After
the Beginning of Autumn, the weather changes from hot to cold, Yang disappears and Yin grows, so health care in autumn must follow the principle of “raising”, and foot soaking is an ideal way to help us “raise”. The Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Internal Medicine records: “After autumn, the cold rises. Soak your feet to dispel the cold and eliminate all diseases.”
Today, doctors in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine will add five “ingredients” to your foot bath basin to create a limited foot bath soup for health preservation in autumn.
Cassia twig
can induce diaphoresis and relieve exterior syndrome, warm meridians and promote blood circulation, dispel cold and relieve pain. People with cold hands and feet can greatly improve the situation by soaking their feet with cassia twig. The cassia twig is pungent and warm and can dispel wind and cold, and the cassia twig foot bath can treat cold, wind and cold, fever and aversion to cold, and the like. The cassia twig helps Yang to transform into qi, and foot soaking can also treat kidney-yang deficiency, cold arthralgia, lumbago, gout and the like. Besides cooking,
Chinese prickly
ash also has rich medicinal value. Zanthoxylum bungeanum is pungent and hot in nature. Like pepper, garlic and ginger, it has the function of dispelling cold. Soaking feet with Zanthoxylum bungeanum can dispel the cold of viscera, and can support Yang Qi. It can improve the deficiency-cold constitution of cold hands and feet, and can play the role of external treatment of internal diseases. Zanthoxylum bungeanum can also play a role in improving indigestion for abdominal distension, food accumulation and other symptoms of spleen-stomach Yang deficiency.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that Chinese prickly ash has the function of promoting blood circulation and dredging collaterals. Soaking feet in Chinese prickly ash water combined with massage can dredge the meridians and collaterals of the whole body, smooth blood vessels, regulate human body function, enhance resistance, eliminate fatigue and regulate sleep. For women, Chinese prickly ash also has the function of warming the uterus, dispelling cold and relieving dysmenorrhea. The warm and dispersing nature of Chinese prickly ash can stimulate Yang Qi of the human body.
Often soak feet with pepper water, which has a certain preventive effect on colds. In addition, the smell of Chinese prickly ash is fragrant, and soaking feet with it has a certain therapeutic and preventive effect on foot diseases, such as beriberi, foot odor, foot sweat and so on.
Ginger
belongs to pungent and warm drugs for relieving exterior syndrome, which has the function of dispelling cold and relieving exterior syndrome, and has less toxic and side effects. Ginger can stimulate capillaries and improve local blood circulation and metabolism. People who are afraid of cold and easy to get cold hands and feet can soak their feet with ginger.
Ginger contains a lot of gingerol, which can speed up the blood circulation in the human body, open the pores, promote the discharge of some dampness and cold in the body, and has the effect of dispelling cold and warming the body.
For people with dysmenorrhea, cold uterus and body cold, proper foot soaking with ginger water can effectively improve a series of discomfort symptoms. For people with low basal metabolic rate, ginger foot soaking can not only improve the basal metabolic rate, but also promote the rapid excretion of some excess water in the body, which has the effect of detumescence and alleviate the symptoms of varicose veins.
Wormwood
has the effects of restoring Yang, regulating qi and blood, and expelling dampness and cold. Soaking feet with wormwood can improve lung function, which is good for people with chronic bronchitis. Folium Artemisiae Argyi contains volatile oil and bitter element, which can warm the body, dredge meridians and improve immunity. It is especially suitable for people with heavy humidity.
Safflower
foot bath can warm the whole body, promote blood circulation, promote blood circulation, but also help to prevent insomnia. Winter is prone to frostbite, and people with dry and cracked skin can use safflower to soak their feet to prevent it.
Foot soaking can be traced back to thousands of years ago
. In China, foot soaking has a long history. As early as the Jin Dynasty, the content of foot soaking was recorded in the Emergency Prescriptions for Elbow Reserve, which has a history of more than a thousand years. Su Dongpo also said: “Hot foot bath is a hundred times more effective than taking medicine.” In his poem, Lu You mentioned that at the age of 82, he still insisted on the habit of washing his feet with hot water before going to bed: “Old people are no longer engaged in farming and mulberry, nor do they forget to count chicken pecks.”. Washing feet and going to bed is really quick, and the young grandson is growing up to cook soup.
It can be seen that foot soaking has been loved by everyone since ancient times, and has a good health effect. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, foot bath is a kind of foot bath, which is one of the commonly used external treatment methods of traditional Chinese medicine, and can smooth Qi and blood in the body.
Modern medicine believes that the process of foot blood returning to the heart is not only long, but also tortuous, so the foot muscle has the reputation of “the second heart” of the human body, and its contraction function determines the state of peripheral circulation. Soaking feet and foot massage promote the brain to conduct signals through the reflex zone, improve the endocrine and blood circulation of the human body, and regulate the physiological environment.
The plantar reflex theory holds that the foot, like the ear, is a microcosm of the human body. Human pathological changes can occur in the plantar acupoints, like an early warning, which can indicate the health status of the human body to a certain extent. Therefore, insisting on foot soaking can accelerate blood microcirculation, promote the circulation of qi and blood, relax tendons and dredge collaterals, harmonize qi and activate blood circulation, so as to achieve the purpose of dispelling diseases and pathogens, benefiting qi and removing blood stasis, and nourishing primordial qi.
This article/Meng Yi (Beijing Geriatric Hospital)
