What is Macrobiotics?

Macrobiotics is not just a diet. When you deeply understand the laws of macrobiotics you understand the laws of the universe. Then you will want to work within them rather than against them. Macrobiotics stresses the importance of a balanced diet because diet is the foundation for a happy, healthy and harmonious life. Macrobiotics calls for living a balanced life based on the two complementary, but opposite, natural forces of contraction YANG and expansion YIN. These forces are often referred to by their well-known and convenient oriental names of yin and yang. Yin being the force of expansion and yang being the force of contraction.

The macrobiotics movement has become increasingly popular during the past decade due to the many shortfalls in traditional western medicine and due also to various astonishing recoveries and cures of chronically ill persons who used the macrobiotics diet wisely.

Macrobiotics applies yin yang principles to explain the relationship between food and the human body. The ingestion of chemical drugs only inhibits the body's ability to cleanse and heal itself. Therefore, causing an accumulation of toxins in the body and thus intensifying the disease rather than affecting a cure.

In macrobiotics there are no diseases but there are stages of illness. But the cause is one. Therefore, macrobiotics theory criticizes the practices of conventional medicine because western medicine searches for only symptomatic cures. Macrobiotics explains the transmission of disease as the body being in a state of decay, thus, making itself a suitable host in which an organism can flourish. On the other hand, a healthy body is not a suitable host for an organism, and as a result, the organism would be destroyed or excreted. Therefore, when eating a macrobiotics diet, you are not necessarily attacking the particular symptoms of a disease, but cleansing the body and thus raising its defenses to the point it can throw off the illness no matter what that illness is in other words allowing the body to cure itself.

Man, as a part of nature, needs to live in harmony and co-operation with it. This includes eating foods from the area in which we live. When our physical body is not in balance it becomes very difficult for us to remain centered and balanced in our thoughts and emotions. A strong yang condition resulting from eating too much meat makes us susceptible to anger, aggression, intolerance, impatience etc, all macrobiotics yang attributes. A yin condition makes us susceptible to being feeble minded, gullible, spineless, absent-minded and impractical, all macrobiotics yin attributes.

Macrobiotics foods that help us remain centered are whole grains, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sea vegetables, pickles etc. One of the most popular macrobiotics foods is organic short grain brown rice. It has the same percentages of proteins, carbohydrates and fats etc. as the human body, and is an excellent staple food. It is sometimes called the king of kings.

The philosophy of yin-yang in macrobiotics shows in simple terms how the universe works. Everything becomes much more easily understood from this macrobiotics perspective. Many phenomena that are usually ambiguous become crystal clear.

The two universal forces in macrobiotics operate in two distinct modes called yin and yang. Yin is expansive energy, moving away from a point. Yang is contractive energy moving towards a point. These two energies are complimentary and opposite, the two energies are not distinct, but comprise one unified field of energetic interaction.

Example: why do some foods propagate an infection and others stop it?

Answer: Sodium is yang (contractive) and potassium is yin (expansive). Yang elements, being contractive, prevent and constrain bacteria from multiplying, while yin elements, being expansive, promote and enhance bacterial multiplication. Therefore, yang foods kill bacteria and stop an infection, while yin foods increase the infection. This is a simple scientific example of macrobiotics. Remember the 61 year old tuberculosis patient mentioned in this page?

My experience with my own diet and with thousands of patients who have visited my macrobiotics consultation office in Damascus, Syria over the last few years from 45 different countries has shown me time and time again that yang foods are the best antibiotics in the world. They are better that any chemical antibiotic man ever invented.

Great emphasis on diet selection is placed in macrobiotics philosophy because regulating our daily eating and drinking is the most basic, practical way to change our own life condition. The food we eat become our blood, affecting the quality of our cells, tissues, organs and eventually our mind. Properly nourished, the body, heart and mind can more easily cleanse and renew themselves.

Macrobiotics on a dietary level calls for eating simple natural traditional foods. Macrobiotics includes the principles of eating foods that grow in our climatic zone, eating fresh foods in their seasons. Macrobiotics is a way of life that starts with diet. Once the body is cleansed, the mind will inevitably follow. A healthy mind in a healthy body. Macrobiotics is a healthy, holistic way of living a balanced lifestyle. The macrobiotics way is one of moderation, and it is still extremely valuable and helpful throughout the world.

Yes, of course. As a person's understanding of the macrobiotics principles deepens, it will eventually become clear that all diseases are the result of a long term disturbance of these two forces at work in the human body. Let us take for example two GI tract disturbances, constipation and diarrhea. Most cases of constipation are the result of consuming too much yang foods (contractive) which results in contracting and tightening of the intestinal muscles. Diarrhea on the other hand is the result of consuming too much foods of the yin type, like sugars and fruit, which cause dilation (expansion) of the intestinal muscles which manifests in diarrhea.

The standard macrobiotics diet consists of various foods and cooking styles. Little more than half of the suggested types of food to consume in macrobiotics are whole cereal grains, such as brown rice and whole wheat. These whole grains constitute 50-60% by weight of the diet. Vegetables make up the next largest proportion of the diet making up 20-30% by weight. These percentages can vary from person to person according to the person's current health condition. Some examples of vegetables for daily use are green cabbage, carrots and cauliflower. Examples of vegetables not recommended for regular use are potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants. It is also recommended in macrobiotics that the vegetables be local and organically grown, with the majority being cooked using different methods of traditional cooking. Suggested cooking styles in macrobiotics include lightly steamed or boiled or sautee' with a small amount of unrefined, cold pressed oils, especially sesame and olive oils. Soups and beans and sea vegetables equally make up the last two categories of the macrobiotics diet each at 5-10%. Recommended beans include adzuki beans, chickpeas and lentils. Soups may be made from various vegetables and grains. Macrobiotics recommends that we avoid red meat, animal fat, eggs, poultry and dairy products.

The balancing of specific foods using the yin-yang principles in macrobiotics is only one important aspect of the macrobiotics diet, but as important is the manner in which the foods are cooked. Macrobiotics recommends using gas stoves or wood burning fire to heat food. Fire gives energy, vitalizing the human organism physically, mentally and spiritually. Fire is also the foundation of human culture and civilization. The quality of water is also an important part of cooking in macrobiotics. Clean natural spring or well water is an important resource for macrobiotics cooking.

The tools and utensils one uses in macrobiotics is also a significant aspect to the macrobiotics way. Items every macrobiotics kitchen must have is a gas stove and a good vegetable knife. Other items include wooden utensils, a grater, cast iron pots and a teapot.

The individual and family that cooks and eats following the macrobiotics way can become humble, strong, relaxed, open, healthy and vital, thus making the whole world in order. When the whole family follows the natural order of things then the community, society, culture, ecology and economy is vital, creative calm and deeply reverent.

Food is always best medicine, no matter what the illness. If you have followed the macrobiotic diet for a while (especially the number seven diet which consists of eating only brown rice for many days) and found no relief, it does not mean that food is not best medicine. It does mean that your choice of foods for your specific health condition has been wrong. For example, if you are suffering from heart disease and decided to eat a bowl of carrots and leeks soup, you will feel much worse. Or if you have diarrhea and decided to eat a bowl of parsley, cucumbers and lettuce salad, then that will greatly aggravate your diarrhea.

The standard macrobiotics diet developed over the years is general and not for everyone. It recommends eating plenty of vegetables, but it does not specify which vegetables will be helpful for each illness.

Your own health condition, especially if it is a serious condition, might require you to do more research into what foods are currently healthful for you, which means digging deep into the macrobiotics concepts of yin and yang and balance. It would also mean experimenting for some time with foods to see how each type of food affects your body.

Recently I had a 61 year old tuberculosis patient come to me from Spain after having been subjected to two periods of long conventional treatments without much success. She also knew about macrobiotics and tried to follow it randomly on her own for about a year without any good results. After 60 days of following the strict modified macrobiotics diet that we designed for her, her tests turned negative and she was elated.

In her case she needed to concentrate on certain vegetables and other foods and to avoid others. For example, leafy greens, which are an essential part of the standard macrobiotics diet would have made her condition worse (TB is a yin illness and leafy greens are also yin). Even the all-healing pumpkins, which are highly prized in macrobiotics, would have made her condition worse. On the other hand, pumpkins are excellent for other illnesses. We have also seen many cases of typhoid fever, gangrene and other stubborn infections and illnesses get cured using selected macrobiotics foods. In the eyes of these patients the macrobiotics cure always seems miraculous.

If you have typhoid, an allergy, some form of cancer or gangrene some of the foods in the standard macrobiotics diet might aggravate your condition. It is for this reason that some people complain that the macrobiotics diet did not really help them and in some cases actually made things worse. To get over this difficulty, one has to either seek macrobiotics advice on what foods are appropriate for one's own current health condition or do more research in to what types of macrobiotics foods are more appropriate for one's current health condition.

This is also the main point of emphasis of our consultations and seminars. Explaining the macrobiotics yin-yang theory and its practical applications in simple terms in order for everyone to be able to identify their current state of health and then identify the foods that are particularly important for curing their existing illness and restoring health.

This is not a criticism of Japanese foods. Macrobiotics Japanese foods are excellent and many are delicious. Macrobiotics philosophy originated in the orient and the main teachers who carried macrobiotics from the far east to the west and other places were Japanese. So it was natural for them to teach people eating balanced Japanese macrobiotics foods. However, we must not forget that in a broad sense macrobiotics calls for understanding the world around us and applying its principles of balance in our daily lives including our eating habits.

One of the fundamentals of macrobiotics is that one should eat locally grown food. This means that applying macrobiotics principle in south Africa, one has to select south African balanced foods, and there are! Applying macrobiotics principles in south America, one has to eat balanced south American foods, and there are! And so on. Our patients have had wonderful results in recovering their health. They have come to us personally or via the internet from 26 different countries seeking macrobiotics cure and nutritional advice with different illnesses ranging from simple tonsillitis to every form of cancer. We provide each of them with a diet plan that suits their health condition but contains carefully selected locally grown foods. The selection of these foods is usually made based on the patients current health condition. For example, a patient with salmonella poisoning should not eat green leafy vegetables until his condition improves, even though green leafy vegetables are a major part of the macrobiotics diet. Also, a patient with ulcerative colitis who has internal bleeding can not digest and assimilate even the simple brown rice which is a staple macrobiotics food. Such a patient has to follow a very limited strict macrobiotics diet until he improves, then he can follow the standard macrobiotics diet.

The standard macrobiotics diet is now well known to most people. It is mainly composed of whole grains, vegetables and small amounts of fish, legumes, soups and pickles. Keep in mind that this is the macrobiotics diet. Meaning the application of the macrobiotics philosophy to foods and nutrition. The macrobiotics philosophy applies to everything in nature and the standard macrobiotics diet is only the nutritional aspect of this philosophy. The main advantages of the macrobiotics foods are the following:

1. macrobiotics foods are rich in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and fiber. These elements facilitate the elimination of toxins from the body. Yang foods like grains speed up the elimination process through the  bowels and yin foods like leafy greens speed up the elimination process through the kidneys.

2. Rather than generating toxins in the body during metabolism, macrobiotics foods help carry toxins out of the body. Remember how whole grains are considered in a macrobiotics a source of clean burning fuel for the body. Animal products leave behind much sulfuric and phosphoric acids that have to be eliminated later from the body.

This has a main advantage when we remember that in macrobiotics, disease is considered really nothing but the long term accumulation of toxins in the body. Therefore, foods that help reduce the amounts of toxins in the body help naturally and gradually cure all acquired diseases. This a macrobiotics applied to health.

Someone with a salmonella poisoning or a food allergy will not tolerate lettuce or even brown rice and will have to rely on a different grain rather than brown rice or whole wheat until he is cured. This person will have to follow a modified diet that suits his current state of health until he cured, then that person can move to the standard macrobiotics diet. The same logic applies to all diseases and all patients. Every sick person will benefit from staying away from certain foods and concentrating on certain other macrobiotics foods for a while at least.

There really is a danger in advising everyone regardless of their state of health to follow the standard macrobiotics diet.

Do you know what foods you should start with based on your current state of health?

Do you know how these vegetables and other foods will affect your body?

Do you know when to eat or avoid each of them? They are all a part of the standard macrobiotic diet

If you do, then you are your own doctor!

You are a free person.

You know what it means to be free from the need for a doctor or a medicine

Your heart does not know fear of illness

You know that your food is your cure and your best medicine

Early in January, 2004 a woman from California with colon cancer and recent liver metastasis requested a diet plan from our website. She had had a consultation with a macrobiotics advisor and he advised her to eat only leafy greens in addition to brown rice for a while.

It is true that the liver is the early-yin phase in the five elements theory in Chinese and macrobiotics thinking, and leafy greens energy resembles that of the liver. However, limiting this woman's macrobiotics foods to leafy greens alone is not right because this would deprive the other organs in the cycle of the five elements (heart, pancreas-spleen, lungs and kidneys) of the energy they need and would invite trouble in the near future.

Is there really a macrobiotics cure for cancer? What are the best foods for curing cancer? Is there a difference between colon cancer and breast cancer? Are there really true complete recoveries from cancer? Does cancer always mean a death sentence?

Traditional medicine has only two therapies for cancer. Cancer radiation therapy and cancer chemotherapy treatment. Both cancer treatments have side effects. Both have low cure statistics.

Cancer does not mean a death sentence. We all have read remarkable stories of recoveries of people who were terminally ill with cancer, until they found out about macrobiotics and followed it for some time. Read the book by Dr. Anthony J. Sattilaro Recalled by life. The improvements can be dramatic and fast or can be slow and painful. Nevertheless, these improvements are fundamental and they indicate a complete transformation of a cancer-sick body back into health as the macrobiotics diet starts cleansing a poison-ridden body from its chemical and organic toxins. The main advantage of the macrobiotics foods is that they are mostly plant foods. And plant foods release very little toxins in the body compared with animal products. Compare what happens to a steak or a glass of milk with what happens to a bowel of steamed rice and vegetables after being both left out for 24 hours in a 37 degree Celsius environment. The steak-milk combination spoils quickly but the rice-vegetable combination remains fresh. The same thing happens in our bodies because food remains approximately 24 hours in our bodies in an even temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.

Macrobiotics is not a faith and macrobiotics is not a religion. Macrobiotics is really a science. It is deeply founded on the principle of oriental medicine. Unlike the western scientific way of thinking which thinks it can tame nature, macrobiotics tries to understand nature and live harmoniously within it because in the end we are part of nature. Can we stop the wind?!

On the other hand, 2500 years ago, the Greek Hippocrates, the father of modern western medicine, admonished his students in one of his precise aphorisms Thy food shall be thy remedy. So who said modern medicine and macrobiotics do not meet eye to eye?!

Food really IS your best medicine, and the philosophy of macrobiotics and natural cure explains why, with its well known definitions of all universal phenomena as the interaction between two opposite but complementary forces yin and yang and sometimes referred to as acid and alkaline. This includes ALL universal phenomena!

One physical example of macrobiotics is electricity which is the interaction between positive and negative.

Another physical aspect of macrobiotics is air moving in between high pressure and low pressure regions.

A biological aspect of macrobiotics is the continuity of human life which is the result of the interplay of the sexes, male and female.

Night and day are also examples. This is also a biological aspect of macrobiotics.

Even in the human body there are dense heavy contractive organs like the liver and pancreas and there are hollow light expansive organs like the stomach and bladder.

Some people have heard that macrobiotics is a dangerous diet. This statement comes from some nutrition textbooks. Many doctors and nutritionists learnt in their nutrition studies that macrobiotics is dangerous.

And so, understandably, they cling to this view without making much effort to find out the truth about macrobiotics or the background as to how this view arose in the first place.

As a result, followers of macrobiotics, especially those with cancer and other serious illnesses are often warned by their doctors and other medical professionals that "macrobiotics is dangerous".

The people who make this claim overlook the disastrous results that many drugs and medications have had on countless patients. Cortisone, radiation therapy and thaledomide are only examples. On the other hand macrobiotics in only foods. and there is nothing dangerous about following a healthy diet.

However, this idea arose during the 1950s and early 1960s when macrobiotics was first introduced to the West from Japan. Today, a large and growing number of nutritional professionals realize that it is possible to eat healthy foods similar to the macrobiotics foods, without ever eating meat, milk and dairy products.

The understanding of macrobiotics was at that time poor. Many people did not fully understand the teachings and when one person died in the last 40 years from supposedly trying to follow an extreme recommendation in macrobiotics. The problem was not in macrobiotics itself, but in the way that person applied it. The person who died had tried to follow a "brown rice only" diet sometimes referred to as number seven diet. George Ohsawa, whose book Zen Macrobiotics had introduced macrobiotics to many westerners, had written that such a diet was the "highest level" diet that would speed up spiritual development. However, that person was also taking drugs and birth control pills. These drugs are extremely yin chemicals and they are the real cause for that persons death rather than the macrobiotics diet. The truth is, macrobiotics does not recommend eating brown rice only. Such a diet is intended as a fast for not more than a few days. It is not supposed to be a long-term macrobiotics diet. Even then, it is very rarely recommended nowadays by macrobiotics counselors.

When macrobiotics was first introduced to the west, it was popular with hippies who were attracted to natural things including natural foods. Because of this macrobiotics was called a fad diet.

This is not true and it is not a fad. macrobiotics dietary recommendations are based on traditional ways of eating that humanity has followed for thousands of years.

In a broader sense, macrobiotics is not just a diet. It is a set of guidelines which we adopt according to our personal condition, our environment and other factors. But it starts with foods.

Where is the calcium in macrobiotics foods? 

Today, some nutritionists and doctors claim that the macrobiotics diet is nutritionally deficient. One of the questions I get asked the most by patients is: "where is the calcium in my foods?"

A common misconception is that the macrobiotics diet does not provide enough calcium because it does not include milk and dairy foods.

Another common misconception is that vegetarians and macrobiotics followers do not get vitamin B12 because this vitamin is found only in meat products.

It is not true that B12 can only be found in meat products. This rare vitamin is actually produced by molds, fungi and bacteria. It can be found in several vegetarian and macrobiotics foods, including fermented foods such as soy sauce, tempeh, miso and pickles.

In the case where a specific illness is present, the macrobiotics pyramid is useless. It does not give an answer to the simple question which most of you ask:

I have an illness, what should I eat to get cured of this illness

The macrobiotics pyramid guidelines have to be modified to fit the patient's current  needs. There is danger in advising anyone, regardless of their current health condition, to follow the macrobiotics food pyramid guidelines. Even the standard macrobiotics diet does not suit all. It has to be modified to suit the patient's current health state.

Example:

The patient might have an allergy to some foods listed in the standard macrobiotics diet or in the food pyramid, as in the case of an intestinal infection, acne or even lung cancer, etc.

Some of your frequently asked questions:

? Which of the listed standard macrobiotics foods are suitable for my health condition?

Answer: There is a specific diet plan for every illness and even for every patient. Parsley, for example, is helpful in the case of anemia, diabetes and many other illnesses but it is harmful in the case of salmonella poisoning, typhoid fever and many other illnesses.

The solution is that the patient becomes aware of the benefit of every food and its medicinal use and then he can be his own doctor.

? I have a specific illness. I think that some of the foods listed in the macrobiotics diet are harmful to me. With which of the foods listed do I begin?

Some people oppose macrobiotics because they claim it is a cult.

Cults typically have a guru whose teachings are blindly followed by their disciples. It is true that macrobiotics teachers like Michio Kushi and Herman Aihara are well known and respected, but this is not the intention of macrobiotics. A key teaching of macrobiotics is: Non Credo or DO NOT BELIEVE.

Statements about diet and lifestyle are always given with explanations, not stated as absolute truths which followers are bound to believe. Followers of macrobiotics are actually encouraged to find out for themselves if such statements are true.

The late Joseph Campbell used to always say: "I do not have to have faith, I have experience".

Macrobiotics is not a cult or a religion. The macrobiotics teachings can help us all understand what life is all about. However, there is never any calling for following a particular prophet or believing in a particular God.

The truth is one. The sages speak of it by many names.