Case study: maintenance of weak stomach and spleen with coldness
As practitioners of life cultivation, let us look at another case study. Here we have a case of a weak stomach and spleen with coldness. This is a very common illness.
01 How to judge whether we have spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness
Before we do something for the maintenance and rejuvenation of a weak stomach and spleen with coldness, we must know that we have such an illness. One easy way is to inspect our body.
01 Lips
The lips correspond to the spleen. If our lips are bright red, there must be heat inside.
02 Tongue
If our tongue coating is thin and red, it must be due to spleen yin deficiency.
03 Bags under the eyes
Bags under the eyes are called meat wheels in herbal medicine, which corresponds to the spleen and stomach. Therefore, people with spleen deficiency will have large bags under the eyes, and those with spleen yin-deficiency will have bags under the eyes becoming red, even purple, and dark in color.
04 Yintang
Yintang, located at the intersection of the line between the two brows of the forehead and the front midline, is where several major meridians of the human body converge. Yintang is located on the stomach meridian and is closely related to the stomach.
The yintang of a healthy person should be plump, red, and shiny. If the yintang is dark, sunken, and has blue veins, it means that the spleen and stomach are weak and cold and need to be rejevenated.
To put it simply, spleen yin-deficiency can be judged by the color of lips, tongue and eye bags. If we learn to look at these parts, we can basically judge whether it is spleen yin-deficiency, because the deficiency of the spleen will definitely be reflected in these three parts.
Once we know that our spleen and stomach are weak and suffer from coldness, we can take several actions to remedy the situation as follows.
01 Rejuvenate stomach by changing lifestyles
01 Develop good living habits in daily life. Do not smoke and limit alcoholic drinks. Eat less spicy food and fried food. Drink less carbonated drinks.
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02 Keep a peaceful mind and relax, and don’t be overjoyed and sad. Balance work and rest and do not overwork.
03 Pay attention to keeping warm in daily life, and eat less raw and cold food.
04 Do not take analgesics indiscriminately, because the medicine may do harm to your body. Taking more analgesics will lead to a decline in physical fitness and symptoms of spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness will increase.
05 Do not overeat and stick to the rule of eating eighty percent full every meal. If you feel uncomfortable after a meal, you have eaten too much food for your own good. Reduce food intake then.
06 If symptoms such as gastrointestinal discomfort and indigestion occur, do not take it lightly. You should start to take steps to rejuvenate your stomach and spleen before they become a disaster.
07 Eat breakfast every day, and drink an appropriate amount of milk or soy milk, depending on your body constitution.
08 Reduce the amount of anger. Anger will cause great damage to the spleen and stomach.
02 Rejuvenate stomach using the dietary technique
People with spleen and stomach deficiency are very particular about drinking tea. The first thing to pay attention to is the type of tea. Do you know what kind of tea to drink for spleen and stomach deficiency? Not all teas are suitable for people with spleen and stomach deficiency.
01 Kind of tea
01 Black tea. Black tea is warm in nature. It warms the spleen and relieves diarrhea, and is very suitable for people with spleen and stomach deficiency.
However, when you brew tea, do not exceed three times with the same tea leaves or tea bags. If you over brew the tea, some unhealthy substances in the tea such as theophylline will precipitate.
02 Rose tea. Rose petals are warm in nature, regular drinking of rose tea is also very helpful to improve spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness. It is especially suitable for women. It can also soothe the liver and regulate qi, promote blood circulation and beautify the skin.
To prepare rose tea, just soak five to eight pieces of rose petals in boiling water. However, women should not drink it during menstruation, because it has the effect of promoting blood circulation and will increase the loss of menstrual blood.
03 Tangerine peel tea. Processed tangerine peel is warm in nature and has the effect of warming the middle-section and dispelling coldness.
To prepare tangerine peel tea, soak five to ten grams of peel in boiling water.
Drink this tea once a day and persist for a long period of time, you will see an improvement of spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness.
In fact, in order to make the improvement better and faster, you may add three to five pieces of jujubes (red dates) to prepare the rose or tangerine peel tea. Make sure you smash up the jujubes so that the nutrients will go into the boiling water.
Jujube is warm in nature, and it is also a good supplementary food for spleen and stomach deficiency.
02 Kind of foods
Foods that are warm in nature and sweet in taste are appropriate foods for invigorating the spleen and qi, warming the intestines and stomach and dispelling coldness.
Examples are (1) mutton, chicken, beef tripe, pork belly, silver carp fish, grass carp fish (2) lychee, pepper, leek, fennel, mustard green, (3) cinnamon, dried ginger, ginger, huajiao pepper, xiaohuixiang pepper, cumin, white cardamom, and (4) brown sugar, indica rice and (5) others.
03 Rejuvenating recipes
01 Ginger porridge
Prepare porridge (congee) with 5-10 grams of sliced fresh ginger, 2-5 pieces of jujubes, and 100-150 grams of japonica rice, seasoned with oil and salt to taste.
It has the effect of dispelling coldness and warming the spleen and stomach.
02 Angelica ginger mutton soup
This classic angelica ginger mutton soup is recorded in the medical classic book Synopsis of the Golden Chamber by Zhang Zhongjing.
Prepare the soup with 15 grams of angelica (danggui), 50 grams of ginger, and 100 grams of mutton. Put the three ingredients together in a pot and prepare the soup with water. Cook the meat until it is soft and mashy. Drink the soup and eat the meat, once a day.
In this prescription, angelica is the main herb, which has the effect of nourishing and invigorating blood. Mutton is warm in nature, which can nourish blood and invigorate deficiency and dispel coldness. Ginger is pungent and warm in nature and dispels coldness.
After eating, you will feel the warmth in your abdomen, which is very comfortable. If you keep taking it for about a month, the condition of spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness will be greatly improved. This soup is especially suitable for consumption in winter.
03 Jujube and ginger soup
Prepare the soup with a few red dates and one or two slices of raw ginger. You may add honey if you like. Drink it as tea every day.
04 Tripe soup
The beef tripe is an animal organ, and it needs to be cleaned very thoroughly before preparation of the soup.
Wash the tripe with water. Put the tripe in a pot. Add three pieces of sliced ginger. Add water. Take to a boil for three minutes. Remove the tripe from the pot and clean it with water again. Now you have a piece of tripe that is thoroughly cleaned to be used for preparing the soup.
Now you put the tripe in a clean pot and add water. Bring it to a boil and then simmer until it is seventy percent done. Now add seasonings including an appropriate amount of salt, cooking wine, chili pepper, and cumin, and cook until it is fully cooked.
Remove the cooked tripe from the pot and let it cool, then shred 100 grams of it to be used to prepare the soup. Put away the rest to be used in the future.
Put the tripe in a large bowl, add three slices of fresh ginger, and an appropriate amount of monosodium glutamate or chicken bouillon, whatever you use to enhance your soup. Instead of using water, use the soup from the second boiled tripe. Add soup into the tripe bowl until the tripe is fully covered by the added soup. Put the tripe bowl in a steamer and steam for forty-five minutes. Serve hot.
05 Fresh ginger and white sugar snack
It is used to treat stomach coldness and pain.
Make the snack by marinating 500 grams of fresh ginger (finely chopped) with 250 grams of sugar.
Eat one tablespoon of the snack three times a day, before meals. Eat for a week then you will see the effect. If not completely cured, you continue to eat it until the symptoms are gone.
06 Eggs with white wine
This concoction is reputed to cure stomach cold.
Pour 50 grams of erguotou white wine into a teacup or coffee mug. Beat one egg into the wine. Light the wine. The wine will dry out and the egg will be cooked. Eat the egg on an empty stomach in the morning.
If the symptom is light, it can be healed by eating the concoction once or twice. Note that the eggs are eaten without any seasoning.
Erguotou white wine is an inexpensive liquor in China. If you cannot find erguotou white wine, you may substitute with any strong liquor made from grains such as vodka that will catch fire.
07 Pepper pork belly tripe soup
This is a very popular traditional soup to treat this illness. You can usually buy the herbs in a package from an Asian supermarket or online. In large cities in the United States such as Los Angeles, you may order the dish in a restaurant.
Materials: 12 grams of pepper, 1 pork belly tripe (about 600 grams), 5 honeyed dates.
The pork belly tripe is the internal organ of an animal, and it needs to be thoroughly cleaned before preparing the soup. However, if you buy it from a supermarket in the Los Angeles area, it is usually cleaned for you.
The standard procedure is to scrub the inside and outside of the pork belly tripe with flour and salt, and then wash with water or vinegar until it is clean.
Put white pepper (12 grams) inside the pork belly, sew it up with thread, put it into a pot together with six pieces of honeyed dates. Add an appropriate amount of water and bring it to a boil. Then simmer for three hours until done. Season to taste. Drink the soup and eat the pork belly tripe and honeyed dates.
It will warm the middle-section and invigorate the spleen, dispelling coldness and relieving pain.
It is usually for patients with gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer with deficiency of the spleen and stomach, with symptoms such as cold pain in the epigastric cavity, preference for warmth and massage, abdominal distension and tendency to vomit, cold limbs, feels cold and fear of coldness.
08 Herbal chicken soup
This is another very popular traditional soup to treat this illness. You can usually buy the herbs in a package from an Asian supermarket or online. In some cases, you may buy the dish prepared and packaged from an Asian supermarket. In large cities in the United States such as Los Angeles, you may order the dish in a restaurant.
Prepare the soup with 30 grams of Chinese yam (huaishan 淮山), 30 grams of poria cocos (茯苓）and 30 grams of codonopsis pilosula (党参) and a whole chicken. You cook it for about sixty minutes. Season to taste. Eat the chicken and soup, but not the herbs.
The soup can improve the spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness.
04 Foods to avoid
Generally, if we have a weak stomach and spleen with coldness, we should eat less of the following foods. It does not mean that we cannot eat them. We just eat less of them. We will stop eating them when we feel uncomfortable after eating them. This has to do with your body constitution, so it is hard to say who should not eat them.
01 Foods that are cold in nature can easily damage the yang- energy of the spleen and stomach, such as buckwheat, naked oats, mung beans, tofu, spinach, water spinach, eggplant, black fungus, golden needles, lettuce, wax gourd, celery, amaranth, water bamboo, cucumber, bitter melon, watermelon, persimmon, banana, loquat, pear, peach, and others.
If we already have a cold stomach, eating more of these foods will tend to aggravate the situation.
02 Foods that are thick and greasy and difficult to digest will easily hinder the transformation function of the spleen and stomach.
If we already have a weak stomach, we should eat less food such as pork, duck, soft-shelled turtle, oyster, glutinous rice, and so on.
03 Foods that have the effect of promoting qi and helping food digestion can damage the natural qi and aggravate deficiency and coldness, such as hawthorn, radish, scallion, coriander, and others. If we already suffer from such illnesses, we should eat less of them.
05 More invigorating recipes for deficiency and coldness symptoms
01 Rice Porridge （大米粥）
Materials: rice, water.
Method: Wash the rice clean with water. Soak the rice in water in a big bowl or pot. Add a little cooking oil and salt and let sit for one hour or more for easy cooking. If you do not soak it, it will take longer to cook the porridge.
Then put it into a pot and add an appropriate amount of water in the way of cooking rice soup. Bring it to a boil and then simmer. It should be ready in forty minutes. Do not skim away the top.
Serve the food hot. Eat the food hot, not warm, not cold.
02 Astragalus jianzhong soup (黄芪建中汤）
Materials: Astragalus 黄芪, jianzhong 建中
Method: Wash astragalus and jianzhong with water, then put them into a pot and add an appropriate amount of water to decoct. After about forty minutes, remove the dregs and take the liquid medicine directly.
Efficacy: Astragalus has the effect of nourishing qi, while jianzhong can warm and nourish the spleen and stomach and dispel coldness. With the combination of the two herbs, it can effectively treat spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness.
03 Pepper pork belly soup 胡椒猪肚汤
Same as 07 Pepper pork belly tripe soup described above.
04 Water chestnut soup 菱角羹
Material: Water chestnut powder 菱角粉 , white sugar 白糖
Method: First you make small chestnut balls from the chestnut powder. You add an appropriate amount of water to the water chestnut powder and then stir to form a paste. You make small chestnut balls from the paste. Then you cook the balls in boiling water. Season with white sugar and eat hot.
Efficacy: This recipe can be used as a main meal or as a snack. It has the effect of invigorating the spleen and nourishing the stomach. It is especially suitable for patients who suffer from loss of appetite, sallow complexion and emaciation due to deficiency of spleen and stomach.
05 Clove ginger candy 丁香姜糖
Materials: Eugenol 丁香酚, ginger powder 生姜末, sugar 白糖
Method: Put the sugar into the pot, add an appropriate amount of water, and slowly melt the sugar over a low heat. Next mix and stir the ginger powder and eugenol evenly to make paste. Then add an appropriate amount of sugar water until it does not stick to your hands. Put away the paste on a plate to cool down. Cut it into pieces and eat as a snack.
Efficacy: This snack can be eaten at any time, and it can replenish qi locally and strengthen the spleen. The ginger powder contained in it can effectively remove the coldness of the body.
If you do not want to prepare the snack, you may buy it from an Asian supermarket or online.
06 Quail soup 鹌鹑汤
Materials: quail 鹌鹑, codonopsis pilosula 党参, Chinese yam 淮山
Method: Wash the quail, Chinese yam and Codonopsis pilosula, put them into the pot together, and add an appropriate amount of water. Take it to a boil and then simmer for three hours until the quail is soft and mashy. Season with salt. Drink the soup directly after removing the dregs.
Efficacy: Eat one a day for one week. It can effectively replenish qi and strengthen the spleen.
07 Clove Duck 丁香鸭
Materials: Duck 鸭子, cinnamon 肉桂, male cloves 公丁香, grass cardamom 草豆蔻
Method: Wash the duck and cut it into pieces for later use. Put the male cloves, cardamom and cinnamon into the pot together, then add an appropriate amount of water and cook for twenty minutes. Pour out the liquid and add the same amount of water to the pot and cook again for another twenty minutes. Pour the liquid into the same pot and mix the two batches together.
Now put the duck with the liquid medicine and cook until the duck is about seventy percent cooked. Take the duck out and drain away the liquid on the side. Add a package of marinade sauce in the medicine pot, and then put the duck back in and cook until it is fully cooked. Take out the duck and let sit to dry. Season the marinade with sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate. Now put the duck back into the marinade sauce and serve.
Efficacy: This dish can effectively regulate the symptoms of spleen and stomach deficiency and coldness. It can effectively warm and nourish the body and provide vitality for the body.
05 Invigorate stomach and spleen using the tuina technique
The tuina technique is our form of the massage technique. It is quite different from the usual massage you may have experienced in a massage parlor. If you execute the technique properly, relief may be instantaneous.
01 Press the zhongwan acupoint
The zhongwan acupoint is located on the front midline of the human body, four inches above the navel. It is the recruiting point of the stomach meridian where the qi of the stomach meridian gathers.
Tap or knead the zhongwan acupoint with your fingers for two to three minutes until a local warm sensation occurs.
02 Knead and press the stomach
Locate the area above the zhongwan acupoint and below the sternum, which is the corresponding area of the stomach on the body surface. Use the palm of your hand to rub clockwise for thirty-six times, and then counterclockwise for another thirty-six times until the local area feels warm and comfortable.
The action is reputed to regulate the energy of the middle-section of the body and unblock the stomach meridian. If your indigestion and bloating symptoms are apparent, you can start the action from the stomach pit and repeat the technique of pushing from top to bottom, and be careful not to push from bottom to top.
03 Push and press the two ribs
Push down with both palms from the lower edge of the breasts to the side waist on both sides of the body to generate local heat, which can dredge the liver and gallbladder meridians and regulate the flow of qi.
Regular practice of these techniques can effectively regulate the function of the stomach, achieve the effects of nourishing and warming the stomach, smoothing the qi movement in the middle-section of the body, and preventing stomach illnesses.
06 Invigorating the stomach and spleen using the moxibustion technique
This presumes that you have learned the moxibustion technique. If you have not done so, you may want to revisit the article on the moxibustion technique.
01 Moxibustion at the zhongwan acupoint
Apply moxibustion at the zhongwan acupoint with moxa sticks for ten to fifteen minutes, or apply moxibustion with moxa jars for twenty to thirty minutes.
The zhongwan acupoint is located on the midline of the abdomen, four inches above the navel, equivalent to the width of five fingers.
The zhongwan acupoint has the functions of regulating the stomach, invigorating qi, dispelling dampness, neutralizing, lowering adverse flow and relieving vomiting. Moxibustion is widely used to improve stomach illnesses.
02 Moxibustion at the zusanli acupoint
The zusanli acupoint is located three inches below the outer knee, about one finger transverse to the outside of the tibia. Apply moxibustion with moxa sticks for ten to fifteen minutes or apply moxibustion with moxa jars for twenty to thirty minutes.
Moxibustion is often used in this way to nourish the spleen and stomach, strengthen the body and nourish vitality, reconcile qi and blood, eliminate pathogenic factors and prevent illnesses.
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