Much like the fire that burns in your woodstove, the quality of heat in the entire house depends on the quality of wood you put in it. If you feed a fire with wet wood the fire becomes smoky and won’t heat the house very well. Good quality food is like dry cut firewood that will burn bright, hot, and clean to create heat throughout the entire system. A fire that burns clean will leave only ash behind with no charcoal. Much like well digested food the waste product should have no chunks of undigested food in the stool. As this is symptom is considered a sign of cold digestion and weak metabolic fire. 

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This concept is of the transformation of food into tissues through the element of digestive fire is in every traditional system of medicine around the world. In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), ‘Spleen Chi’ has more to do with this digestive fire than it does with the actual organ called the spleen. In physiology, the spleen is an immune organ that all lymphatic fluid flows into. There are dense concentrations lymphatic vessels woven into the digestive tract. Lymph nodes are modules of immune components and these are integrated into the surface of the gut lining known as Payer’s Patches.  If we think of the immune system as an inseparable part of digestive processes then we see how the Chinese concept of spleen could be associated with digestion and nutrient absorption.  In Unani Tibb, this same concept of the fire of transformation that turns food into tissue through digestion is called ‘Pepsis’ - as in relation to the word pepsin, which is the digestive enzyme that breaks down proteins in the stomach.

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Citrus peel enhances this fiery digestive process. In today’s terms we say that it helps with nutrient absorption, but now you know so much more than that by understanding digestive fire. It is this warming action on the system along with its uplifting fragrance that make Citrus useful as an antidepressant. All things warm and delicious smelling help with depression.