Winter weather is dry, making it easy to experience symptoms of internal heat. Therefore, it's important to pay attention to your daily diet and eat more foods that can prevent internal heat. Let's take a look at some foods that can help prevent internal heat in winter.
What to eat to prevent internal heat in winter
Cooling Soup: Winter Melon with Seaweed. Many families love to make tomato and cucumber soup, but the best soup for winter is actually winter melon soup. Remember to add dried shrimp and seaweed; these two ingredients from the ocean are good for calcium supplementation and cooling down. Speaking of pears, many people have reservations, as they often get diarrhea after eating only half a pear. For those with weak spleen and stomach, the best way to prepare them is with rock sugar pear water, which can protect the stomach and intestines and also reduce internal heat.
Radishes are a lung-cleansing vegetable, and can be eaten in two ways. The most highly recommended radish is the inexpensive, green-skinned, and spicy Weiqing radish. If you can't remember which radish is best, just go to the market and buy the cheapest one; you can often buy a bunch of Weiqing radishes for just two yuan. Weiqing radishes are good for bowel movements, warm the stomach, and stimulate intestinal peristalsis. Adding some to dumpling soup enhances the flavor. Thick white radishes are suitable for two ways: they can be sliced and eaten as fruit, or steamed with rock sugar. Eating some radishes every week can help regulate qi, moisturize the lungs, and relieve constipation.
Remedy for Dryness: Use sesame oil both externally and internally. Nasal dryness is common when heating is on, especially for those traveling from the south to the north, often resulting in nosebleeds. In this case, fill an eye drop bottle with sesame oil. Before disembarking, squeeze a little sesame oil onto a cotton swab and apply it to the inside and outside of the nasal cavity for guaranteed comfort. If you feel a dry throat upon waking, you can swallow 10 ml of sesame oil before bed to create a protective film in your throat. For comfort in the roof of your mouth, you can hold a small spoonful of sesame oil in your mouth while lying down and swallowing.
In addition, radishes and fruit juice can also help prevent internal heat.
Radishes and fruit juice can help prevent internal heat in winter.
Unlike the heat of summer and the dryness of autumn, winter's climate is particularly cold, requiring appropriate warming and nourishing methods for health maintenance. It's best to avoid taking heat-clearing and detoxifying herbs like forsythia and chrysanthemum indiscriminately when experiencing internal heat in winter. Also, avoid brewing too much herbal tea, especially chrysanthemum tea, every day. There's a long-standing saying: "Eat radish in winter and ginger in summer." In the past, people consumed more meat in winter. Because of the cold, every household used a stove, and with the addition of modern central heating, throats became dry, thirsty, and prone to internal heat. Radishes are the most cooling, tender, and sweetest in winter, making them the best choice for reducing internal heat. Furthermore, winter tonics should be tailored to the individual, a point often emphasized by traditional Chinese medicine experts. Before taking any tonics, it's best to consult a professional doctor to determine your constitution-whether it's qi deficiency, blood deficiency, yin deficiency, or yang deficiency-otherwise, you might worsen your condition by taking more tonics.
For relieving the internal heat caused by winter dryness, Traditional Chinese Medicine offers an excellent dietary therapy called "Five-Juice Drink." This involves juicing sugarcane separately from four other ingredients with heat-clearing and fluid-generating properties: water chestnuts, pears, reed rhizomes, and ophiopogon japonicus, then mixing the juices together. Fresh reed rhizomes and ophiopogon japonicus are best, but they are harder to find in winter; dried ones can be purchased from a Chinese medicine store. If using dried ophiopogon japonicus, they should be boiled in a pot until the water is relatively reduced before adding them to the separately juiced water chestnuts, sugarcane, and pears. It's important to note that the skins of the water chestnuts, sugarcane, and pears must be removed before juicing, especially the water chestnuts, as their purplish-black skin may harbor invisible parasites. The water chestnuts must be peeled and washed thoroughly before juicing, and any small holes should be cleaned. Alternatively, lotus root can be used as a substitute for sugarcane.
There are many ways to prevent internal heat in winter, and you can choose according to your needs.
