Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
How should we nurture health in the blazing summer? Drawing on Chinese medicine and the characteristics of the summer season, Eastern Taoism sets out the principles of summer wellness, mental and emotional care in summer, summer diet, everyday health care in summer, and the prevention of illnesses easily caught in summer, offering a practical health guide.
1. The Principles of Summer Wellness
“The unity of heaven and humanity” and “the Tao follows what is so of itself” are the guiding theories of Taoism and Taoist medicine: people must adapt to the changes of the natural world and change accordingly. The chapter “Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit According to the Four Qi” in the Plain Questions (Suwen) records: “The yin and yang of the four seasons are the root of all things. Therefore the sage nurtures yang in spring and summer and nurtures yin in autumn and winter, so as to follow this root; thus he rises and sinks with all things through the gate of birth and growth. To go against this root is to cut down one's foundation and ruin one's true self.”
Broadly, this passage means that the yin and yang of the human body change in step with the yin and yang of nature. In spring and summer, people should protect the growth of yang qi in the body; in autumn and winter, they should conserve the body's yin qi so that it can be stored within. Of the four seasons, summer is when yang qi is at its height: the climate is hot and life is at its most vigorous, and for the human body it is a period of vigorous metabolism.
Wang Qishi pointed out in the Primary Mirror for Treating Deficiency (Lixu Yuanjian): “In summer guard against summer-heat, yet also guard against seeking coolness because of the heat; in the long summer guard against dampness.” This states the basic principles of summer as clearly as can be: at midsummer, guard against the summer-heat pathogen; in the long summer, guard against the damp pathogen; and at the same time take care to protect the body's yang qi. In summer yang qi disperses outward, so the yang qi inside the body is, relatively speaking, insufficient. If one exposes the body to too much cold or drinks too many cold drinks at this time, it is easy to injure the yang qi. That is why Chinese medicine stresses and warns people not to indulge too much in coolness in summer, or many illnesses may follow.
Midsummer corresponds to the heart among the five zang organs. When the summer-heat pathogen harms people, it easily brings on symptoms of a restless heart-spirit such as irritability, palpitations, insomnia, and dizziness. At this time it is good to eat some foods that clear heat and relieve summer-heat, which both clear the summer-heat brought by the hot weather and drain the internal heat the body produces. One can also take pungent-cool dispersing or sweet-cold heat-clearing herbs, such as chrysanthemum, mint, lotus leaf, honeysuckle, and forsythia, to relieve heart fire and disperse summer-heat.
The last month of summer, the “long summer,” corresponds to the spleen. At this time the weather is sultry, the rain continues without end, and the air is very humid, so people are prone to the damp pathogen. Once the yang of the spleen is obstructed by dampness, symptoms appear such as poor appetite, fullness and distension of the stomach and abdomen, loose stools, and cold limbs. To guard against dampness, the dietary principle for the long summer is to eat light food with little grease and few sweets, mainly warm food rather than anything too cold. You can add more minced ginger to meals, and it is good to eat Job's tears and adzuki bean congee, winter melon and adzuki bean soup, and similar dishes that strengthen the spleen and drain dampness.
2. The Chinese Medical Theory of the Causes of Disease
Zhang Zhongjing, the famous physician of the Han dynasty, was honored by later generations as the “Sage of Medicine.” In his Essentials from the Golden Cabinet (Jingui Yaolüe) he wrote: “The thousand kinds of illness do not go beyond three categories. First, pathogens are received and enter the zang and fu organs; these are caused from within. Second, the four limbs and nine orifices, passed through the blood vessels, become blocked and obstructed; these are struck from the outer skin. Third, injuries from sexual activity, metal blades, insects, and beasts. Examined in this way, the causes of illness are fully covered.” On the basis of this passage, later physicians grouped the causes of disease into three broad categories: external causes, internal causes, and other causes. External causes include the six excesses and pestilential qi; internal causes include injury from the seven emotions, improper diet, and excess of work or rest; other factors include trauma and disease-causing pathological products.
External causes—the six excesses. “The six excesses” is the collective name for the six externally contracted pathogens of wind, cold, summer-heat, dampness, dryness, and fire. The concept comes from the “six qi,” the six climatic changes of the natural world—wind, cold, summer-heat, dampness, dryness, and fire—which do not cause illness under normal conditions. Only when the climate changes abnormally and beyond a certain limit—when the six qi are excessive (such as extreme heat in summer or extreme cold in winter), insufficient (such as a summer that is not hot or a winter that is not cold), arrive out of season (such as spring turning cold when it should be warm, or winter turning warm when it should be cold), or change too abruptly (such as sudden cold or sudden heat)—exceeding the body's ability to adapt and thus making people ill, do the six qi become the six excesses.
3. Pathogens Easily Contracted in Summer
Summer-heat is the fiery pathogen of summer and the ruling qi of the season, transformed from fire and heat. Illness from summer-heat is markedly seasonal and occurs only in summer. Summer-heat is purely an external pathogen.
1. Summer-Heat Is a Yang Pathogen, Hot and Blazing by Nature
Summer-heat is transformed from the fiery qi of summer days, and fire and heat belong to yang, so summer-heat is a yang pathogen. When it harms people, a series of heat symptoms usually appears, such as high fever, irritability, a red face, thirst, a red tongue, and a flooding, large pulse.
2. Summer-Heat Rises and Disperses, Damaging Fluids and Consuming Qi
Summer-heat is a yang pathogen, and yang tends upward and outward—that is, it rises and disperses. So when summer-heat invades the body, people feel dizzy and irritable and may even faint suddenly; this is heatstroke. “Outward” means that summer-heat usually invades through the pores of the skin, causing them to open and profuse sweating to pour out. Sweat is one of the body's fluids, and excessive sweating depletes and damages the fluids. Chinese medicine holds that “sweat is the fluid of the heart,” so heavy sweating harms not only the fluids but also the heart qi. “Qi escapes along with the fluids,” which is why palpitations, shortness of breath, and fatigue appear after heavy sweating in summer.
4. Summer-Heat Often Carries Dampness: Beware the Damp Pathogen
The last month of summer is called the “long summer.” Its climate is hot, rainy, and humid. Summer-heat often invades the body together with dampness, while people at this time tend to stay in cool places—for example, spending long hours in air-conditioned rooms—and indulge in raw and cold food. So besides summer-heat symptoms such as fever and restless thirst, the illness often shows symptoms of internal damp obstruction, such as weak limbs, a stuffy chest, nausea and vomiting, and loose or incomplete bowel movements.
Dampness is the ruling qi of the long summer. Illnesses caused by dampness are divided into internal and external dampness. External dampness is caused by damp pathogens entering the body from outside—through rainy weather and a humid climate, wading through water or getting caught in the rain, or living in a damp place. Internal dampness refers to a pathological state in which water and dampness collect in the body because the spleen's function of transporting and transforming fluids is disordered, whether from a constitution born with weak spleen yang or from overeating raw and cold food and damaging the spleen qi.
(1) Dampness is heavy and turbid by nature. When the body is affected by dampness, it shows signs of “heaviness,” such as a head that feels heavy as if wrapped, as if carrying a load, heaviness throughout the body, and aching, sluggish, heavy limbs. “Turbid” means foul and murky: when affected by dampness, a person produces foul, unclear secretions or excretions.
(2) Dampness is a yin pathogen that easily obstructs the qi dynamic and damages yang qi. The damp pathogen is water that the body cannot metabolize normally. Water belongs to yin, so dampness is a yin pathogen; it therefore easily damages the body's yang qi and obstructs the qi dynamic, disturbing the rising and descending movement of qi in a whole series of organs—the liver, spleen, lungs, stomach, large intestine, bladder, and so on—and producing symptoms such as shortness of breath, oppression and restlessness, scanty and difficult urination, and sluggish bowel movements.
(3) Dampness is sticky, stagnant, and diffuse by nature. The nature of the damp pathogen is sticky and stagnant, which shows in two main ways. First, the illnesses produced when dampness invades the body tend to be sticky and unsatisfying. For example, when dampness accumulates in the stomach and intestines, stools are sticky and incomplete, as in summer enteritis and bacillary dysentery; when dampness accumulates into phlegm, there is sticky phlegm and a stuffy chest; when dampness obstructs the bladder, urination dribbles without finishing. Second, illnesses caused by dampness tend to linger in the body and are hard to shake off, with a long course or repeated attacks, as in damp-warm disease and chronic eczema.
(4) Dampness tends to move downward and easily attacks the yin regions. Illness from dampness most readily invades the lower part of the body, because dampness is of the same kind as water: fire blazes upward and water flows downward, so dampness tends to pour downward. “When one is harmed by dampness, the lower body receives it first.”
5. Do Not Seek Coolness Because of the Heat
In summer, “guard against seeking coolness because of the heat.” As the Inner Classic says, “nurture yang in spring and summer.” So how should we protect the body's yang qi?
First, beware of air-conditioning illness, which people develop from staying too long in air-conditioned environments. Mild cases bring facial nerve pain, aching legs, fatigue, headache, low back pain, a tendency to catch colds, and gastrointestinal problems of varying degrees; severe cases bring skin diseases and cardiovascular diseases. The various symptoms are even more pronounced in the elderly.
In view of this, people must not indulge in coolness during the height of summer, and should take special care to keep the abdomen warm. The difference between indoor and outdoor temperature should not be too great, with the indoor temperature no lower than 25 degrees Celsius. It is best to switch off the air conditioner when going to sleep. Air-conditioned rooms should not be kept sealed for long periods; whenever possible, let indoor air circulate with the air outside. When you feel chilly indoors, be sure to stand up and move your limbs and body to speed up circulation. People with chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, or arteriosclerosis—especially the elderly—should not stay in air-conditioned environments for long.
Second, guard against drinking cold drinks without restraint. Children's spleens and stomachs are delicate. If they often eat raw and cold food, especially ice cream and soft drinks, which are also high in sugar, the transporting and transforming function of the spleen and stomach is easily damaged, leading to long-term poor appetite, abdominal pain, abnormal bowel movements, and other symptoms that affect their growth and development. Women should all the more avoid indulging in raw and cold food, especially during menstruation and after childbirth. Eating too much raw and cold food not only harms the spleen and stomach but can also cause cold in the uterus and even affect fertility.