Traditional Chinese Medicine and Dietary Taboos

Avoid foods that conflict with the properties of the medicine, foods that conflict with your own symptoms, and foods that increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract and affect the absorption of the medicine. The taboo scales of different schools of traditional Chinese medicine vary greatly. The widespread rumor on the Internet that "you cannot eat raw, cold, spicy seafood when drinking traditional Chinese medicine" is purely a rumor. For specific requirements, just follow the prescribing physician's instructions.

When I was doing a free TCM clinic in the community two months ago, I met a pretty typical aunt. She was in her 50s and had a weak spleen and stomach. She had cold hands and feet and diarrhea when winter came. She found an old TCM doctor who prescribed Aconite Lizhong Decoction for half a month. After drinking it, she said it was of no use at all, but the diarrhea became worse. After I asked a few more questions, I found out that she likes to stock up on iced watermelons in the summer. She thinks that drinking medicine is taking medicine and eating is eating. She has to chew on the melons just taken out of the refrigerator after every meal. Think about it, aconite, dried ginger, are all hot medicines that warm the body and dispel cold. It's strange that if you just ignite the spleen and stomach here, you can directly pour a basin of cold water over the ice watermelon, and the medicinal effect will be fully exerted.

Interestingly, different schools of traditional Chinese medicine actually have very different requirements for dietary taboos. Take the Jingfang School as an example. Only when taking medicines such as Guizhi Decoction to relieve the symptoms, it is clearly required to avoid cold, sticky, meaty noodles, wine and cheese, which are afraid of aggravating the symptoms. If the patient himself has Yangming heat syndrome, he is prescribed Baihu Decoction, Qingwen Baidu Drink, a major cold heat-clearing medicine, not to mention watermelon and pears at room temperature. If the patient is very thirsty, eating some ice is not a taboo, but can help the medicine take effect. On the contrary, doctors from the Shifang School, especially doctors who are good at regulating deficiency syndromes, tend to emphasize the taboos of "fabrication". Especially when treating skin diseases and allergic diseases, they will specifically tell you not to touch seafood, beef, mutton, leeks and the like. This is not deliberately to make things difficult, but is the use of different schools. The logic of medicine is different. The prescriptions are more "corrective". If you are hot, you will be given a cold, and if you are cold, you will be warmed. As long as the food does not conflict with the direction of the medicinal properties, it will be fine. The prescriptions and supplements are more "stable", as they are afraid that external substances will disrupt the body's recovery rhythm. There is no saying that one is superior or the other is inferior.

Many people spread the idea that "you cannot eat radishes when drinking Chinese medicine", which is a typical generalization. Only when you are taking qi-tonifying medicines such as ginseng, astragalus, and dangshen, you need to avoid radish - after all, radish lowers qi and eliminates accumulated qi. If you replenish qi here, the radish will dissipate it for you, which is equivalent to a waste of nourishment. If you eat too much and suffer from bloating and constipation, the doctor prescribes medicines such as Baohe Pills and Zhishi Daozhi Pills to eliminate accumulated food and lead to stagnation. If you take two more mouthfuls of radish, it will help the medicine take effect, and you may get better faster.

As for the current hotly debated question on the Internet about whether hair-making is a fake concept, there is actually no need to fight to the death. From the perspective of modern medicine, there is indeed no clear classification of "hair products". At most, some high-protein foods can easily aggravate allergic reactions, and some high-sugar and high-oil foods can aggravate inflammation. But if you stay in the clinic for a long time, you will find that there are indeed many patients with eczema and urticaria. The rash is almost gone when they take medicine, but it relapses the next day after a seafood meal. In this case, if you insist on saying that the hair product is fake, the patient's own feelings will never lie. When I talk to patients, I usually don’t insist on it. I just tell them that you can try eating. If you feel uncomfortable or the symptoms worsen after eating, don’t touch it next time. If nothing happens after eating, just eat when you need to. There is no need to make eating because of taboos uncomfortable, which will affect recovery.

When I usually prescribe prescriptions to young patients, I rarely ask them to completely abstain from spicy food and ice. As long as it is not a medicine for stomach problems or heat syndrome, I will at most ask them to take less medicine than usual. After all, today's young people cannot live without hot pot milk tea. If you insist on making him not touch anything spicy, he will superficially agree to you and then turn around and eat hot pot secretly. Instead, he will eat more. It is better to give him some flexibility. As long as he doesn't go too far, the effect of the medicine is really not that big.

To put it bluntly, the dietary taboos of traditional Chinese medicine are essentially the "trial and error experience" passed down by our ancestors for thousands of years. They are lessons learned by generations of people, and there are not so many mysterious superstitious elements. If you really need to worry about what to avoid, don’t search for those messy unified taboos on the Internet, just ask the doctor who prescribes it for you - after all, he knows best what medicine you use and what disease you are treating, and the advice he gives is definitely much more reliable than the general templates on the Internet.