An article intended for practitioners of Chinese medicine: I have written here before about a phenomenon called ARFID (Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder), meaning the avoidance of food due to fear that it will worsen digestive problems.

That's why when a patient comes to me, I actually want to check what he can eat and not take more things off his menu.

Some of the foods that people remove from their menu due to concerns about the digestive system's reaction to them are nightshade vegetables, so today I will write here how Chinese medicine views nightshade vegetables, when they are appropriate and when there is no problem with them.

The solanaceous vegetable group includes familiar vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.

In a small poll I conducted in a Facebook group for people with sensitive intestines, I asked which cruciferous vegetables were not good for the digestive system. Out of 65 votes, eggplant received the most negative votes, followed by red pepper and tomato (which is similar to what I hear at the clinic).

Potatoes, according to the survey, are the vegetable that least disturbs the digestive system.

By the way, in a similar survey I conducted, 58 percent stated that nightshades do not cause them digestive problems or that only some do. So I don't think it's worth avoiding certain vegetables just because they belong to the nightshade family.

So when are they suitable and for whom?

As you know, according to Chinese medicine, the taste, texture, color, and appearance of food are related to the effect of the food on our body.

Potatoes are sweet, light brown/reddish in color, so we can conclude that they strengthen the earth element and will be relatively easy to digest (as we saw in the survey).

Who is it not suitable for? For people with dampness who suffer from a feeling of heaviness in the body or stomach, a feeling of incomplete emptying, and mucus in the stool. On the other hand, since it is relatively easy to digest, I do recommend eating it in small quantities if you want to diversify the vegetables you eat so that patients do not feel too limited in their diet. I do not think that you should necessarily eat mashed potatoes, but you can make a mashed root vegetable that contains both potatoes and parsley and celery roots (with milk substitute).

Tomatoes are full of fluids and are therefore good for people with yin deficiency and dry stools. They are considered very cold in Chinese medicine and therefore it is best not to eat too much of them, especially now in the winter.

If we want to speed up the bowel movement of a patient who suffers from bloating and lack of fluids, we can ask him to eat crushed tomatoes with a little black pepper.

Eggplants are blood-thinning (you can see the connection to blood by the oval color). They will be good for people who suffer from severe, sharp pain, specifically menstrual pain.

Sweet peppers are spicy and move qi. Theoretically, they could be good for someone who suffers from pressing pain, but since I hear about peppers and eggplants having negative reactions from the digestive system, I suggest eating them in small quantities and seeing how the patient reacts to them.

May you have a warm winter and good news for all of us 🙏🏻 To join a WhatsApp group for Chinese medicine practitioners with information on treating digestive problems, click here