Ibn Sina's Four Elements and Food Balancers
How fire, air, water and earth built temperament theory, and how food balancers are chosen.
Erdem Bayraktar — Molecular Biology & Genetics Engineer, Üsküdar University4 November 2026, 4-minute read
Four elements, four temperaments
The tradition running from Hippocrates through Galen to Ibn Sina's Canon explains the body through the balance of four elements: fire (hot-dry), air (hot-moist), water (cold-moist) and earth (cold-dry).
From these come four temperaments: safravi, demevi, balgami and sevdavi. Temperament describes a person's inborn constitution. This system is a powerful language, passed down for centuries, for seeing the person as a whole; we read it side by side with modern biochemistry.
Abnormal humors
In the tradition, trouble comes not from a person's temperament but from a humor building up in excess and in a corrupted form. Abnormal balgam, safra and sevda are the names of that build-up.
In our analysis these concepts are drawn from your tongue observations and personalise your nutrition advice.
Food balancers
In traditional medicine every food has a temperament. Yogurt counts as cold-moist and goat meat as hot-dry. The companion that corrects a food's side effect is eaten with it: mint and thyme with yogurt, ginger with fish. Traditionally these companions are called muslih.
Many classic pairings in our kitchens carry this logic. Our guide lists 223 foods with their temperament and balancing companion. These suggestions rest on centuries of traditional knowledge and offer a personal, sustainable language for eating.
