Chinese remedies for common ailments

What do you when you get a cold? Do you automatically run to the pharmacy and load up on nasal sprays and medicine? If you followed Traditional Chinese Medicine, you're more likely to look inside the refrigerator rather than the medicine cabinet or go to the grocery rather than the pharmacy. That's because the Chinese believe that eating the right food can actually help cure diseases.

In his book Eating Your Way to Health, Cai Jingfeng shows how simple, everyday food – things you would normally have in the kitchen – can be used to cure illnesses. Some of the prescriptions do include exotic ingredients, but for the most part, there is nothing that you shouldn't be able to find on grocery shelves or an Asian food store. So the next time you feel yourself getting sick, turn to this natural way of curing diseases.

Treating the common cold

To help relieve a cold, the first thing you have to do is determine whether it's a cold-wind type or a hot-wind type. If you have fever, chilliness without perspiration, headache, body pain, stuffy nose, runny nose and your tongue has a white coating, then it's cold-wind type. Hot-wind type cold is characterized by high fever, slight sweating with no feeling of chilliness, red eyes, sore throat, headache, and a slightly yellow coated tongue.

For cold-wind type cold:

1. Put 25 g of ginger that has been washed and sliced thinly into a bowl. Pour boiling water over the ginger and keep the bowl covered for 5 to 10 minutes. Add 25 g of brown sugar. Drink like tea. Then, make sure you dress warmly. It is good to prepare this remedy just before bedtime so you can go straight to bed and rest.

2. Wash 25 g of spring onion stalk and 25 g of ginger. Cut them into small pieces. Prepare a small bowl of glass noodles (made from mung beans) or unflavored rice or wheat noodles according to package directions with a small amount of salt. Add the chopped spring onions and ginger pieces.

Hot-wind type cold:

1. Prepare 250 g of chilies and an equal amount of fermented soybeans. Stir-fry the chilies and soybeans separately. Then mix them together in a bowl and add some salt. This also makes a good side dish especially for porridge.

2. Finely slice 500 g of fresh peeled turnips. Add some sesame oil, salt and monosodium glutamate. Serve as a side dish. This is especially helpful in colds characterized by a lot of mucus of phlegm.

Treating influenza (flu)

Ginger can help cure the common cold. (Image: Radio86)If your cold came suddenly and you have severe headache and body pains, you might be suffering from the flu. Other symptoms include congestion of the throat, tiredness, coughing and high fever.

1. Rinse and peel 250 g of turnips. Chop up and soak in vinegar for a few hours. Eat with hot rice porridge.

2. Place about 3 g each of young peppermint leaves and licorice roots into a cup. Pour boiling water. Cover and let stand for about 15 minutes. Drink the mixture hot about two or three times a day.

3. Cook 250 g of bean curd in boiling water until it is well done. Add 12 g of fermented soy beans and 15 g of spring onion stalks. Boil for another 20 minutes. Eat while hot. This is good to eat at night, so you can go and rest after eating. Make sure you are wearing warm clothes.

Treating hypertension

The stress we deal with it everyday could lead to high blood pressure. Cai recommends using basic ingredients such as honey, celery and garlic which are said to have a blood pressure lowering action.

1. Chop celery into small pieces and squeeze out the juice. Add either white or brown sugar to the juice and sip it as tea. You can also add the sweetened juice to sliced bitter melon and serve it as a side dish.

2. Dilute honey with water and sip it like tea.

3. Count one clove of garlic for each year of your age. Peel the garlic cloves and add to 100 g of mung beans in a bowl. Add 500 ml of boiling water, cover and let infuse for 10 minutes. You may add sugar if you wish. Drink as tea.

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