Body Basics Part 6: A Blissful Balance of Hot and Cold

Hot springs in winter: a blissful balance of Hot and Cold. 

I talk about the body as your internal ecosystem, and Heat and Cold are two important aspects of that. Heat and Cold — balanced or otherwise — play a critical role in all kinds of health issues, and a particularly strong role in the menstrual cycle and fertility.  

Too much Heat in your body burns off healthy moisture, just like too-high temperatures in our external environment dry up environmental moisture. In our external environment, this looks like the effects of heat waves or drought on our external landscape. In your internal environment, this looks like excess Heat affecting egg quality, decreasing the quantity and quality of fertile cervical mucous needed to nourish and transport sperm, or a deficiency in the thick, cozy endometrial lining necessary for successful implantation.  It can look like hot flashes or night sweats.  Or restlessness.  Or anxiety.  Or irritability. Or insomnia.

Conversely, too much Cold in your body and we see eggs lacking vitality and a deficiency of the incubating warmth necessary to support a fertilized egg in its development.  Or we see hypothyroid or Raynaud’s or extreme fatigue.  Or whole bunch of other things.  Enough to fill many, many textbooks. (As many have done, for many centuries.)

In western hormonal language (and in the context of women’s health) much of this balance can be translated into the balance of estrogen and progesterone.  And this can be useful. But part of the beauty of Chinese Medicine is that while Heat in the female body includes the role of progesterone, and Cold in the body includes the role of estrogen, the balance of Hot and Cold is part of a larger tapestry that takes into account the health of YOUR WHOLE HUMAN ECOSYSTEM. Hot and Cold are more than just numbers on a lab; the balance of Hot and Cold reflects the complexity of the whole human organism.

Here’s what’s so fun: when we understand the relationship between Hot and Cold and your symptoms, then Chinese herbal medicine, purposeful nutritional supplementation, a cool tool called moxibustion, and focused food therapy are all super effective ways to change the temperature of your internal ecosystem and balance your hormones. 

We don’t micromanage individual lab values.  Rather, we give your infinitely wise body the building blocks it needs to course-correct on its own, from the inside out.

What is your experience of your temperature, or temperature preferences?  Never mind what a thermometer tells you — what’s your experience of temperature inside your own skin?  Are you always warmer than the people around you, or are your fingers and toes always cold, or your butt and your nipples and your nose?  Does your temperature change throughout your menstrual cycle?  If so, what other symptoms change with it?

Noticing details like this in your own body puts you back in relationship with yourself — WIN!! — while also providing a health detective like me a wealth of information as to how I can best support you.

Think your Hot and Cold are out of balance? Let us help you!
Your initial consultation is always free — come meet us in person and learn more.