Dietotherapy refers to the therapeutic effect of food. Therefore, the concept of dietotherapy in traditional Chinese medicine is aimed at the sick people, which embodies the idea that food is homologous in traditional Chinese medicine and food comes before medicine. This is an academic study that uses proper food, or uses food and medicine to treat diseases through daily diet. The role and importance of dietotherapy is highly summarized in Qian Jin Fang written by Sun Simiao, the king of medicine in the Tang Dynasty: "Eating can dispel pathogenic factors, strengthen viscera, soothe the nerves and replenish blood. If you can eat to calm your illness and relieve it, it is a good job ... You must first understand the source of the disease, know what disease it is, treat it with food, and then order medicine. " This sentence tells us that food can dispel evil, protect health and nourish human qi and blood. If people can cure diseases with only food, they can be called outstanding doctors. The general rule of treatment is to know the cause, understand the condition, and then treat with food first. If the food is not handled properly, use drugs.
In addition, it should be emphasized that although dietotherapy is effective, it cannot blindly replace drugs. Because although food also has sexual taste bias, it can correct the imbalance between yin and yang, but its bias is always not as obvious as drugs, so simple diet therapy is mainly suitable for the initial or recovery period of mild diseases, or the remission period of chronic diseases. After all, drugs are biased, and the effect of treating diseases is far stronger than food. Dietotherapy cannot replace western medicine. From the comparison of Chinese and western medicine, the focus of Chinese medicine treatment is mainly to regulate the viscera, yin and yang qi, but pay attention to the whole rather than the local; Western medicine emphasizes targeted therapy, but lacks the overall regulation of systemic function. The combination of the two can often get twice the result with half the effort. This is also the reason why some diseases, especially chronic diseases, can reduce the dosage of western medicine after cooperating with Chinese medicine diet. However, if the drug is stopped blindly and maintained only by food support and diet therapy, it will inevitably lead to a short-term rebound in the disease. In this case, the correct approach should be to gradually reduce the dosage of western medicine according to the condition, try to reduce the dosage of western medicine as much as possible, or simply use diet control to recover through a slow process.
It can be seen that diet therapy and food supplement are two completely different categories. Because the fundamental principle of TCM in treating diseases is "regulating Yin and Yang, and correcting the bias of (human body) with medicine and food", that is to say, using the bias of various therapeutic media to correct the imbalance of Yin and Yang in human body, so as to restore the normal balance of Yin and Yang. If healthy people take dietary remedies, because the dietary remedies are obviously biased, they will not only fail to play a health care role, but also break the original balance of yin and yang, leading to diseases. Therefore, health care providers must distinguish between food supplements and food treatments. When you see the relevant information, you must carefully understand its function and scope of application, and you must not use it indiscriminately.