TCM: A Natural Path to Allergy Relief
Allergies, a prevalent health concern affecting millions worldwide, are often triggered by various environmental factors, from pollen and pet dander to specific foods and airborne particles. While conventional treatments like antihistamines and allergy shots have their merits, exploring alternative remedies from the realm of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can offer unique insights and solutions for allergy sufferers. TCM takes a holistic approach, addressing the body’s imbalances and enhancing its natural defenses to alleviate allergic reactions. In this post, we delve into the wisdom of TCM to uncover dietary adjustments, lifestyle practices, and ancient exercises like Tai Chi and Qi Gong that can play a pivotal role in providing long-lasting relief from allergies.
TCM Dietary Suggestions
Diet is also an important healing strategy. Diet can help alleviate any condition caused by internal cold or wind, which can drain your energy and unbalance your body. Add warming ginger or cinnamon to food, avoid cold and raw foods, and limit cold water or sodas. Instead, add healing foods that are harvested in season. In spring, eat foods that support the Liver like salmon, scallions, eggplant, broccoli, and dandelion greens. In the fall, support the Lung with pears, almonds, and chickpeas. In the winter, eat a lot of cooked root veggies such as parsnip, onions, and sweet potatoes.
Another way to improve allergies is to get rid of phlegm by improving your diet. Phlegm in TCM causes runny nose, mucous, dried mucus blocking your nasal passages, sputum in your lungs, clogged ears, swollen tonsils and post nasal drip. By removing dairy, sugar, refined foods, and greasy foods, you can drastically eliminate phlegm.
TCM also suggests replacing coffee with catechin rich green tea, which provides anti-allergy actions. Chrysanthemum tea is shown to reduce excess allergy symptoms. Some TCM herbalists may recommend quercetin, a bioflavonoid, which has been shown to stabilize mast cells. This slows down the body’s release of histamine and other chemicals related to allergic symptoms. Furthermore, radishes cool and moisten, which makes them ideal for treating dry, itchy allergy eyes. Radishes help clear the sinuses by draining phlegm and helping with sore throats.
To function efficiently, your liver needs specific vitamins and nutrients from your diet. According to TCM, eating liver is one of the best foods to help this. It can be beef or chicken livers; and eating them once to twice a month is a good start.
TCM Lifestyle Suggestions
Combat Stress
According to TCM, the liver is highly affected by tension and stress. Use techniques such as meditation and yoga on a regular basis to help keep your stress levels down.
Practice Tai Chi or Qi Gong
Qigong is an ancient Chinese movement using mental concentration to help calm the mind and the body. Research has found that Qigong training significantly increases levels of monocytes and lymphocytes, types of white blood cells involved in the immune response. Studies like these indicate some of the potential physiological benefits of tai chi and Qi gong.
Conclusion
By following these dietary and lifestyle strategies on a daily basis, you can help your body conserve your Qi throughout the year. This can help address the root cause of your allergies. Allergies don’t have to be a common condition for everyone. They are more a flag or warning from your body that other imbalances are happening that may cause even worse, possibly life threatening, problems in the future. Everyone knows that if you don’t fill up your car’s gas when the tank is low, you will surely run into car trouble or issues later. People should pay the same special attention to themselves. It is easy to take small steps to not just to feel better today, but to stop suffering from allergies in the future. You can also improve your body’s health and prevent serious diseases from striking in the future.
