This can’t be eaten, that can’t be eaten, what exactly are the “irritating foods” that Chinese medicine talks about?

"You can't eat mutton," "You can't eat seafood," "You can't eat goose meat"... Anyone who has seen a Chinese doctor knows that dietary taboos are indispensable in the doctor's prescription. Even patients will take the initiative to ask, "Doctor, are there any taboos when taking this medicine?" For thousands of years, what are the "irritants" that have been passed down from mouth to mouth in China?

△ The book "Puji Fang" in the Ming Dynasty mentioned "triggering food" Source: Knowledge Graph - Scan of "The Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature"

The past and present of hair

Regarding dietary taboos, the Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, Treatise on Cold Damage, Compendium of Materia Medica, and other Chinese medical books all mention this. In the Qianjin Yaofang written by Sun Simiao in the Tang Dynasty, there is a record that "after all the bad sores have healed, you should be careful about what you eat for 100 days. Otherwise, the sores will flare up." In the Puji Fang of the Ming Dynasty, the term "irritating foods" was clearly mentioned. After the warming prescription in Volume 355 of the book, there is a description that "avoid raw and cold mutton and irritating foods, etc."

The name is justified, and probably because of the accurate name, the saying of "irritating food" has been increasingly popular since the Ming Dynasty. Xu Da's death from eating roast goose is a typical example. Legend has it that after Zhu Yuanzhang pacified the world, in order to protect the country, he imitated Han Gaozu and harmed his meritorious officials. At that time, Xu Da had a back sore, and Zhu Taizu sent someone to send him a roast goose. Xu Da knew it well, but he could not disobey the emperor's order, so he ate it with hatred and died of illness.

The legend may not be credible, but the concept of "fawu" is indeed gradually expanding. Even dictionaries such as the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" include the term "fawu", which is explained as "foods that are rich in nutrition or irritating and can easily cause boils or certain symptoms, such as mutton, fish and shrimp". It is generally believed that "fawu" refers to foods that are rich in nutrition or irritating and can easily induce certain diseases (especially old diseases) or aggravate existing diseases.

The true face of hair

With the help of modern medicine, we can also explain the food that causes allergies. For example, deep-sea fish generally contain foreign proteins unknown to humans. Some people will be allergic to these foreign proteins. If they have related diseases, their condition will be aggravated. For example, fish, shrimp, and crabs contain histamine, which can increase vascular permeability, microvascular dilation, congestion, plasma exudation, edema, hypersecretion of glands, and increase of eosinophils, which can also induce allergic reactions or related symptoms.

But in traditional Chinese medicine, although the causes of irritants are derived from experience and evidence, there are still rules behind them, and that is the medicinal properties.

Traditional Chinese medicine advocates that "medicine and food have the same origin". Many foods are medicines, and many medicines are also food. They all have four properties and five flavors. Even simple food has specific properties and flavors, but they are relatively mild. At the same time, traditional Chinese medicine believes that the fundamental mechanism of human disease is the imbalance of yin and yang, that is, the human body is in a state of bias, and one of the mechanisms for Chinese medicine to play a therapeutic role is to correct the bias of the human body with the bias of the medicine. If you take a certain kind of food with a strong bias outside the prescription, it will naturally cause abnormal reactions in the human body.

△ Seafood such as fish, shrimp, and crab are often considered as hair-raising foods. Source: pexels

Six common hair-raising foods, targeting specific groups of people

01

Fire-inducing substances

Onions, ginger, leeks, pepper, mutton, dog meat and other warm and spicy foods are easy to cause heat and fire, and are not suitable for people with hot constitutions, yin deficiency and excessive fire, tuberculosis patients, people with wound inflammation, fever, thirst, and constipation. On the contrary, people with cold constitutions can often help expel the cold in the body if they eat some of them.

02

Wind-inducing substances

Fish, shrimp, crab, eggs, goose, etc. are easy to make people allergic to wind, and are not suitable for patients with skin diseases and allergic diseases such as urticaria, eczema, carbuncle, furuncle, etc., as they can easily spread the disease or aggravate the skin lesions. Patients with stroke, gout, etc. should also avoid eating them. At the same time, seafood is rich in high-quality protein, which is a good food for healthy people or some patients who need nutritional supplements.

03

Moisturizing hair products

Foods such as maltose, glutinous rice, fermented glutinous rice, rice wine, jujube, pork, etc. are mostly sticky, fatty, sweet and greasy, which affect the spleen's transportation and transformation, promote dampness and heat, and people suffering from damp-heat diseases, liver and gallbladder diseases, dysentery, etc. should not eat too much. However, weak people with insufficient qi can use glutinous rice for conditioning, which has a certain tonic effect.

04

Cold-heating products

Watermelon, persimmon, ice cream, winter melon, green beans, lettuce, persimmon, etc. are cold in nature, which can easily damage the body's yang energy, causing the spleen, stomach, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and other organs to become colder, leading to diarrhea, cold pain, cough, chest pain and other symptoms. People with weak spleen and stomach should not eat too much. However, for people with a hot constitution, eating cold foods in moderation is a good way to reduce fire.

05

Animal blood

Foods such as pepper, chili, longan, mutton, dog meat, and white wine are mostly warm and can damage blood vessels and cause bleeding, such as epistaxis, hematemesis, hemoptysis, or hemorrhoids, menorrhagia, and hematuria caused by blood heat. However, these foods can be used to promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis.

06

Stagnant Qi and irritating substances

Beans, potatoes, greasy foods, oil cakes, buckwheat noodles, oat noodles, gorgon seeds, lotus seeds, taro, sweet potatoes, etc. are generally stagnant and difficult to digest, which can cause stagnation of qi and bloating. People with weak spleen and stomach should be careful when eating them. However, some of these foods have the effects of strengthening the kidney and astringing the essence, tonifying the spleen and stopping diarrhea, and have a certain therapeutic effect on people with spleen deficiency diarrhea or kidney deficiency premature ejaculation.

All things are interdependent, but they are just the two extremes of yin and yang, so there is no fixed rule for what can cause irritation. Some people need to avoid eating them to avoid inducing or aggravating their illness, while others are eager to eat them to help cure their illness. In reality, in clinical practice, patients often have multiple symptoms, which cannot be summarized into one type or one category. So in the final analysis, what are irritants, which ones can be eaten, which ones cannot be eaten, which ones can be eaten more, and which ones can be eaten less, you still have to listen to the doctor.

Author: Chunyan