Treating winter ailments in summer
- Source: Global Times
- [20:51 July 22 2009]
- Comments
Two young boys receiving their herbal plasters in a hospital in Wuhan. Photo: CFP
By Pan Yan
Long a tradition in China, the hottest summer days are used to cure and prevent winter illness. Marking the year’s warmest weeks, the period known in China as sanfu is considered an ideal time to boost your health. This year sanfu began with chufu on July 14, has zhongfu as its mid-point tomorrow and its final period mofu begins on August 13 and ends on August 23.
In the lead up to tomorrow’s zhongfu, hospitals have been busy dealing with crowds of people eager to buy and apply a herbal plaster (futie) to prevent winter illness.
“To treat winter ailments in summer is the working principle of the application of herbal plasters,” said Xiao Yanling, deputy director of the outpatient department at Beijing Tongrentang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
“This principle first appeared in The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, stating that people should preserve yang energy in spring and summer and yin energy in autumn and winter.”
The principle also corresponds with a traditional Chinese viewpoint that human beings and nature are united and that humans should adjust their daily lives including diet, sleep and mindset according to different characteristics of the four seasons in order to achieve a yin-yang balance of the body.
With the cold weather in winter, the human body tends to contain excessive yin energy due to insufficient yang energy, which makes people liable to attract diseases such as bronchitis, rheumatism, bronchial asthma and cold in the spleen and stomach.
Treating winter ailments in summer means that summer, a season when yang energy peaks, is the time to nourish yang energy for winter, thus relieving and preventing those chronic cold-related ailments that plague people during the chillier months.
The key components of the healing herbal plaster varies from hospital to hospital, but most include traditional Chinese herbal medicines which are deemed helpful to nourish yang energy such as storax, musk, bulbus fritillariae and Chinese caterpillar fungus.
Due to the different formulas of each hospital, the time of applying the plaster is also not the same. Some hospitals state that their plaster should be applied on the first day of each sanfu period while other hospitals say that any day within the entire time is fine.
The herbal plaster is applied on specific acupuncture points of body according to the corresponding part that is in need of care.
Su Wenfang just completed her herbal plaster application at Tongrentang. “Stomach illnesses attack me whenever the weather changes, especially in winter. I have tried many means to cure this disease, but all of them address the symptoms and not the cause,” Su said.
“Last year I heard that herbal plasters applied in summer can prevent some winter illnesses, including stomach illness. I went to the hospital to try and I also began taking some traditional Chinese medicine. Last winter my stomach illness didn’t occur as frequently as before,” she explained. “I think it really works.”
“In summer, especially during sanfu, our pores open up because of the heat. With a plaster application on the skin, the herbal medicine within the plaster will penetrate into the skin, then stimulate the acupuncture points and increase the blood flow,” Xiao Yanling from Tongrentang Hospital explained.
“A freer flow of blood will take the active ingredients of the herbal medicine contained within the plaster to parts of the body, especially those that are inclined to be affected by the cold in winter, such as the spleen, stomach and internal organs, thus gathering more yang energy for those parts and improving the body’s ability at resisting disease.”
Dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the application of herbal plasters continues to be viewed as a very effective way to relieve and prevent winter ailments.
To this day, tens of thousands of people crowd into hospitals for a herbal plaster application. However, Xiao cautioned that the plasters are not suitable for everyone, so a doctor should be consulted.
People wearing the plasters need to keep away from cold, greasy and spicy food so that the full effects can be felt, he added.