Robust health and vitality maintenance guidelines for the winter season include;
Nourishing the Kidney functioning, protection and cultivation of the Spleen and Stomach functioning. Winter is the time for all the Qi to be stored away internally. Kidney is the root of storage, and therefore we nourish the Kidney to nourish the body’s ability to store Qi.
Ensuring adequate 7-9 undisturbed hours of deep restorative sleep, getting to bed early. Along with warming therapies such as sauna, relaxing hot water full body and foot baths prior to retiring to bed, supports the warming functioning and metabolism during the cold winter season.
Nutritional guidelines protect and strengthen the digestive functioning and metabolism in particular, the first basic guideline is to eat foods that are easy to digest and take foods at regular intervals.
Patients with a weak metabolism and cold body temperature with overall yang deficiency are encouraged to consume yang warming foods and drink such as lamb, venison, and warming spices like ginger and cinnamon. It is recommended to avoid cold thermal nature foods such as duck, rabbit, chrysanthemum, mint, dairy products, cucumber, raw salad, bananas, cold foods and cold drinks.
Patients who are prone to mucus retention, cold damp conditions (such as arthritic patients) should do the same as mentioned above and especially avoid cold-damp producing foods such as oranges, orange juice, tropical fruits, refined sugars, yeast, saturated fats, and lectin foods such as gluten.
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