Health Preservation in Summer | Eat Ginger

Summer provides us a best opportunity to expel pathogenic evils, wind, cold, dampness, dryness, fire. With the help of ginger, it's even easier to treat problems.

In China, there is a saying that " A man can't live without ginger for 100 days." Current clinical research has discovered that ginger has anti-inflammatory and analgesic property and it can accelerate metabolism and adjust prostate function, help middle-aged and older men's sexual dysfunction.

If someone often feels cold in stomach with poor appetite, fresh ginger can stimulate the secretion of gastric juice and promote digestion.

Regarding ginger intake, we need to know the following tips:

1. If someone in the family has caught cold, take a bowl of ginger soup immediately to relieve the exterior cold. Drinking fresh ginger and red date tea for couple of days helps cold stomach.

For daily health preservation, ginger is best to be taken at breakfast. Ginger is great dispersing Yangming channels' Yang energy. Morning is the time that Qi and Blood flow through Yangming channels, ginger intake in morning can help generate stomach Qi and promote digestion.

2. Ginger should not be taken after noon. Otherwise, it could hurt lungs.

Chinese people most emphasize harmony between human and the nature. The nature's Yang energy reaches its peak at noon. After noon, the Yin energy starts to grow and Yang starts to decrease. For this reason, ginger, dispersing Yang, should not be taken after noon as it will work against the nature.

After noon, Heart channel's Qi and Blood is the most flourishing. Taking ginger at this moment is like adding fuel on fire. Too much heart fire will damage the lungs causing coughing, phlegm and other internal heat symptoms.

Also, those who are yin deficient with deficiency heat should not take ginger after noon time.

3. Ginger at night is the worst. Ginger excites nervous system and leads to bad sleep. Taking ginger at night creates internal fire, damages lung yin and kidney water.

Usually after work, many people enjoy alcohol at night, together with some delicious dishes cooked with ginger. Alcohol and ginger both are hot. Taking alcohol and ginger at night is as bad as taking toxic.

4. Do you need to remove the skin of ginger ? Depends. Plant's skin and flesh are a pair of Yin and Yang. Ginger flesh is hot and ginger skin is cool. Therefore it is best to take ginger flesh only without its skin to induce sweat. If we use ginger to cook, we can use the whole ginger to avoid bias.

5. Radish before bed and ginger after bed keeps you away from doctors.

Before going to bed at night, one can not over think. Over-thinking hurts the spleen and spleen is the organ in charge of transformation and transportation. So take some radish, no matter green, white, to guide the Qi downward and nourish the spleen and stomach. Taking a bit reddish at 8-9pm can give you a good night of sound sleep. What's more, your bowel movement the next day will be formed and easier.

After getting up, ginger intake in the morning can help grow Yang energy as we have just talked about in this blog.

本文译自《中医之夏季养生：三伏吃姜 全年健康》，中医思维＋（zhongyisw)，2017-05-16 搜狐健康，版权归原作者所有。