When Chinese medicine diagnoses, it often mentions concepts such as cold pathogen, dampness, deficiency, dry-heat, which contain rich health information. Cold pathogen usually refers to symptoms that make people feel cold, stiff and may cause body contraction, with typical manifestations like common cold and wind-cold cough in winter. When cold pathogen harms the body, it weakens the body’s yang qi, causing symptoms like aversion to cold, muscle stiffness, and may affect the circulation of qi and blood, leading to pain or numbness in limbs. Cupping, gua sha, and hot compress are traditional therapies to resist cold pathogen, along with warm food ingredients in diet therapy like dried ginger and cinnamon are good choices.
Dampness is considered the root of many diseases, often accumulated in the body due to overeating, lack of exercise, and humid environment, manifesting as body heaviness, eczema, edema, and similar symptoms. Improving dampness condition is crucial by keeping the environment dry and ventilated, adjusting dietary habits by reducing sweet and cold food intake, increasing food items like adzuki beans and coix seeds that help drain dampness.
As for heat pathogen, it is usually associated with internal heat, with symptoms such as fever, constipation, dry mouth and throat. Dealing with heat pathogen involves avoiding spicy and greasy foods, Chinese medicine recommends bitter foods like lotus seed hearts, bitter gourd, and honeysuckle to clear heat and detoxify.
In Chinese medicine theory, “deficiency” refers to insufficient bodily energy or low function, further categorized into qi deficiency, blood deficiency, among others. Different types of deficiency require targeted nourishment, such as ginseng and codonopsis for qi deficiency, dang gui and goji berries for blood deficiency, and lung deficiency, kidney deficiency require corresponding food items like Chinese yam, pig liver to enhance the function of the respective organs.
In conclusion, Chinese medicine emphasizes taking appropriate protective and conditioning measures based on individual constitution and specific symptoms to achieve the goal of balancing yin and yang and restoring health.
