Choose Life

A Practical Guide to Health and Nutrition

Batya Shemesh

• Publisher: Global Summit House
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781647133627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

The Creator of the World commanded us to choose life. Choosing life means choosing health, physical and spiritual. Batya Shemesh writes fascinating explanations to Bible passages from the perspective of an alternative healer.
Choose Life fuses Biblical wisdom, science and Chinese Medicine to form basic principles that can be easily followed. She also shares many ideas for practical uses of herbal remedies, vitamins and other natural supplements that have worked for her own patients for decades.

Chapter 8
Yin, Yang and In Between

Many of my readers are probably familiar with the concepts of Yin and Yang. Yin is cold and wet. Yang means hot and dry. The reason I use these concepts is because Maimonides of blessed memory wrote of these same concepts in his medical writings. He didn’t call them Yin and Yang; he termed them the temperaments of foods. Maimonides listed the following categories: Hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and wet, cold and dry.

The properties of the food we eat are a very strong basis for our health. Many of our emotional states can also be categorized as Yin and Yang. For example, if you get angry or depressed easily, you are too Yang and need to eat more Yin foods. If you get colds and flu easily or you are very fearful and underweight you need more Yang foods.

Our diet should also depend on the climate and the weather. Macrobiotics doesn’t leave room for any meat or dairy but I have learned from my experience that a person’s diet should be close to the diet of their forefathers. Some people want to be cavemen, and some want to live in the future. I just want you to be healthy with your great grandmother’s cooking. If you have a little bit of everything that your genes are used to, then all you need to know is the quantities. If you have a cold, you should lower your dairy intake because milk is very Yin and instead have some chicken soup to warm you up. If you have muscle pain, then up the dairy and fruit and lower the poultry, meat and eggs. Consider your heritage and see what fun you can have by cooking the foods of your ancestors.

Israel is a hot country and that’s why it was blessed to be flowing with milk and honey. There are very cooling foods as you will see from the chart below. When Israelis eat meat and rice in the summer, they get very ill. The same goes for people who live in the cold countries and are lacking a hot cooked meal during their lunch hour in the winter.

The trend in modern society is to eat much too many Yang foods and that’s why there are so many people suffering from chronic Yang diseases. Arthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease are some examples.

After learning about the laws of Kashrut, we certainly advise you to avoid beef, lamb and goat even if they are kosher. The heat that they emanate is not healthy and can mess up your whole equilibrium unless you live in a very cold climate. The following chart will give you an idea of what foods are Yin and what foods are Yang. They are listed in order from extremely Yang to extremely Yin.

Food Categorized from Yang to Yin

Extreme Yang Food (Dry and Hot)

Use only small quantities in very cold weather

Salt

Eggs

Beef

Lamb

Sausage

Veal

Turkey

Chicken

Goose

Duck

Yellow Mustard

Roasted Sesame Seed

Yang Food (Dry and Hot)

Use for winter meals and for colds and flus

Legumes	Seasonings and Oil
Adzuki Beans	Hot pepper
Black eyed peas	Curry
Soybeans	Tumeric
Broad beans	Ginger
Chickpeas	Cinnamon
Kidney beans	Olives
Lentils	Chamomile tea
Lima beans	Garlic
Mung beans	Nutmeg
White ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Disclaimer
• Introduction
• A Healthy Start
• God’s View on Nutrition
• Keeping Kosher
• Don’t Cook a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk
• Healthy Cooking
• Choosing Life on a Budget
• The Acid/Alkaline Ratio
• Yin, Yang and In Between
• God’s View on Alternative Medicine
• God’s Pharmacy
• Uncommon Remedies to Common Maladies
• Life, Death and Longevity
• Anatomy of a Soul
• Glossary