I am highly interested in learning about TCM. Where can I start? Any good book recommendations? or a school? There’s a lot of misinformation out there and I would love to hear from those who know more. Thanks.
How can I treat oral trust? Any teas to take? Any things to avoid? I am 6 months postpartum, breastfeeding, and otherwise healthy but I guess my immune system is low or I wouldn’t have gotten this? blood tests showed low levels of Vitamin D and iron. I haven’t been taking my prenatals. I am confused what this is and how I got it. But would like to avoid meds. Thanks.
So I have been suffering from migraines from school years but they are less frequent now. Im 26F. the way it goes for me is as follows: Id get disturbance in my vision which i recognise the instant it happens. then it turns to blind spots and then it gradually expands. if it happens on the left region of my sight, the pain first starts on the right side of my head before spreading to whole of my head. offf its awful when it happens. i cannot think straightly i feel like someone has just stopped my brain. and has wrapped a tight cloth around my head and squeezing it. the vision disturbance and pain gets fine in several hours but the unable to think straight feeling still lingers around at least a day.
the triggers? i really dont know sometimes i think its blood circulation problem. there are days when im so busy and sleep deficit with all the people around but i dont get the migraine. sometimes im relaxed none of the reason is there and i suddenly get it.
I want to reach to the root cause and get it cured. I really wanna what is happening in my body that causes it. I have been to neurologist but they dont seem to listen or investigate it in depth.
We will be going into the Xiao Shu (小暑) solar term (节气) starting from 7 to 21 Jul 2026. Xiao Shu is the 11th solar term out of the entire 24.
With the arrival of Xiao Shu, we are about two weeks away from the most humid time of the year, Da Shu (大暑).
In these two weeks, some people may experience weaker digestion and/or poor appetite due to the humidity.
The dietary direction for this solar term is 消暑健脾, 养阴生津. This means reducing summer heatiness, strengthening the spleen, as well as nourishing the Yin to encourage the production of fluids in the body.
The following are foods you can consider to consume more often during this period:
Adzuki beans (赤小豆) – Adzuki beans are good for clearing summer heatiness as well as helping to remove dampness in our body. It is one of the best foods to be consumed during this solar term.
Chinese Yam (山药) – Chinese yam is very suitable for this period because it can help to strengthen our spleen and improve its ability to get rid of accumulated dampness in our body.
Winter Melon (冬瓜) – Winter melon is a recommended food for this solar term because it can help to remove the dampness in the body through urination. It can also reduce body heatiness due to the summer heat.
Lotus Seeds (Chinese name: 莲子) – Lotus seed is good for calming the mind. Heart fire can disrupt the mind and affect sleep quality. Lotus seed is a natural remedy to counter this.
In the next 4 weeks (2 solar terms), there will be an increase in cases of 暑湿感冒 (summer flu) as compared to the usual wind heat flu (风热感冒) or wind cold flu (风寒感冒).
The characteristics of summer flu are high and persistent fever, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and/or skin rashes.
Unlike wind heat and wind cold flu, people with summer flu will not find relief after sweating. Thus, some people may suspect it is dengue fever.
The following are some suggestions to avoid getting summer flu in the next 4 weeks:
Avoid entering an air-conditioned room immediately after sweating from the heat. Instead, find a sheltered place to cool down and let the sweating subside before entering the air-conditioned area.
Avoid consuming cold drinks especially when you are feeling very warm and hot. It is best to drink room temperature water in this case so that it won’t hurt your spleen. This is the most common reason why people get summer flu.
Avoid consuming oily and sweet foods as they will burden and weaken your spleen and increase your vulnerability to summer flu.
Consume foods that help to strengthen your spleen and clear dampness in the body (such as those mentioned earlier in this post).
For someone who has gotten the summer flu (with the above mentioned symptoms), he/she can try to take 藿香正气丸. This is a proven TCM formula for summer flu that you can purchase in any TCM retail shop.
Hope this information helps!
the main symptoms I'm having are a sore and scratchy throat, headaches, and full body exhaustion. I've been taking different medicines for throat pain and chrysanthemum tea. I took gan mao ling a couple of times yesterday (it started late Friday night) and then forgot to take any today.
What would you do herbs wise and action wise to heal up a torn Achilles? Recently tore mine five days ago and wanting to do the non surgery route as it heals in a cast. I’m curious what I can do to support tendon healing/re-knitting of the Achilles any help or thoughts would be appreciated
did a couple days of classes on Chinese external medicine (外治法) while in Guangzhou, taught by an actual licensed TCM doctor. honestly the useful part wasn't the treatments, it was just getting a straight answer on which one's for what and when you shouldn't do it. dumping my notes. not medical advice obviously.
first, myth bust: the red/purple marks from gua sha and cupping are NOT "toxins leaving your body." it's just blood pulled up near the surface, fades in a few days. (fun bit tho — they actually read the color. bright red = heat, dark purple = cold sitting deeper. )
quick rundown:
gua sha (scraping) — shallow, fast, good for neck/shoulder tension. there's even a small study where it beat a heat pad for neck pain short term. the facial gua sha all over your feed is a way gentler thing, the lifting/lymph drainage claims are pretty thin. skip it if you bruise easy, take blood thinners, or on broken skin.
cupping — deeper, the suction grabs the knots further down. alright evidence for low back pain. skip on fever/inflammation/blood thinners.
moxibustion (burning mugwort over a point) — it's heat, so it's for cold/tired/"damp" type stuff. the rule that stuck with me: heat treats cold, so you do NOT use it on a fever or anything hot/red/inflamed.
ear seeds — this was my fav actually. lil seeds taped onto points on your ear and you press them yourself for a few days. the whole ear is mapped like an upside down baby apparently, each spot = a body part. used for sleep/stress/cravings. evidence is mixed but i liked that you take it home with you.
the thing that actually reframed it for me: someone in the class said she thought she was totally healthy, gym every day, all her western bloodwork fine — and the doctor takes her pulse and goes yeah you're quite 虚 (xū), basically depleted/running on empty. like TCM treats the person not the lab sheet. also why two good practitioners will treat the same stiff neck completely differently — "TCM" only got standardized into one system last century, before that it was all family lineages doing their own thing.
also apparently quality matters way more than i thought?? aged moxa vs a cheap stick = not the same treatment at all. same as good vs bad herbs. the technique is simple, the hand and the materials aren't.
tl;dr fine as everyday tools for minor stuff, not a doctor replacement, just go see someone trained instead of youtubing it on yourself lol.
I have experienced mood swings, anger issues, depression and anxiety since a very young age. I am now 25, and have found PMDD symptoms increasing with the years. It got so bad that I have decided to seek TCM treatment.
Yesterday I had my first session with my tcm doctor. He said I had a liver Qi weakness/stagnation. I had an acupuncture session and he gave me Xiao Yao Wan pills to take.
I feel like I already feel lighter emotionally and more able to combat the negative thoughts with more positive ones. My body is super achey though and I feel a little bit wiped out - there were no issues during the session and i’ve read that this can be common but it is strangely noticeable, especially in my lower back there is quite a bit of aching and weakness.
If anyone else is working on liver Qi weakness/stagnation, what was your treatment and experience like? How long did it take for you to feel better? Do you have any tips for managing mood related problems like this?
Any advice is appreciated
Sitting the month means avoiding wind blowing directly to you, not touching ice cold water, bathing or washing hair on the base of ensuring the room is warm enough.
This is based on TCM wellness guidance.
I'm 40 now, and it took me way too long to understand something my grandmother tried to teach me when I was five: **stop drinking ice water with your meals.**
In the West this is normal. Restaurants automatically bring a glass of ice water. In China, restaurants often serve hot tea or warm water by default. It's not a cultural quirk. It's 2,000 years of observation about how the digestive system actually works.
**Here's the TCM logic (plain English version):**
Your stomach is basically a cooking pot. It needs warmth to break down food — what TCM calls "digestive fire" (脾阳 / spleen yang). When you dump ice water into a cooking pot, the fire goes out. The food sits there half-processed. Your body then has to waste energy re-heating everything just to get digestion going again.
This creates a cascade:
- Food that should take 2-3 hours to process now takes 4-6
- Undigested food ferments → bloating, gas, that afternoon energy crash
- Your spleen has to work overtime to extract nutrients from cold, wet sludge
- Long term: spleen qi deficiency → chronic fatigue, brain fog, weight gain that doesn't respond to diet or exercise
**The Western research actually backs this up:**
There's a reason your body temperature is 37°C (98.6°F). Every enzyme in your digestive tract is calibrated to work at that temperature. Drop the temperature even a few degrees, and enzyme activity drops significantly. Cold water also causes blood vessels in the stomach to constrict, reducing blood flow to the area when you need it most.
**What I changed (and what happened):**
Three years ago I switched to room temperature or warm water with meals. That's it. No supplements, no special diet, no herbs. Just stopped drinking ice water.
- Week 1: Felt weird. Missed the cold.
- Week 2: Stopped getting that heavy/bloated feeling after lunch.
- Month 1: Afternoon energy crash disappeared. Like, completely.
- Month 3: Digestion noticeably smoother. No more random stomach aches.
I'm not saying this cures anything. I'm saying your body has been trying to tell you something, and you've been drowning the signal in ice.
**Try this for one week:**
- No ice in your water. Room temperature or warm.
- Nothing colder than room temperature within 30 minutes before or after a meal.
- If you must have a cold drink, make it between meals, not during.
Report back. Curious if anyone else has tried this.
What's your experience? Does your culture default to cold or warm drinks with food?
So, for example, if I eat a package of those "instant noodles", it's supposed to give me a lot of Qi(energy), but it's an unhealthy food, so does this increases my Qi or reduces it?
Same for things like eating like a cake, it has sugar, so is it reducing my Jing or Qi?
Also what about sausage and other unhealthy foods in general, do they replenish our energies or they backfire in a negative way, so instead of increasing my Qi they are actually damaging it?
I would like more explanation on this, thank you!
What the title states. Any idea what could be causing it? It keeps reoccurring.
There’s a growing awareness in China 🇨🇳 that chemical shampoos can damage both hair and scalp.
Some people have even compares photos of hair from the 1970s and 1980s with today’s, as the 2nd pic shows. And the difference is striking.
So I used my TCM knowledge and made a shampoo with 20 different herbs. Even the foaming agent comes from tree bark, nothing synthetic.
It’s runny, but it lathers well and rinses off easily. I no longer have to worry about chemical residue sitting on my scalp.
And the biggest change? I used to go 1-2 days between washes. Now I only wash it once every 5 days.
I love herbs☘️. I love traditional Chinese medicine. 🇨🇳
Any tcm headache remedies
Haven’t practised TCM before, but i’m in quite a bit of pain. Don’t really want to go to the doctors if i know there is a better way to heal myself. Thanks!
For people raised in the West, we mainly know biomedicine, which is separated from spirituality.
There is psychotherapy, but it's also separated from spirituality.
Can spirituality and/or psychotherapy complement TCM?
I recently went to a TCM practitioner for help. Our first session was long almost 2.5 hrs and included acupuncture with magnets on my feet and some round donut like jade stones on my head.
She grabbed 12-15 different kinds of barks and herbs and ground them all to a fine powder.
I bring 2 tsp to a simmer and let it steep overnight. Drink 1 cup before breakfast and another in between lunch and dinner.
My tongue has changed, it's more white and now has a squiggly white line at the tip of my tongue.
Is this an improvement? When I first went to her (June 16) my tongue was not really white at all. Maybe a tiny bit in the back of it.
My phone automatically softens the texture on photos so my photo looks a little smoother and less textured (on the surface) than my tongue in real life.
This works so well for constipation. Purchased from the eastern philosophy.
Hi everyone!
I just went to a herbalist doctor with my friend from work and she communicated with him for me regarding a large ovarian cyst I have and menstrual pain.
He recommended Gui Zhi Fu Ling Wan which I understand is really common for treating menstrual pain and ovarian masses through blood stimulation.
However, I was not able to communicate that I take 50 mg of Spironolactane for hormonal acne already. I have been taking it for about 1 year. I messaged my PCP but they are saying they can’t make recommendations for supplements not prescribed through their system.
It seems like the risks have to do with different effects each have on hormones and maybe potassium/ electrolyte levels. Does anyone have any insight about how risky it might be to start the GZFW? I really want to try to manage the menstrual and cyst pain naturally and avoid laparoscopic surgery. Thank you!
This is from my TCM clinic. Just want to double check with another professional if this is safe for early pregnancy. AI is telling me some of the herbs contain blood movers which isn't suitable.
菟絲子 (Tù Sī Zǐ) – Dodder Seed 紫參 (Zǐ Shēn) – Red Sage Root (Salvia Root) 續斷 (Xù Duàn) – Teasel Root 蓮子 (Lián Zǐ) – Lotus Seed 砂仁 (Shā Rén) – Amomum Fruit (Cardamom) 廣香 (Guǎng Xiāng) – Costus Root (Aucklandia Root) 熟地黃 (Shú Dì Huáng) – Prepared Rehmannia Root 桑寄生 (Sāng Jì Shēng) – Mulberry Mistleto 女貞子 (Nǚ Zhēn Zǐ) – Glossy Privet Fruit 陳皮 (Chén Pí) – Dried Tangerine Peel 炒白朮 (Chǎo Bái Zhú) – Stir-fried Atractylodes Root