What does Chinese medicine mean by "avoiding raw and cold food"?

Traditional Chinese Medicine is a traditional medicine that is very effective in treating many diseases. Anyone who has seen a Chinese medicine doctor should know that doctors often remind patients to avoid eating raw and cold foods. The raw and cold foods mentioned here mainly refer to cold foods. Although they have the effect of clearing heat and detoxifying, they often develop in the same direction as the disease. If you are not careful, it will affect the treatment effect. So, what are the raw and cold foods that Chinese medicine prohibits? Let’s take a look below.

Food Features

The first thing to consider when it comes to diet and health is "sex". "Nature" (or "Qi") refers to the different properties of food such as cold, cool, warm, and hot, which are called "four natures" or "four Qi" in traditional Chinese medicine.

Any food that is suitable for hot constitution and diseases is considered cool or cold food. For example, pears, which are suitable for symptoms such as fever, thirst, and irritability; and pears, which are suitable for symptoms such as cough, chest pain, and excessive sputum, are all cold foods.

Warm or hot properties are the opposite of cool or cold properties. Any food that is suitable for cold constitution and diseases is warm or hot food. For example, ginger, scallion, and coriander are suitable for symptoms such as colds, fever, aversion to cold, runny nose, and headache; dried ginger and black tea are suitable for symptoms such as abdominal pain, vomiting, and preference for hot drinks; chili peppers and wine are suitable for symptoms such as cold limbs, fear of cold, and rheumatic joint pain. These are all foods with warm properties.

The nature of neutral food is between cold and warm food. It is suitable for people with normal constitution and people with cold or hot diseases. Most neutral foods are general nutritional and health products. Such as rice, noodles, soybeans, sweet potatoes, radishes, apples, milk, etc.

An analysis of more than 300 commonly used foods recorded in Chinese medicine diet therapy books from past dynasties shows that most of them are neutral in nature; followed by warm and hot foods; and finally cold and cool foods. Generally speaking, in addition to having nutritional and health benefits, foods of all natures are of the Yin nature, and have the effects of clearing heat, purging fire, cooling blood, and detoxifying; warm foods are of the Yang nature, and have the effects of dispelling cold, warming the meridians, unblocking collaterals, and assisting yang.

Common Foods

Millet, mung beans, kelp, mung bean sprouts, eggplant, bitter gourd, tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, pears, watermelons, melons, winter melons, wild rice stems, seaweed, water chestnuts, persimmons, pig intestines, pig brains, pig marrow, mulberries, kiwis, sugarcane, etc.

Classification

1. Seasoning: salt, noodle sauce, soy sauce, alum

2. Vegetables: lotus root (raw), purslane, water shield, houttuynia, aloe, kelp, cucumber, seaweed, straw mushroom, soybean sprout, mung bean sprout, bitter melon (raw), cactus, gracilaria, water spinach, vermicelli, agar, bracken, bracken root powder, elm money, gourd, yellow quail, sleeping vegetable, ground ear, wild cabbage, osmanthus, bitter vegetable, sunflower, bamboo leaf vegetable, plantain, wild leek, sorrel, kochia seedling, fubi, dandelion, dry moss, water chestnut, sesame leaf, ramie head, pig tooth vegetable, hijiki, basella, black fungus, arrowhead (slightly cold), black fungus (watercress), hair vegetable (dragon beard vegetable), Houttuynia, bamboo shoot (slightly cold), seaweed

3. Eggs: Songhua eggs, duck eggs (slightly cold)

4. Meat: seafood noodles, clams (river clams), field snails (Dahan), razor clams, mud snails, snails, otter meat, snails, duck blood, horse meat, earthworms, duck meat

,crab

5. Fruits: bananas, persimmons, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapefruit, carambola, mulberry, loofah, pear, kiwi, sugar cane, fig, melon (cantaloupe)

6. Dried fruit: dried persimmon

7. Drinks: Golden lotus tea, wood butterfly tea, ginseng leaf tea, trumpet creeper tea, senna leaf tea, kuding tea, gynostemma pentaphyllum tea, yellow tooth tea, indigo leaf tea, gardenia tea, honeysuckle, bitter melon tea

8. Chinese medicine: Ophiopogon japonicus, pearl, gardenia, dendrobium, Imperata root, Phragmites australis, Prunella vulgaris, Asparagus cochinchinensis, Rhubarb, Bupleurum chinense, antelope horn, Phellodendron chinense, rhinoceros horn, seaweed, Plantago seed, Coptis chinensis, Rehmannia root, Paeonia suffruticosa, Pueraria lobata, Golden bell fruit, thatch root, alum, Momordica grosvenori.

9. Fish: soft-shelled turtle, eel, and snakehead fish.