“Eat radish in winter and ginger in summer, without a doctor’s prescription” is a health saying that hangs on the people’s lips and has always guided our diet and health. But many people have questions – summer is so hot, but also eat hot ginger, will not be on fire? The winter is so cold, why eat cool radish, is not a mistake? Today we will talk about the wisdom of Chinese medicine behind “eating radish in winter and eating ginger in summer”.
The four seasons of health, as described in the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, are to follow the natural laws of the weather, the Tao of nature, so that spring is born, summer grows, autumn harvests, and winter hides.
The Treatise on Typhoid says: “In May, when Yang Qi is on the surface, the stomach is weak and cold, because Yang Qi is weak inside and cannot overcome cold; in November, when Yang Qi is in the interior, the stomach is annoyingly hot, because Yin Qi is weak inside and cannot overcome heat.” In the month of May, Yang Qi is vaporized and radiates upward and outward, and the Yang Qi of the human body is also generated at the surface, when the Yang Qi in the stomach is weak and easily suffers from cold. The natural phenomenon that most visually illustrates this truth is the temperature of well water. We notice that in summer the weather is hot, but the well water underground is very cool. And in summer itself, sweating is more, Chinese medicine said “sweating out of the dead Yang”, resulting in the weakening of the body’s Yang energy.
People today, greedy for cool, blowing air conditioning, drinking cold, eating ice cream, and even chilled fruit, is not to make the stomach more cold? At this time, the internal and external cold, the stomach in the weak cold, damage the spleen and stomach Yang Qi, will appear abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting and a series of clinical symptoms. Including summer heatstroke patients, also outside the fever, but the stomach is cold.
Whether it is the physiological state of summer people “Yang Qi in the table, stomach deficiency cold”, or the pathological “stomach deficiency cold”, all need to warm the inside to disperse the cold. Ginger is warm in nature and pungent in taste, which can help to generate the spleen and stomach yang energy and dispel cold from the spleen; it even has the function of relieving superficial cold if you have an external wind chill.
You may have a question, in Chinese medicine, there are ginger, dried ginger and concoction ginger, what ginger should we eat? The ginger and dried ginger both have the effect of dispersing cold and relieving pain and vomiting, but the ginger is inclined to stop vomiting, becoming “the holy medicine of vomiting”, and also has the function of relieving the surface, so you see the ginger used in Gui Zhi Tang. Dry ginger is inclined to stop pain, “guard but not go” of the function, the pill is used in the dry ginger. The gun ginger is more hot than raw ginger, so it can be used for some serious chronic cold.
The above “Treatise on Typhoid” says that “the time of November” is the winter month of winter, which is the month of the winter solstice, and the situation is the opposite: the natural cold and yin qi rises, and the yang qi turns inward to warm our bodies internally to prevent the cold and yin qi from being too much and the body from being hurt. At this time of the year, yang energy is inside and tends to annoy and heat up the stomach. Nowadays, it is difficult for people in the city to observe that when they go to the well water at this time, the well water is bubbling with white gas. This white gas is the vapor of the earth’s internal heat turned into cold. Therefore, many patients in the clinic have cold hands and feet in winter, but their stomachs are hot.
In winter, the water is cold and the ground is chaparral, so people have less outdoor activities, and many regions have the habit of “cat winter”. In the north, people sleep on a fire bed, and many cities have heating, and in the south, people like to warm themselves around a charcoal stove. In the past winter, the two suns and cold water were particularly cold in Guangdong, so hot water bags, electric heaters and electric blankets were used.
In winter, many people follow the proverb “winter tonic, three spring tiger”, have the habit of tonic. A large amount of fat, sweet and thick, will cause the spleen and stomach stagnation, depression and heat; coupled with the external artificial heating of the fire of the evil, so clinically, the winter will appear a lot of hot disease, the so-called stomach in the annoying heat.
Radish, called “Lycopodium” in ancient times, is pungent, sweet and cool in nature. Li Shizhen pointed out in the “Compendium of Materia Medica” that radish “reduces qi, eliminates grain and neutralization, and removes evil heat”. Therefore, eating radish can not only relieve stagnation in the spleen and stomach, but also clear the heat in the spleen and stomach. Similarly, the principle of the winter solstice tonic “mutton stew with radish” is also to use the cold nature of radish to counter the heat of mutton.
In May, “a yin is born”, that is, “summer solstice a yin is born”. The “May time” mentioned in the “Treatise on Typhoid” is the summer solstice, which the ancients called “Yin Dan”, meaning that the Yang pole is reversed, since this moment, although the world is still lush and green, but the natural heavenly way has shifted from warm to cold, and the Yin energy in the body is gradually flourishing, and the Yang energy is weak inside. The yin energy in the body is getting stronger and the yang energy is weak, so it cannot overcome the cold. In November, “a yang is born”, that is, a yang is born at the winter solstice, which the ancients called “Yang Dan”, the cold pole produces heat.
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine says, “Nurture Yang in spring and summer, nourish Yin in autumn and winter”, which is the theory of health care contained in the saying, “Eat radish in winter and ginger in summer”. In order to follow the Qi of the four seasons and nourish your body, you can achieve “the righteousness of the qi exists within, evil cannot dry”.