Disease is a state, either cold or hot. This cold and heat can be combined with dampness, causing the body to appear in a state of cold and damp and damp heat. The most obvious manifestations are cold damp cold and damp heat cold. To understand cold dampness and damp heat cold, we should first understand damp evil.
Where does the humidity come from? It comes from nature, from within us.
The humidity in nature is heavy, such as sauna days, such as Jiangnan water towns, the entire environment is humid, which will cause corresponding changes in the human body.
There are also many sources of moisture in our body. Drinking tea excessively and eating too much fat will cause the spleen and stomach to be unable to transport and transform, and will produce moisture; Not much water, less metabolism.
However, moisture itself is not the causative agent of colds. We call moisture evil, but moisture itself does not directly cause a cold. The greatest harm of moisture is to make the body function abnormally. Once the body functions abnormally, the cold virus will take advantage of it and finally make you catch a cold.
Everyone should understand: Dampness is the only tangible evil among the six evils. Others can be combined with dampness, such as summer dampness, cold dampness, damp heat, and rheumatism. Only dryness is opposite to dampness, so there is no combination.
It was originally "dampness is a yin evil, which cannot be transformed by temperature", but with such a combination, dampness will also come out with cold and heat. Therefore, when treating a cold caused by moisture, it is also necessary to distinguish between yin and yang. Everyone should remember the idea of dividing yin and yang, which is the principle of Chinese medicine.
If the combination of cold and moisture leads to dysfunction of the human body, then the human body will have a white and thick tongue coating, cold body, dizziness, heavy head, and chest tightness. The most obvious is that there are often problems with the spleen and stomach, such as abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, etc. At this time, the cold virus takes advantage of the weak point, and it will form what we usually call a cold and damp cold (if the symptoms of the spleen and stomach are severe, we also call it gastrointestinal disease). influenza).
At this time how to adjust it?
The idea of traditional Chinese medicine is still to regulate yin and yang. Since there is cold and dampness in the body, we just need to drive out the cold and dampness, and the body's yin and yang will be balanced, and the disease will be cured naturally. There is no need to think of ways to kill the cold virus. In fact, until today, Western medicine has not been able to kill it. This kind of cold tends to get worse the more antibiotics are taken. Many people have a fever after suffering from this kind of cold, so they go to the hospital for drips.
From this point, you can see the difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Chinese medicine focuses on regulating one's own state, while Western medicine focuses on killing cold viruses. In order to illustrate this problem more vividly, we might as well compare viruses to villains. The way Western medicine treats villains is to kill them all without leaving any future troubles, but can villains be exterminated? cannot. Throughout the ages, villains always emerge in endlessly, and more importantly, in the process of killing villains, you will also suffer losses. Countless heroes in history did not die in battle, but eventually fell in front of villains. This is how western medicine treats diseases. While western medicine kills viruses, it may also destroy your own body.
So how does Chinese medicine treat villains? Chinese medicine believes that the reason why there are villains around a person is because the person's moral character is not good, such as he is vain, greedy, selfish, jealous, etc. Being in an unbalanced state gave the villain an opportunity to take advantage of. So, how to deal with these villains? The method is very simple: one is to ignore it, not to get entangled with it, and not think about how to eliminate it; the other is to quickly correct one's mistakes and reconcile yin and yang. After the yin and yang were adjusted, the body functioned normally. The villain saw that this was a gentleman. He didn't entangle me, which was too boring, so the villain would leave in disappointment and look for other people.
There is no villain around a wise person, because he does not give the villain an opportunity. Sometimes the villain will deliberately attack and spread rumors to cause trouble, but the wise always ignore them. After a long time, the rumors will disappear. Therefore, rumors Stop with the wise. In the same way, people who are good at keeping in good health never give the virus an opportunity, because the yin and yang in their bodies are always in a state of balance, and occasionally get out of balance, and they can restore their balance with a little adjustment.
Take this cold and damp cold as an example. The idea of Western medicine is to kill the virus, while the idea of Chinese medicine is to get rid of the cold and dampness in the body so as not to entangle with the virus. In the "Taiping Huimin Hejiju Prescription" in the Song Dynasty, the ancestors provided us with a very wise prescription called Huoxiang Zhengqi Powder. Huoxiang Zhengqi San contains patchouli, perilla leaf, angelica dahurica, Atractylodes macrocephala, tangerine peel, pinellia koji, magnolia officinalis, Poria cocos, platycodon grandiflorum, licorice, Dabupi, jujube, and ginger. In this recipe, patchouli is used to dispel dampness. It stimulates the yang energy in the body through its aroma, thereby dispelling dampness. Angelica dahurica also plays the same role; Su Ye and ginger are used to warm yang, which can drive out cold evils ; Poria cocos and Dabupi are dampness-relieving, which can excrete moisture; tangerine peel and magnolia bark are qi-promoting, and are used to invigorate the qi. The whole prescription is to correct the body's cold and damp state, and none of the medicines is aimed at cold viruses. So does this recipe work?
For example, I have a friend whose wife is an actress. She called me suddenly one day and said that they were traveling to the South together. As soon as they got home, she had diarrhea and a fever. She was very uncomfortable. She was so scared Terrible, ask me what to do, should I go to the hospital for an IV? I analyzed her situation on the phone and asked her, can she still act? She said it was okay, so I asked her to go downstairs to buy Huoxiang Zhengqi Soft Capsules.
As a result, the next day, she told me that there was basically no problem.
It worked so fast.
There is a trick to using Huoxiangzhengqi: if the person has diarrhea, it is best to take Huoxiangzhengqi pills or soft capsules, because the potency of the medicine will be lower; if it is vomiting, it is best to take Huoxiangzhengqi water, because the potency of the medicine will be higher ; If you have vomiting and diarrhea, use both. This is my experience in the application. This experience is very useful, and my friends have benefited a lot. Later, I found that many of my friends can identify cold and damp colds by themselves and take care of them.
The other is damp heat cold, which usually occurs in summer sauna days. Symptoms are often fever, dizziness, heavy head as if wearing a hat, and sometimes a slight chill, fear of wind, chest tightness, infrequent and yellow urine.
At this time, our treatment principle is: remove dampness and heat at the same time, but remember not to use detoxification drugs, because if the moisture is not removed, detoxification will not have much effect.
At this time, it is better to use the Sanren Decoction of Wu Jutong, a famous doctor in the Qing Dynasty. I wrote about the application of this prescription in "This Way of Doctors Seeing Doctors". In fact, this prescription has nothing to kill the cold virus, it is almond, white coix seed, coix seed, these three seeds, plus pinellia, talc, bamboo leaves, magnolia bark, and tongcao. If the tongue coating is yellow, you can also add Scutellaria baicalensis and Coptis chinensis in small amounts, but the amount must be small, three to five grams is enough.
The three kernels in this prescription are all damp-removing, among which almonds open up the lung qi, and Chinese medicine believes that the lungs are the source of the water; Once the water is gone, the body will naturally recover.
According to my experience, after using Sanren Decoction for damp-heat colds, the recovery is extremely rapid, and the problem is often resolved within a day or two.
So, how to prevent cold and damp cold and damp heat cold?
First, don't catch cold. At night, be careful not to let the cold evil invade you, be aware of the changes in the weather, and be prepared.
Second, pay attention to the influence of moisture. In places where it often rains or has heavy humidity, we should pay attention to dampness, how to get rid of it? You can go to the seasoning store to buy some white coriander, put a few when the dishes are about to be ready, and don’t forget to add pepper and other seasonings, because these are medicines for drying dampness, which can improve our body’s resistance to humidity.
Third, pay attention to exercise. Exercising is the key to improving Yang Qi. Sweating during exercise is also an important means to get rid of moisture, and during exercise, the circulation of Qi and blood in the body is accelerated, which is also a good opportunity to improve the functions of various body systems.
What should you do if you have a cold or a damp-heat cold?
This type of cold usually starts with a heavy nose, runny nose, sneezing, and heavy head. These are symptoms of severe cold and dampness. Therefore, Huoxiang Zhengqi Water can be used to treat it. I usually ask the patients to boil some ginger soup by themselves. The specific method is to cut a few slices of ginger, boil a bowl of water, and boil it for two or three minutes. Then add Huoxiang Zhengqi water and drink it together. Huoxiang Zhengqi Water can dispel dampness and relieve the exterior, and it has a good effect on people who have dampness in the body and cold exterior at the same time. Generally, drinking it for one day should have an effect, if not, then you are likely to have a cold of other syndromes.
If you didn't pay attention at the beginning, the phlegm started to turn yellow and you had a fever, the situation would be different, which means that there is already heat in the body. At this time, the syndrome type is complicated, with external cold, internal heat, and moisture.
At this time, we should use Huoxiang, Peilan, Coix Seed and other medicines to dispel dampness; at the same time, use Shuanghua, Forsythia, Dandelion, Diding to dispel internal heat; and ginger, perilla and other medicines to dispel external cold. In short, it should be adjusted in three directions, so that the evil energy can be dispelled and the body can restore the balance of yin and yang.
