Dr. Kelly Cmolik Dr. TCM - Doctor of Chinese Medicine

07/09/2025

📸 Before + After: Tongue Edition 👅

What you’re seeing here isn’t just a cleaner tongue—it’s a snapshot of internal transformation.

In Chinese medicine, a thick yellow tongue coating often points to damp-heat—a sticky, stagnant internal environment that breeds inflammation. Think: overgrowth of microbes, sluggish digestion, and toxic heat trying to escape.

When damp-heat lingers, it often shows up on the skin as conditions like eczema, acne, or psoriasis.
But here’s the kicker: the skin is often the last place to catch up. You may see tongue changes before major skin improvement.

Why? Because we’re dismantling polymicrobial biofilms and deeply clearing what’s under the surface—stuff that doesn’t shift with topicals or quick fixes.

✨ Healing is an inside job.
💊 Herbs, food therapy, and consistent care can clear what you can’t scrub off.
👅 Always watch the tongue. It’ll tell you what the skin can’t (yet).

Drop a 🔥 if you’ve seen wild changes in your tongue on your healing journey. Or want help decoding yours? DM me 📩

07/07/2025

Summer is Heart season in Chinese medicine.☀️

The Heart isn’t just about circulation — it also houses your Shen (spirit), rules sleep, emotional regulation, and even how clearly you express yourself.

But when summer heat builds up?
🔥 Insomnia
🔥 Palpitations
🔥 Anxiety or agitation
🔥 Skin flares (especially psoriasis + heat-type eczema)
🔥 Night sweats + restlessness

And from a Western perspective? Dehydration and heat stress increase your risk of heart issues — especially if you’re on blood pressure meds that mess with your body’s cooling mechanisms.

Tips to support your Heart this summer:
💧 Hydrate (room temp water > ice water)
🍒 Eat bitter + red foods (think cherries, dandelion, hawthorn)
🧘‍♀️ Calm the Shen with breathwork, rest, and joy
🌿 Avoid high-heat workouts mid-day

07/03/2025

SUPER SKIN FOODS // WATERMELON 🍉

If your skin flares up in the summer—think red, itchy, burning, or oozing—this juicy fruit might be more than just a picnic snack.

In Chinese medicine, summer heat is a seasonal pathogenic factor. It’s hot, rising, and drying in nature—and it tends to invade the body when we’re already depleted, overheated, or not protecting our qi (👋 sunscreen + hydration).

When summer heat combines with dampness (from humidity or sluggish digestion), it can show up as:

🔥 inflamed skin

🌡️ weepy eczema

☀️ sun rashes

🥵 fatigue, dizziness, constipation

This is where watermelon shines—it’s nature’s antidote to summer heat.

💧 TCM uses it to:

– Clear internal heat

– Cool the blood

– Hydrate dryness

– Soothe skin irritation

🧬 Nutritional bonus:

– Lycopene helps protect against UV damage

– 92% water = next-level hydration

– Citrulline supports healthy circulation + recovery

TCM Tip: If your digestion is cold or weak, avoid chilled watermelon and skip it after heavy meals—it can “put out your digestive fire.”

🍉 Not sure if your skin symptoms are heat- or dryness-related? That’s something I can help you figure out.

06/23/2025

🌞 The sun reached its peak… and now it turns.

We’re officially past the Summer Solstice, and in Chinese medicine, this is more than just a shift in sunlight—it’s a pivot point for your entire body.

Yang (heat, activity, outward energy) was at its highest.
Now Yin begins to rise—cooling, calming, replenishing.

Your body feels it before your mind does.
That craving for quiet? The irritability? The flare-up?
Totally valid.

✨ There is a whole-ass system in Chinese medicine about living in sync with the seasons—and it works.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about rhythm.
Align with nature, and your digestion, hormones, skin, and mood will follow.

Try this post-solstice reset:

🥒 Eat cooling foods – cucumber, mint, mung beans, watermelon
🧘 Move at dusk, not noon
💧 Hydrate like it’s your job—with minerals, teas, and fruit infusions
📵 Unplug early to help Yin rise
💬 Sit in stillness—your Heart (and nervous system) will thank you

You don’t need to go harder.
You need to go inward.

This is seasonal living. This is TCM wisdom. 💛

06/16/2025

Cherry season is short—so treat your skin while it lasts 🍒

In Chinese medicine, cherries are known to tonify qi and blood, promote healthy circulation, and moisten internal dryness.
In other words, they’re great when your skin is looking dull, flaky, tired—or your whole system just feels a bit… depleted.

They’re also packed with:
🔬 Anthocyanins (antioxidants that protect your collagen + calm inflammation)
💤 Melatonin (to support deeper sleep + overnight skin repair)
🍬 A naturally low glycemic load (key for reducing breakouts + insulin spikes)

💡 Clinically, I recommend them for people dealing with:
– Hormonal acne
– Dry or pale skin
– Poor circulation
– Post-illness recovery
– PMS stagnation

Pro tip: If raw fruit makes you bloat or feel heavy, cook them down with ginger or cinnamon to support your digestion.

It’s one of the easiest seasonal foods to fold into your routine—with a pretty solid skin payoff.

Are you into cherries, or nah?
👇Tell me your favorite way to eat them—or drop a 🍒 if you’re down for skin support that tastes like dessert.

06/10/2025

“What a gift—to feel truly comfortable in your own skin.”
—a quiet thought I had recently, and one I haven’t been able to shake.

Because for many of the people I work with, that comfort doesn’t come easily.
Not when the skin is cracked, inflamed, weeping.
Not when sleep is broken from constant itching.
Not when you’re afraid to wear short sleeves, or dreading summer because heat makes everything worse.
Not when you’ve been given steroid after steroid with no real explanation—just more creams, more flare-ups, and mounting shame.

Some people suffer deeply with their skin.
I’ve worked with patients who’ve landed in the ER from infections, who’ve lost jobs, missed birthdays, canceled dates, and cried in changing rooms because nothing feels okay.

And yet—this medicine gives me hope.

Because Chinese medicine doesn’t just see skin as a surface problem.
It recognizes the connections between the skin, the digestive system, the immune system, and the emotional body.
Anxiety and depression? Not separate. Often part of the same picture.
Bloating, constipation, fatigue? These are not side notes—they’re often central to why the skin is reacting.

In my practice, we treat the whole person.
We clear heat, nourish the blood, support the gut, calm the spirit, and restore flow.
And slowly, things begin to shift.

The skin softens.
The nervous system quiets.
Confidence returns.
And over time, my patients begin to feel something they haven’t felt in a long while—
comfortable in their own skin.

And that?
That is a gift.
One that you deserve, too.

06/06/2025

🌿✨ Exciting news! I was recently featured in Delicious Living magazine talking all things holistic skincare and how to create a truly balanced beauty routine — inside and out.

In the article, I share why I believe skin health is a reflection of our internal landscape, not just what we put on top. We touch on mineral-based SPF (yes, please), vitamin C serums, and how Traditional Chinese Medicine can address underlying issues like inflammation, hormonal imbalance, and stagnation that often show up on your skin’s surface.

It’s such an honor to contribute to a platform that values natural beauty and integrative approaches to wellness. This is the kind of education I wish more people had access to earlier — because beautiful skin is about so much more than what’s trending on TikTok.

📰 You can read the full article here: https://www.deliciousliving.com/beauty/natural-beauty/balance-your-beauty-routine/

💬 I’d love to hear your thoughts — what’s one thing you’ve shifted in your skincare routine that made a big difference?

05/29/2025

Throwback Thursday: East Africa, 2003 🌿✍️

Here I am, barefoot and wide-eyed, scribbling out an ethnobotany paper by hand on the coast of Kenya during a field studies program. I spent my days cruising around in the back of my professor’s truck, visiting local tribes and witnessing how plants were used for food, medicine, shelter, textiles—you name it.

It blew my mind. 💥

This was the trip that cracked my world wide open and made me fall deeply in love with plant medicine. I came home on fire, interviewed with UBC’s pharmacology department, even considered a PhD—but the idea of lab work felt… soul-sucking. I kept stumbling across Chinese medicine, kept brushing it off as “woo”—until I actually looked closer.

And what I found? A brilliantly sophisticated, poetic, and radically different way of understanding health. Not weird. Not flimsy. Just not Western.

I realized I didn’t want to research from the sidelines—I wanted to translate, practice, and help people heal.

That scrappy girl in the photo? She had no idea what was coming. But she was onto something.

🌀 Have you ever had a trip or turning point that completely changed your direction?

02/18/2025

Rethinking Autoimmunity: A New Perspective on Healing -

When it comes to autoimmunity, Western medicine often describes it as a case of mistaken identity—your immune system can’t tell the difference between you and an invader, so it starts attacking your own tissues. 🚨 The standard approach? Suppress the immune response with medication.