Baskets of Blueberries
Posted on | September 9, 2008 |
Starting in mid-August, we began receiving baskets of blueberries from our CSA. I wanted to know how to put these berries are put to use - from a Chinese medicine perspective. However, there’s not much written anywhere that I can find. Because the blueberry (Vaccinium Cyanococcus) is a native American plant species, it’s definitely not going to be found in the Shen Nong Ben Cao or other classics, but it grows rampant at this time of year in Portland and it can be powerful medicine. The biggest question for me is how to fit it into the medicinal philosophy that I’m learning.
In his Pharmacodynamic Basis of Herbal Medicine, Ebadi talks about the blueberry as an antioxidant, an anti-inflammatory, a cardiovascular protectant, a memory and vision enhancer, and something that can fight both urinary tract infections and cancer. This is great information, coming from a Western viewpoint, but is there a way that we can use this information to see the blueberry as a component of Oriental medicine? If we can manage to classify it within Chinese medicine, how then would we be able to determine it’s use and amount in a formula? I am a big believer in the Chinese Classical approach that we are taught at NCNM, but I am also a big believer in the use of local and seasonal plants. There must be a way to integrate both of these philosophies for the benefit of our patients.
With the little I know, I believe that I still have a good starting point for the classification of this plant. It is blue in color, hence the species name having the component cyan. Cyan comes from the Greek, kyanos, meaning “dark blue enamel,” or “lapis lazuli.” This association with lapis lazuli is interesting because the rock was believed to be associated with power and certainly with higher beings. The nobility of the past were often buried with massive amounts of it to carry into the afterlife. The power within this color is also seen in it’s pairing with the Water phase of Chinese thought. The blueberry really does embody the blue/black color that can be connected with the Water organs of the body: the Kidney/Bladder. This association can be enhanced by the western recognition that the blueberry is beneficial for the memory function, plays a role in fighting urinary tract infection and it is helpful for enhancing vision, but most specifically, the enhancement of night vision, which is linked to the Kidney.
The calyx of the berry is a star with five-points. The numerology of the organs would relate the number five to the Heart…if for no other reason than the number 5 falls into the middle of the numerology graph and is the only number that is surrounded on all sides by other numbers; hence, the number 5 is in the middle and is the harmonizer. This correlates with the Emperor who is surrounded on all sides. Because of this centering and harmonizing, we can also see a relationship with the Earth phase, which is often attributed to the Stomach and Spleen in the body, but it must be remembered that the Heart also has Earthly phase components to it. The blueberry serves in western medicine as a cardiovascular protector - thus showing this correlation that the blueberry has to the Heart.
The blueberry certainly has a sour flavor to it, as all berries do. However, in comparison to schisandra (wu wei zi), it is much sweeter. The sour flavor is considered to reduce the Wood phase and tonify Metal. One of the older students at my school, Nic Buscemi, gave me a piece of paperwork that included the work of sour on the Fire phase. It is attributed with “recollection.” Qi Bo says something in the Neijing to the effect that the Heart has a capacity for recollection and that is called reflection. The retention of the reflection is what we call the will - which is stored in the Kidney. Now, in the generation and control cycles, Metal controls Wood, and Wood creates Fire - so, if Metal is being tonified by the sour flavor, and Wood is being reduced (which logically makes sense), then from that, sour increased the ability of recollection within the Fire element. Perhaps there is the idea of putting too much wood on a fire - which can suffocate it, but when reducing the wood, the fire is actually able to breathe. This would make sense, in terms of the sour flavor allowing the Fire phase to breathe…and, going back to the western attributions to the blueberry, we’ve got a serious relationship here between the Kidney and the Heart, both of which benefit from the berry.
I’ve got a long way to go in thinking about this, but hopefully after I have herbs and formulas, I can put this together a little better and put some of these native plants to use.
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December 12th, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
Thanks for all the interesting posts! This blueberry comment reminds me of a comment our herbs teacher made in class a few weeks ago. Lightheartedly, he suggested it should be any day now that western scientists reveal some vitamin or mineral in the blueberry that proves extremely useful for helping overall cognitive function. “The best herb for the brain!” The brain, being the Sea of Marrow, seems to sit like a reservoir for the Kidneys. Obviously the blueberry’s dark color (玄) sends at least part of the herb into the kidney channel, but all of this talk of flavors is so complicated to me. We know that sour herbs consolidate, sweet herbs tonify the center, and bitter herbs tonify the water organs. But to what extent can we simply rely on our taste buds to collect this information? A blueberry, to me, is sweet and sour, but where’s the bitter? Materia Medicas peg Dang Gui as a sweet, pungent herb, but anyone who’s ever chewed on a strip can tell it’s as bitter as anything else in the pharmacopoeia. It seems like Shen Nong was tasting things that perhaps I am not, and as we depart from the realm of physical flavor and land in that of functional (discrete) flavor, where do we end up? Do humans still possess the ability to energetically assess the functions of these herbs?