Autumn Preventive Healthcare Focuses on Nourishing the Lungs

There is an old Chinese saying: “Feel sleepy in spring and feel tired in autumn.” Different seasons have different effects on the human body. When autumn arrives, people feel tired and are less active. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners say that nourishing the lungs is the focus at this time. Throughout the changes of the four seasons, by maintaining energy and changing diet and habits healthy longevity can be achieved.

Ritsugaku Ken, TCM practitioner of the Japan Society for Oriental Medicine (JSOM) and director of the acupuncture department of Kurashiki Heisei Hospital in Japan, said in an interview with the Epoch Times on Nov. 24 that the weather in summer is relatively hot and people sweat a lot. When entering autumn, body fluids lost in summer have not yet recovered; therefore, people feel tired, such as, fatigue in the limbs, and so on. This is the TCM concept of “tiredness in autumn.”

Body fluids refer to the various fluids the human body relies on to maintain normal bodily functions, such as, sweat, saliva, gastric juices, digestive enzymes in the small intestine, urine, and so on. From the perspective of modern medicine, since people sweat more during the summer, it is easy to cause a water-electrolyte imbalance, which  increases the burden on the nervous system and weakens the functions of the stomach and intestines. This leads to a deficient state in the human body.

TCM practitioners believe that the dry weather in autumn means the lungs can easily be hurt. Therefore people should pay attention to nourishing their lungs. The best way to do that is to stay calm. Lungs are respiratory organs, and changes in emotion are reflected on respiration directly; unstable breathing increases a burden on the lungs. Therefore, people should keep calm and relax.

Get Enough Sleep

After liqiu, the 13th solar term in the traditional Chinese calendar (the beginning of autumn), the weather changes from hot to chilly, entering the transition stage of “diminishing yang and increasing yin.” The yin and yang theory in the TCM basic concepts says that two relatively opposite characters, yin and yang, exist in everything or every phenomenon in nature. For example, there are earth and sky and chilly and hot weather. The two energies of yin and yang, oppose each other, and at the same time, in symbiosis, they cannot live without each other. People are healthy and energetic when there is a balance of yin and yang, and things are coordinated and stable.

Harumi Hiraji, acupuncturist, representative of TCM drug store and Wako Acupuncture, Japan, mentioned that among the four seasons, the warm spring and summer are the yang seasons and the cold autumn and winter are the yin seasons. Moving from summer to autumn is a period of changing from yang to yin and it causes the greatest impact on the body. People should follow the changes in seasons in this period and supplement yang energy from the sunshine. Therefore, people need to adjust their sleep routine, try to go to bed at 10 p.m. or before 11 p.m., and wake up before 6:30 a.m., that is, go to bed early and wake up early, intentionally letting the body rest to recover from the tiredness of the summer and get ready for winter.

Appropriate Exercises

Ritsugaku mentioned that appropriate exercises, for example, Tai Chi, badminton, walking, jogging, and so on, can supply sufficient oxygen to the brain and relieve tiredness in the body. However, to prevent over-sweating and losing yang energy, and therefore increasing the tiredness of the body, the intensity of the exercise should not be too high. People who work in an office and are often sitting can always do stretching, to stretch the waist, move tendons and bones, relax the spine, and through moving the body, transmit more oxygenated blood to the brain.

Prevention Better Than Cure

The TCM book “Yellow Emperor’s Indoor Canon,” mentioned that “best work is to prevent those not yet sick, not to cure those already sick.” It means that good doctors prevent the illness from developing; they will not wait until an illness develops and then give treatment.

TCM suggests that health preservation is important and focuses on medicine and food from the same source. The body function is tuned to the best state through daily diet so people feel unwell less often and have no serious illness.

Ritsugaku suggested that the diet in autumn should be mild and that balance in nutrition should be achieved. Spicy and stimulating food such as chili pepper, ginger, zanthoxylum spices, and spring onion should be eaten less or avoided. These foods can harm human bodies by increasing autumn dryness. Increase the intake of high quality protein by increasing the intake of eggs, lean pork, fish, dairy products, and soya products. Also, eating more sour and sweet food is not  recommended as they can cause dryness in the lungs.

He emphasized that people, especially those who are weak, should pay attention to the preservation of the gastrointestinal system. When autumn starts, take a dietary supplement, and consume some TCM health-preserving food and drinks to improve immunity, so that one can have a strong body to survive the winter.

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