What are the dietary taboos of Chinese medicine?

In fact, there are no universal dietary taboos that apply to all Chinese medicines. The essence of all foods that require taboos is to avoid conflicting with the properties of the medicine, counteracting the efficacy of the medicine, or aggravating the disease itself. Those statements posted on the Internet that "you cannot eat radishes, mung beans, and seafood when drinking Chinese medicine" are mostly taken out of context and cannot be generalized at all.

I have been working in community pharmacies for almost ten years, and I have seen too many pitfalls that people make by blindly restricting food or not doing so at all. Not long ago, there was a lady who suffered from wind-heat and cold. She took the doctor's prescription for a pungent, cool medicine to relieve symptoms. After drinking it for three days and having a fever, she came back and asked what was going on. After talking to her, she realized that she had heard of it. The old man at home said that traditional Chinese medicine should not be taken cold, so Dunden gave the medicine with ginger and brown sugar water. Ginger and brown sugar are both warm in nature, which happened to collide with the cooling medicine like Yinqiao powder she took. It was equivalent to the medicine cooling her down. She secretly "burned the stove" under it, but it was useless.

Speaking of which, I have to mention a few "recognized taboos" that everyone has been arguing about for many years. The controversy is indeed not small. For example, the most widely circulated saying is "don't eat radish when eating ginseng". The traditional saying is that radish breaks the qi and will offset the qi-tonifying effect of ginseng. However, there are many clinical cases showing that if you have qi deficiency or stagnation, you will have a bloated stomach and cannot sleep after eating ginseng. Instead, chew a few mouthfuls of radish or add a little radish seeds (that is, radish seeds), which can straighten the qi that has been added and help ginseng to play its role. It is not completely untouchable. There is also the saying "mung bean cures hundreds of medicines". In fact, only when you take warm tonics such as aconite, dried ginger, and astragalus, drinking iced mung bean soup every now and then will offset the medicinal properties. If you are taking heat-clearing and detoxifying medicines such as coptis and honeysuckle, drinking some warm mung bean soup can actually help the effects of the medicine. There is no such thing as an antidote to all medicines.

Of course, this does not mean that all dietary taboos are groundless. Some are indeed practical experiences that we have accumulated over the years. For example, if you take Chinese medicine to treat allergy-related diseases such as eczema, allergic rhinitis, and urticaria, no matter whether the medicine is cold or hot, you must first avoid seafood, mango, durian, beef and mutton for ten and a half days. I have seen too many people taking allergy medicine and eating crayfish at the same time. Also, when taking Chinese medicine that warms the stomach, don’t nibble on iced watermelon or drink cold beer. The medicine is replenishing the yang energy of your spleen and stomach. If you forcefully stuff ice into your stomach, it is equivalent to pouring cold water on the pot while boiling. No matter how good the medicine is, it will be useless.

Nowadays, many scholars who are doing modern pharmacological research believe that many dietary taboos lack evidence-based evidence in large samples, and they do not need to be followed too strictly. This makes sense. For example, if you drink a peaceful prescription to regulate qi and blood, and occasionally take a few bites of ice or spicy food, as long as you don't eat it every day, it won't actually have much impact. You don't have to overdo it to the point where you have to boil an apple before you dare to eat it. If you are really unsure about what you can and cannot eat, just ask the doctor who prescribes it when taking medicine. It is much more reliable than the cookie-cutter general contraindications you can search on the Internet.