ADOLESCENTS/TEENS
This is a rapid growth and maturation phase (physical/mental/emotional) of their life and they need more high quality food than any other time, and this is the time when they tend to get the worst nourishment. The problem is most adolescents/teens aren’t educated on the importance of the nourishment from foods and drink, so they tend to eat fast food and other refined or processed foods instead of taking the time out of their usually busy and sometimes hectic life to get the nourishing foods their body/minds need. We tend to have great desires that lead us in many directions of which we cannot possibly achieve. I say “we” and "us” because this usually gets worse as you become an adult due to the responsibilities in our lives that tend to squelch those desires and dreams.
At this stage of life what their peers think of them can have a greater influence on what they do and how they act then what they actually know is right or wrong inside or what their parents or adults have hopefully taught them. So they tend to follow their peers examples, which in many cases can be very destructive to their mental and physical health, instead of attempting to educate themselves and use their own inborn common sense. You can see this in many adults as they carry these insecurities throughout adulthood.
This peer pressure influence affects some of them more than other but it is a dominant factor in this stage of life.
Even if their parents attempt to educate them and “nag” them to death about their eating and lifestyle habits it may not be enough to sway their opinion when many of their peers are doing the opposite. This is a society problem from lack of parental education and communication as a whole, which puts your child in the middle making it even harder to do what is right when so many others are doing it wrong. You can only encourage them to know that they are an individual who is responsible for their own actions even when there are strong influences that promote them to make incorrect choices, we all make mistakes, it is impossible not to, but it is possible to learn from these mistakes and make better choices in life that will not only affect us but the people around us.
This is also the time of their life in which they become more independent by having more control of their life than their parents, this is a natural growth phase in their life and should be encouraged and guided by you and their adult family around them.
But with this new control of self-destiny comes more responsibility and adulthood. They will make many mistakes and hopefully learn from these mistakes and correct them along the way. Some mistake will be sever and sometimes life threatening but most will be mild to moderate in degree and these are the ones which influence our life quietly behind the scenes and we usually don’t realize their strong influence until much later in your life. In contrast the sever or life threatening mistakes may cause a equally severe change in their life at that particular time, with lasting affects which stay with them the rest of their lives. Some are what we call “good” and some are “bad”, we are extremely adaptable beings and given the right environment and human support we are capable of great things, but given the wrong environment and support we are also capable of horrible things, this is still to a large part determined by them and how they choose to respond to these “stimulus’s” throughout their lives.
This phase of their life is also when the kidney qi is very active, especially the kidney jing and kidney yang. This expresses itself in physical body changes, increased sexual attractions and desires, and their ability to be extremely active, even to the point of over activity or “self-abuse” yet they tend to recover quickly so they don't pay attention to the "negatives" because the "positives" feel so good. Along with this are emotional ups and downs to the degree they have not had before, easily irritated, excited, body shape changes (some they like and some not so much), acne, body odor, sweating and craving to go along with their emotional swings. If this new-found energy is not allowed to flow or the lack of a balanced lifestyle and diet does not nourish and support these changes their imbalances increase as time goes on. They should increase their green vegetables, complex carbohydrates and protein to help counter the desire for excessive refined carbohydrates and sugars which promote the stagnant heat tendencies (irritability, restlessness, skin disorders, etc), drink plenty of room temperature water, and stay away from rich, oily, sweet and spicy foods as much as possible, and get plenty of SLEEP.
The number of hours and your quality of sleep are extremely important. When you sleep you build new cells, replenish your energy that you used during the day and repair the damaged tissue that can occur with the active and excessive life style of this phase of life. Even if you sleep 12 hours but you tend to wake up with a heaviness throughout your body, groggy or unclear head, sleep (mucus) in your eyes, “mucus voice”, etc you did not get good quality sleep, yet on the other hand if you slept 8 hours and awoke feeling refreshed with a lightness feeling in the extremities, clearness in the mind and without the “mucus voice” you had good quality sleep and actually replenished you energy and promoted growth and regeneration at a much higher rate than the other person.
What this all comes down to is what they do and who they will become later in life is slowly becoming more their own responsibility than their parents yet with anything new they will need and hopefully accept your guidance along the way.
One real important part of this phase of life is that it will determine to a great degree your constitutional health in adulthood. If you abuse yourself at this time it will show up later in life because you will have used up a lot of you kidney jing or “essence”, you can think of this as your life energy reserves that you will use through the rest of your life, and when it is gone life will cease. The more you use it now whether knowingly or unknowingly, through poor diet, lifestyle, and lack of sleep the less you will have later in life and the greater chance of getting a debilitating or life threatening illness or diseases throughout your life. This will not be a fun retirement that you will enjoy but rather the debilitating and uncomfortable retirement that you never thought you would have.
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