Autumn is Upon Us

It’s almost shocking that October is here, isn’t it? It almost feels like time should have stopped last March, and we get a do over once COVID has run its course. But now we have to add wildfire smoke to the mix, and the regular flu season is also about to begin. So no heads in sand, it’s time to stay vigilant, and ramp up our efforts of self care. Chinese Medicine offers us much wisdom and guidance on how to do this for the Fall.

Each season in Chinese Medicine is associated with a yin/yang organ pair, and Autumn is the Lung and Large Intestine pair. Each season also has an associated “Qi”, or environmental factor. Autumn’s qi is Dry, and this dryness (or lack of dryness) can be very detrimental to our lungs.

Just the dryness of Autumn is reason enough to give our lungs extra attention.

Here are some important tools to support our lungs, the first line of defence for our immune system.

1. Acupuncture and Herbs

 “A superior doctor prevents sickness; A mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; An inferior doctor treats sickness.”

-Chinese Proverb

Chinese Medicine has many tools for preventing illness. Although it isn’t always possible to be the superior doctor, it is ingrained in the medicine to strive for it. There has been much research on acupuncture and how it works, and lots has been found to explain its ability to strengthen the immune system. Acupuncture has been shown to work on the nerve-endocrine-immune system, promoting the release anti-inflammatory and analgesic substances (read the study here). It has also been studied to have good effects on depressed immunity due to emotional disturbances, such as high-stress and anxiety (read the summary here)

Getting an acupuncture treatment once a month, along with gua sha and cupping, is a good way to strengthen our lungs. It can build the immune system’s ability to respond to the external pathogens, such as smoke and viruses. Also, having herbs on hand that you can take immediately, at the first tickle of a cold or flu is a good idea. Treating at the very beginning of the illness is a great way to keep it from progressing, and becoming serious.

Book an appointment here.

2. Food Medicine to Balance Dryness

The most famous home remedy in Chinese Medicine for dry lungs are pears. The juiciness of a ripe pear, even better an Asian pear, can moisten lungs for a dry cough, sore throat, and dry skin. It also can moisten the Large Intestine (remember it’s the yin/yang pair of the Lungs) for dry constipation.  You can eat them alone, or with some lemon to astringe more fluids with the sour flavor. You can also make a congee for breakfast. This will make a big batch you can use for a few days.

Pear Congee Recipe

• 1 C of glutinous rice
• 6-7 C of water
• 2-3 diced Asian Pears
• 4 slices of ginger, peeled

Put all the ingredients together and simmer on the stove until the rice has broken apart and makes thin gruel, 2-3 hours. You can also use a slow cooker on low overnight, or a pressure cooker on high for 30 minutes and natural release.

Top with sesame seeds, walnuts, and/or honey if you’d like.

3. Acupressure

A great point on the Lung Channel that you can acupressure is Lung 5. In the crook of your elbow, on the thumb side of the biceps tendon, you can hunt for an especially tender spot. When you find it, use firm pressure to massage the point. While you do it, let the rest of your body relax, and breath deeply. Massage in circles, press down for 5 seconds. Release, and repeat 2 more times.

Lung 5 is a great point to regulate lung function, and is great for harmonizing with the beginning of autumn. It also treats cough, wheezing, the common cold and allergies.

4. Begin to Slow Down

The intense heat waves we are going through here in the Bay Area wouldn’t reveal it, but Autumn marks the decline of Yang heat energy , and beginning of the growth of Yin. One cool metaphor for the intense heat that occurs in Autumn, is think if the Yang summer energy as a tube of toothpaste. As you are squeezing it out, you get a big glob that squishes out the back, bursting the tube. So even though we are feeling that Yang push out the back, it is making its way down to hibernate into the earth, and hide away for winter.

It’s time for us to do the same. We need to start going to bed a little earlier, and transition into less activity. It’s a lovely time to incorporate some Qigong to strengthen our lungs and build immunity, and perhaps start or deepen our meditation practice.

I really like this meditation instruction by Alan Watts. I like anything by Alan Watts actually, just listening to him before bed is a lovely way to have your mind blown a bit.

Here is some easy Qigong for your lungs. Remember you do not want to strain at all while doing Qigong. You want your breath to be completely silent, as this is how we build/strengthen qi energy. If you hear your breath, you are dispersing/moving your energy, and energy is lost.

Stay safe out there.

The sun is up early, and it stays out late. Follow it’s lead for a strong immune system.

A Different View of Immunity

In Chinese medicine, we think of immunity as the body’s ability to be flexible to environmental change. Whether that change is the weather or the presence of virus, Asian medicine will always classify it as a type of qi. The different types of qi are:

• Cold
• Heat
• Damp
• Wind
• Dryness

When a person “catches” a cold or flu, it is because their body’s ability to adapt to its environment has failed. The enviromental qi has overpowered the body’s qi. What this email is about today, are the different ways we can keep our own qi strong, so when it comes in contact with the multitudes of qi in the environment, it has it’s best chance of staying flexible, not become overpowered, and not get sick.

Yang, (heat), is our most precious resource. It is what keeps our body temperature up, our fluids from pooling and stagnating, our blood moving, and our immune systems ability to protect us. Every action we take requires this yang, and so we need to replenish it when we can. Summer is the time to do this.

Let the Sun on Your Whole Body

Ideally, you would expose your whole body to the sun everyday. We are like a giant plant, and our skin absorbs the sun’s rays into our bloodstream like chlorophyll. This is the greatest yang in our universe, and getting in into our systems is one way we replenish the yang inside of us. According to Chinese medicine theory, it’s not a coincidence that we are more susceptible colds and flus in the winter. It is because the yang of the sun is not as strong of a force in our environment, and not supplementing our own yang for immune protection.

Now, yes. This does seem strange to talk about as COVID is raging during the middle of the summer, but remember this all started in the colder months. To maintain our health, we need to safely get our bodies into the sun for a small amount of time each day, while it is strong and abundant, to fortify us for when the cold returns.

Eat the Sun

All the seasonal fruits and vegetables are bursting with the yang energy of sun right now. And here in the Bay Area we have such a bounty of local produce at our fingertips. Eat as many colors as you can each day. But eat them lightly steamed/cooked if you tend towards looser stools and low energy.

Probiotics

Our gut health is very important to the strength of our immune systems. Probiotics are a very important part of our diets to keep our digestive system functioning, and they are also a major lack in may modern diets. Easy ways to incorporate probiotics into our days are:

 

• • Homemade lacto-ferments
    • making sauerkraut, pickles, kimchee, using just a little sea salt and water it a great way to get an abundance of probiotics into your diet.
  • Miso
    • fining raw and unpasteurized versions is important to have the live healthy bacteria in there.
  • Amazake
    • this is a sweet fermented rice product that is the basis for sake, and known as an “energy drink” in Japan.
  • kvass
    • Traditional Slavic fermented beverage made out of stale bread

 

Using the strength of the season is the best way to keep yourself and your immune system health, and able to face all the challenges we are facing right now.

 

So here we all are, two and a half weeks into this.

From my kitchen, everything just feels quiet. There are more birds in the oak outside my window, the air is clean in los Angeles, and coyotes are roaming the streets of San Francisco. People are being sweet to each other. Our social and cultural structures are transforming into something nobody can predict. When I sent the email about the Year of the Metal Rat being about new beginnings, I had no idea of the swiftness and severity with which they would come. The Tao doesn’t mess around.

Now we have a choice, do we continue to fight against nature and the Tao? Or do we allow it, and move along with its flow. This virus isn’t going anywhere, but we can try to strengthen our immune systems so our bodies can live in health alongside it.

A strong, warm interior body is how we keep exterior pathogens on the outside. It isn’t a matter of fighting, it’s a matter of matching the strength of our insides to that of the outside environment. This way our body’s ability to maintain balance and health isn’t overpowered by the strength of the of virus.

Here are 6 ways to build up our interior, and maintain health.

Telemedicine and Prevention

I am offering some preventative care through the virtual world.  I have a preventative herbal formula for anybody who is interested in taking herbs right now. If this is something you would like, we can do an online consult so it can be modified for you specifically. You can then pick up the herbs at the clinic, or I can deliver.

If you have ANY symptoms of COVID-19, please do this immediately. Loss of appetite, fever, fatigue, body aches and dry cough are the main ones (but not the only, read here for more). The sooner you get on a formula, the quicker the virus will move through, and the less likely it is to become serious.

I also have some acupoint + lineament kits for people who feel they need more respiratory support/immune enhancement. This is a protocol that involves putting a dab of Chinese lineament on little plasters (stickers), and putting them on acupuncture points related to the lungs and immunity. These can be left on for 10 hours at a time (less for kids),  and you can put them on your families.

I think this could be especially good for those of you who are essential workers…taking it for all of us. These kits will be available for pick up at the clinic, and we will do the acupoint instruction online through Zoom.

Both these appointments can be booked here through my website.

Self Care

Cloth Masks

There are some new articles and research out speaking to the benefits of using DIY masks made of cloth, that are not N95, or N99 respirators, which are in shortage. A few months ago this wasn’t recommended, saying there wasn’t any scientific evidence that it prevented spread of airborne viruses. But scientists are taking notice of the countries, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, that use non-N95 masks in public and are having far less deaths from COVID-19.  Using just a double layer of cotton, or even a paper towel, can prevent the virus in droplets of saliva from getting into, or leaving from, your mouth. Here is a nice little video explaining the science and how to make a mask from a T-shirt, with an insert for a paper towel.

Here is also some more information from the NIH.

Breakfast

Start your day with a warm, moist breakfast. It is the cold and dry conditions that are allowing this virus to enter our own cold and dry interiors. This is a good way to build yang inside our bodies, and not allow the yin outside to overcome us.

Congee is an age old way of doing this. Congee is basically a long cooked grain porridge that is very easily digestible, warming and moistening. Different grains have different properties, but starting with rice and fresh ginger, and adding some green onions and soy sauce is a simple way to go. This is the very basic and easy recipe. If you’d like to go down the rabbit hole of congee, and why not, check out this article here.

Congee 

1 cup of white rice

8-12C water, or water/broth combo.

3 inches peeled and sliced ginger

Put all this in a crock pot, set on low and leave to simmer for about 6 -8 hours. This can also be done stove top, simmer for about 3 hours. Add toppings such as green onion, soy sauce and sesame oil. Or leftover vegetables/meats from the night before. Congee can be refrigerated and reheated.

Skin Brushing

Skin brushing stimulates the lymph nodes, promoting circulation of blood and excretion of cellular waste. It also brings yang  warmth to the skin, which is the chinese medicine way of saying boosting immunity. Use a natural bristle brush, and use it when you get out of the shower. Brush towards your heart, from the neck and armpits especially.

Ginger, Orange Peel, Honey Tea

A nice moistening blend of fresh ginger, orange peel (from the oranges you are eating for it’s Vitamin C), with some honey is a great way to keep hydrated, stay warm, and moisten the lungs. Make a big batch in the morning and drink throughout the day.

Essential oils

There is a lot of research lately on the antiviral properties of certain essential oils. Here are a few that are well known for this.

• Eucalyptus
• Tea Tree
• Niaouli
• Lemon
• Cinnamon leaf
• Clove
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Melissa

You can make a blend in a carrier oil, (30 drops per ounce of a carrier oil) and rub on your hands, neck, and chest before leaving the house. You can also diffuse them in your home.

In health,

Jen