5 Habits to Help You Stay Healthy This Fall
Fall is here, whether you like it not. Do you know what comes next? Yes you got it right, winter cold. In Chinese medicine, the things you do in the fall affect how you feel in the winter. Here are some habits Chinese medicine recommends for this time of year.
1. Protect Your Neck
What do you mean protect your neck!!?? Based on Chinese Medicine, pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, dust, pollen or in Chinese Terms, wind, cold, damp, heat, and dryness. These pathogens enter the body first from the back of the neck and through the skin. The skin is constantly opening and closing its pores to release heat in the form of sweat to maintain your perfect body temperature. The weather during fall fluctuates quickly, as the temperature rises and falls, your body has to compensate. Since the pores are opening and closing, it can easily let pathogens enter the body, and also may entrap them if it gets cold outside quickly and the body responds by letting less heat escape. Protect your neck, or at least dress a bit warmer than you think you need to.
Ever wonder why when you first get sick, you often feel achy and sore at the neck and shoulders?
2. Eat Soup
Soup is warming as it is usually cooked for an extended period of time using heat. Heat does help breakdown food, by breaking the cell wall of food items or making it easier for the body to do that. Either we cook our food, or our bodies cook our food, when they enter the extremely hot stomach. Since the weather is getting colder outside, we need more warmth in our bodies. Drinking soup is an easy way to get a lot of easily digestible nutrition, and warmth.
3. Prepare for Winter
Prepare for winter by cleaning out your home, putting all your summer items away in storage. This will make your life have less stress as you will be prepared for when it starts to snow. It is also a good time to clean out anything you don’t need in your life, either physical or emotional.
You can also read, about Winter here.
4. Increase your intake of cooked food
During the summer months, when fruits and vegetables are growing, it is the right time to eat more raw foods. Once the Fall season begins, you want to decrease your intake of raw, and focus on increasing more cooked food. This is especially important for people who are constantly feeling cold inside, and if you are a heater inside your body, you can still eat raw food to help cool you down. It really depends on your signs and symptoms. You want to slowly increase cooked food as winter approaches. 100 years ago, before mass transportation, you would be relying on all cooked or preserved food while living in cooler norther climates.
5. Eat for the season
Eating for the Fall season is important. Please click here for information on the Fall Season.
If you would like advice for your own body, acupuncture and Chinese herbs are chosen from a Chinese medicine diagnosis.