dampnes

Dear Tutor

Is it difficult in clinical practice to remove dampnes from spleen ?
How long should take to see results (to see tonque coating thining )

Tommy

Dear Tommy,
That's right!
It is indeed difficult to remove the dampness than to do other pathogens.

It's very hard for me to tell how long the result could be shown, I don't know how severe the situation is, how long the patients have suffered from the dampness, or whether the dampness is mixed with other factors, cold, heat, phlegm, wind, etc.

You really load a big burden on me

thanks for reply !

In fact, in traditional Chinese medicine, there are several ways to deal with the dampness, just because the dampness could be very refractory!

According to my experience, and the ones of my peers, dampness can be caused by endogenous and/or exogenous factors. I am going to focus on the exogenous ones now.
Food is a very delicate subject for we tend to eat what we like and discard things that we don't causing disbalances in all our body, this is something we all know .
Eating a lot of dairy products like cheese, butter, yogurt and anything else that contains milk, as well as drinking milk itself, creates a lot of phlegm/dampness all over our bodies. Also, the consumption of sweet foods such as candies, soft drinks, chocolates, ice-cream, etc, damages the spleen when eaten in considerable amounts. Another thing that causes phlegm/dampness is alcoholic drinks, these have a high level of sugars in them. Fried and/or oily foods should also be avoided. Finally -i think- white bread is ONE of the most phlegm-dampness causative factors there are out there.
Before starting any kind of therapy, it is necessary to check the "food" factor, and to see if a person is getting enough exercise, for the lack -or excess- of it can also cause problems.
Regarding the endogenous factors, overthinking can damage the spleen making it possible to hurt the transforming and transporting functions of it. Anger will disbalance the liver, and since wind dominates wood, a disbalance in the wind will affect the wood. Imagine if you have anger and overthinking together, a person is continiously thinking of something that makes him/her very angry... this could definatly cause serious problems in our bodies.
In order to remove dampness from the spleen, or from any other place- it is necessary to change our eating habits, do some sort of exercise if possible, calm our emotions and start a TCM or any other kind of therapy. If it is possible, fresh ginger root tea can help a lot with these kind of problems, but first it is necessary to check the persons tolerance or any other factors that could cause harm -i have never seen people being harmed by ginger, but there's always a first time...

I hope that helps
Juan

It seems Juan is a dietotherapist!

Sure, the diet is a very important factor for the dampness!

Comparing with dairy food, pork contains more phlegm-causing stuffs, don't you think so Juan?

I do appreciate the idea of exercise!!!

I'm doing Taiji myself, but I also think jogging (slow running) is very good way for removing (solving) the dampness.

Ginger is a good stuff for health and is used alot in traditional Chinese medicine. But to take fresh ginger, we'd better know these points in the following:

1). Please do take the fresh ginger in the morning, not in the evening!
2). Every time, a little bit, maybe you could cut the ginger into thin slices and mix them with a little vinager.
3). If the weather is damp or cold, the intake of fresh ginger is no harm, but it's the hot and dry weather, you'd better not take fresh ginger. In the desert, or areas nearby desert, you'd better not take the fresh ginger.
4). I'm sure nobody likes dry ginger, so I don't mention it. In fact, the dry ginger is much stronger than the fresh ones, so you'd better not take the dry ginger as food or diet.

Just a little personal suggestion

and what about when is internal heat mix with dampness ?
Ginger is hot or even very hot - so we cannot eat hot things in this case ?
or am I wrong ?

Dear Tommy,
For sure when there is heat mixed with dampness, we must be careful with the hot stuffs. So, if ginger is taken, something which is cold in nature should be combined, or at least the ones cool in nature should be combined, maybe kelp?

It's also the treating principle in TCM, the combination of bitter and cold for the damp-heat.

Tutor