
Anti-Dampness Foods – which help to clear Damp!
Discover which anti-dampness foods and herbs help DISPEL damp from your body. But also, STOP eating foods that CAUSE damp!
In Chinese medicine it is called an ‘external pathogenic factor‘. This means that it invades you from outside, and that your body tries to keep it at a distance from its essential inner Energy Organs, your ‘zang-fu‘.
Nearly 2000 years ago an observant Chinese doctor produced a theory called the Invasion of Cold in Six Stages. It is just as useful today as it was then! It explains what your body does as Cold invades, both in terms of symptoms and how serious they are – and what to do. The rest of this page is a gentle introduction to the first stage.
Your body defends itself as far as possible by putting or containing the symptoms in the acupuncture channels – usually the limbs and joints – away from the vital organs in the torso.
Cold can, however, penetrate those vital inner organs when the body’s defence system is damaged, perhaps by accident, ill-advised treatment, medication or ignorance. OR when your body is too weak to contain the pathogenic factor in a ‘safe’ place – ie on the outside, or as far from the centre as possible.
If the body cannot defend itself, at the start Cold may attack the surface areas of the body, its muscles and sinews, commonly the shoulders and neck.
Depending on where you have weakness, it may then invade, for example, your Stomach (causing stomach pain and vomiting as in some forms of Stomach-Cold); your womb, (causing acutely painful periods); or your Intestines (diarrhoea and abdominal pain).
Of course, once it’s reached inside like this, it has become Internal Cold, about which read more below.
If you think about what it is like to get suddenly intensely cold, you’ll recognise some of the symptoms in the list.
Often you don’t want to move much – except to shiver – and you like or crave warmth.
Mentally, it often makes you fearful and tense.
If you also have Qi stagnation, the Cold and Qi stagnation will reinforce one another.
Depending on other factors you could also have sneezing or shivering, for instance if Wind invades at the same time. (And yes, what is called Wind-Chill can certainly cause it. Read more about Wind Chill here.)
People with strong constitutions can become intensely restless and some feel terrified that they are about to die.
Both Wind and Cold can invade quickly where your defensive-qi (this is roughly the equivalent of your immune system from the Western medical perspective) cannot prevent it.
Their penetration into your body can be stopped if caught early on.
Do not overlook or disregard this as a cause of disease! it can arrive unexpectedly, such as
If appropriate action is taken immediately, such as covering up, or wrapping up well or taking a hot bath, the body may expel or overcome it.
By then, it will certainly have become internal cold.
By then the body may have even changed it into ‘Heat‘ symptoms, (masking the original cause) in a desperate attempt to contain or combat it. You might recognize this in the ‘burning’ skin around an arthritic joint.
With the correct treatment, if that Heat can be expelled, it is possible that the patient will then experience a period of coldness again, at which time appropriate treatment would be needed, possibly the opposite of the treatment for symptoms of Heat.
Depends on what you have available. If you are otherwise in good health, what to do? (Apart from getting out of the Cold, of course! And out of damp or wet conditions, too.)
Various kinds of treatment for Cold once you have been invaded?
Warning: Any form of external warmth, including moxibustion, may take a while to register with your nerves if you are feeling frozen. Until you get a return of some feeling in your skin, you could easily burn. Take Great Care! And this is even more important if you or the patient is old. An older body’s nerves work less efficiently: be sure to warm them up before applying external warmth.
Please realise that no matter how good the treatment you receive, it won’t work for long if you go out and get cold again, especially if you eat Cold Foods.
You MUST make sure what you eat is warming. So… no cold salad, no cold fruit, no chilled food, no raw food, no ice, no ice-cream, no gin and chilled lemonade etc.
Just eat food that has been cooked and is warm.
Avoid Cold Food and Eat/Drink Warm Food.
Further reading? If this has whetted your appetite, there are many more pages on this site to consider, or why not consult our acupuncture study reading list?
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