Comprehensive knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine health care and conditioning

The essence of TCM health care has never been the template of "drinking wolfberry, soaking mugwort, and pressing acupuncture points" that is common across the Internet. The core logic is only 8 words - follow the heavens and respond to people, and provide nourishment based on syndrome differentiation. All health care methods that are divorced from personal constitution and living environment are ineffective or even harmful to the body.

To be honest, in the past few years, I have met too many people who followed the trend and raised problems. Two years ago, a girl who was born in 1996 came to me and said that she had followed a health blogger to drink red bean and barley water for three months in order to get rid of what she judged to be a "heavy moisture". As a result, the more she drank, the colder her hands and feet became. Her period was delayed by almost 20 days, and her tongue coating was thicker and greasier than before. But another aunt in her 50s who came on the same day also drank red bean and barley water for two months. Her previous problems of having a bitter mouth in the morning and having stools sticky on the toilet bowl were mostly cured. Do you think this method is useful or useless? To put it bluntly, the girl has a constitution of spleen deficiency and cold-dampness, so what she drank was uncooked raw barley, which is equivalent to adding cold to cold. ； Auntie has a damp-heat constitution, which is just the right symptom.

Many people's first impression of traditional Chinese medicine is that "medicine and food come from the same source." However, different schools of thought actually have different meanings in these four words. If you ask an old traditional Chinese medicine doctor from the Northern Traditional Chinese Medicine School, they will most likely tell you to eat vegetables in season. In winter, just eat cabbage and radish. Don’t eat cold food like watermelon and dragon fruit out of season, otherwise it will damage your yang energy. ； But if you ask a febrile doctor in Lingnan, they might tell you that if the local winter is over ten degrees Celsius, and you are very irritated by eating braised pork and roasting meat every day, there is nothing wrong with eating cool seasonal fruits occasionally, and it can relieve the heat. A patient told me before that his liver was not good. He followed the saying on the Internet that "five colors enter the five internal organs" and ate green vegetables every day and celery cold every meal. As a result, he had a cold stomach and suffered from stomach pain for half a month. Later, I asked him to replace the celery with spinach and add two slices of ginger when frying.

After talking about food, let’s talk about work and rest issues that young people are most anxious about nowadays. The ancestors said, "work when the sun rises and rest when the sun sets." It is best to go to bed before 11 o'clock to nourish your courage. This is true, but in today's living environment, not everyone can do it. I know a fellow Chinese medicine practitioner who does night clinics. He doesn't get off work until after 12 o'clock every day. It's impossible for him to go to bed at 11 o'clock. It's not like people say on the Internet that "staying up late for a long time will damage the liver and shorten your life." His own adjustment method is to fix his schedule: 2 o'clock in the morning every day Go to bed until 10 a.m. to ensure 8 hours of complete sleep. Before going to bed, soak your feet in hot water for 5 minutes and press the Yongquan point 30 times. When you wake up, drink a cup of warm astragalus water to replenish your yang energy. Now that I am almost 50 years old, my complexion is much better than that of many young people who work 9 to 5 and stay up late every day to check their mobile phones. There are also different opinions in the industry on this point. Some ancient health-preserving schools insist that 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. is the time for liver and gallbladder detoxification, and one must sleep ； However, many Chinese medicine practitioners who have studied clinical studies have found that as long as you maintain a fixed sleep cycle and the sleep quality is high enough, the damage to the body is much less than an irregular schedule of going to bed at 10 o'clock today, going to bed at 3 o'clock tomorrow, staying up late and then sleeping all day. Don't lie in bed anxious until one or two o'clock in order to meet the KPI of "go to bed before 11 o'clock". That is really frustrating.

As for the Internet celebrity health programs such as moxibustion, Sanfu Tie, and Baduanjin that everyone often asks about, the controversy is even greater. A while ago, a girl came to me and said that she had read online that moxibustion could treat dysmenorrhea, and she moxibustioned the Guanyuan point at home every day. After a month of moxibustion, not only was her dysmenorrhea not cured, but she also kept getting nosebleeds and oral ulcers. After asking, I found out that she has a constitution of yin deficiency and fire exuberance. She usually has hot palms and soles and is prone to dry mouth. The moxibustion and replenishing yang often recommended by the Fuyang School completely added fuel to the fire for her. Later, she stopped moxibustion and drank some Ophiopogon japonicus water every day. She pressed Sanyinjiao one week before her period, and applied a warm towel to her lower abdomen when she was in pain. She was relieved a lot in the second month. There are also many people who follow the trend of practicing Baduanjin, thinking that it is a national health-preserving exercise. In fact, it is not suitable for everyone. There used to be an old man with asthma who practiced Baduanjin with the community. Every time he did the arm-raising movement of "supporting the three energizers of heaven and earth with both hands", he was out of breath. Later, he changed to walking slowly for 20 minutes after meals every day, and occasionally doing simplified Tai Chi. On the contrary, his energy improved a lot. Health preservation is never about following the trend. If others use good things, they may become a burden to you.

There are also a few health tips that everyone has heard so much. Don’t be fooled. For example, "eat carrots in winter and ginger in summer." If you stay in an air-conditioned room every day in summer and keep iced milk tea and iced coffee in hand, drinking a cup of ginger tea can really repel the cold and warm your stomach. ； But if you run business outdoors every day and are sweating profusely in the sun, your mouth is dry. If you drink ginger tea every day, it will be strange if you don't get angry. There is also a saying on the Internet that "drink eight glasses of water a day". There is no such saying in traditional Chinese medicine. People with spleen deficiency and heavy dampness will not be able to expel water after drinking too much, which will aggravate the problems of edema and thick tongue coating. When drinking water, drink warm water, sip slowly, and do not force it down when you are not thirsty, which will increase the burden on the spleen and stomach.

After all, health preservation through traditional Chinese medicine is really not a mysterious thing, and you don’t need to spend a lot of money to buy Cordyceps sinensis and Ganoderma spore powder to call it health preservation. You should feel more about your body: after what you eat, your stomach feels good and your energy is good, how long you sleep without getting tired, and after you do some exercise, you feel relaxed instead of sore and tired. These most intuitive feelings are more useful than all online health guides. If you really have a long-term uncomfortable problem, don’t search for information and make random adjustments on your own. See a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in a regular hospital to check and make adjustments after syndrome differentiation. This is better than anything else.