Chinese medicine treats allergies: food taboos and physical conditioning

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, the essence of allergies is that the balance of "good qi exists within, and evil cannot be affected" is broken - the deficiency of righteous qi is the internal cause, and the invasion of external evils such as wind, cold, dampness, heat, etc. is the inducement. It is neither simply "low immunity", nor is there a universal list of taboos for everyone. The core of conditioning is to correct the deviant constitution, rather than blindly tabooing foods or blindly supplementing immunity.

During the first few weeks of spring, half of the patients came in with rubbish-red eyes and paper for wiping their noses. The first thing they said when they sat down was nine times out of ten, "Doctor, should I avoid eggs, milk, beef, and mutton?" ”Last week I met a 16-year-old girl who has suffered from allergic rhinitis for 3 years. She made a blacklist of all the "hair products" through popular science. She hasn't even touched eggs in half a year. Her face is sallow and skinny. When she touches her hands, they feel as cold as if she just took them out of the refrigerator. Her pulse is typical of lung qi deficiency. Her spleen and stomach were wet. She had heard people say that mutton was too hairy to touch. Instead, I asked her to drink angelica, ginger and mutton soup once a week. I stopped the cold milk tea and iced coke for now. I didn’t prescribe much medicine. When she came back for a follow-up visit two weeks later, the number of sneezes was reduced by 70%, and her hands were warmer.

In fact, there are many patients in outpatient clinics who blindly avoid foods. When it comes to whether and what foods to avoid due to allergies, there is actually no unified standard within TCM, and the focuses of different schools are quite different. Most Jingfang schools believe that in the acute stage of allergies, the evil must be eliminated first, such as allergic rhinitis and cough caused by cold drinks. Xiao Qinglong Decoction can be used to disperse the cold evil on the body surface. The dietary taboos do not need to be too strict, as long as you avoid raw, cold, sweet, greasy and moist things. Fish, shrimp, beef and mutton can be eaten as long as the symptoms are not aggravated. ； Most doctors of the febrile disease school pay more attention to "wind evil", especially those with blood-heat and wind-dry allergies such as urticaria and atopic dermatitis. In the acute stage, spicy, alcoholic, and high-sugar and high-fat foods must be avoided, otherwise it will easily aggravate the symptoms of rash and itching. Even if the patient wants to eat, he must hold it down first. In clinical practice, I usually adopt two approaches: first look at the symptoms and then look at the constitution. I don’t give people a long list of taboos at the first step.

To put it bluntly, the "fat foods" that everyone is struggling with are not fixed things at all, they are just foods that "hedge" with your body type. It's like growing flowers. If you water succulents that like dryness every day, they will definitely have rotten roots. If you leave green radish that likes moisture in the sun, they will definitely turn yellow. How can there be any unified maintenance standards? For example, if you have a cold constitution, your hands and feet are usually cold, and you get hives when you blow a cold wind, then iced milk tea and iced watermelon are the number one "hair triggers" for you, and are much more harmful than eating two bites of shrimp. ； If you have a damp-heat constitution, usually have bitter mouth and bad breath, and get rashes on your face when you eat spicy food, then eating hot pot and drinking white wine every day is just asking for trouble for yourself. Oh, by the way, a patient asked me before, saying that I heard others say that if you are allergic, you need to take more vitamin C and probiotics. Is it helpful? In fact, it may be useful for constipation and skin rashes of the damp-heat type. If the person of the deficiency-cold type eats cold fruits every day to replenish vitamin C, the more they eat, the more allergic they become.

I once met a 28-year-old young man who had an allergic cough for two years. He had been nebulized dozens of times. He coughed as soon as he stopped taking the anti-allergic medicine, and he couldn't even go upstairs. He usually likes to stay up late to watch football, and drinks three or four bottles of cold beer in one meal. When he first came to the doctor, his tongue coating was as thick as a layer of ash. Typical wet drinks were blocked in the spleen and stomach, and the evil energy in the lungs could not be dissipated. I didn't ask him to quit drinking completely. I just changed it to room temperature drink and drank it at most once a week. I gave him Linggui Zhugan decoction with some fried malt and fried hawthorn to dehumidify the spleen and stomach. After drinking it for half a month, he said he basically stopped coughing at night. After more than three months of treatment, he can now occasionally drink a few sips of iced drink without being unable to sleep all night long without coughing. In fact, conditioning your body does not mean that you will be an ascetic for the rest of your life. It just restores your distorted physical condition. When you are righteous enough, your tolerance for these "hairy things" will naturally increase, and you will not be able to touch them for the rest of your life.

Nowadays, many people on the Internet say that there is no scientific basis for the "hair growth" of traditional Chinese medicine. In fact, this is either true or not. The so-called hair substance itself is an individualized concept. For people who are lactose intolerant, milk is their hair substance. For people who are allergic to mango, mango is their hair substance. There is no need to apply unified laboratory standards. Traditional Chinese medicine is to treat people, not doctors.

Ultimately, when it comes to allergies, it’s never about a grudge between you and the food, it’s about your body being temporarily out of balance. If you really can't figure out what you should avoid, just remember the stupidest principle: after eating something, your allergy will be obviously aggravated, then you should not touch this thing recently. If you feel comfortable after eating, then there is no problem in eating in moderation. Don’t live your life staring at the list of taboos every day. If you keep your spleen and stomach well and have enough righteousness, those recurring minor problems will naturally be far away from you.