Chinese Medicine Approach to Excessive Phlegm Self-Check 

Feeling like your body is not balanced but couldn’t find anything wrong from a western medicine doctor? Chinese Medicine may offer you a alternative angle to see your health. Do a self check if you have excessive phlegm using Chinese Medicine approach.

Do you have the following signs and symptoms that compromises your life quality and well-being?

 

  • Lethargy, gets tired easily, lack of concentrationphlegm_and_dampness_type
  • Bad breath, body odor, unpleasant smell
  • Oily hair and oily skin
  • Vaginal itchiness, burning, unpleasant smell or discomfort
  • Low libido
  • Snoring, coughing with or without mucus/phlegm
  • Sticky poop, smelly and difficult to flush
  • Increasing lack of motivation, doesn’t want to talk, fatigued
  • Under-eye puffiness, obesity, hard to loose weight or bounce back easily
  • Pale face
  • Gassy and bloated stomach/abdomen, fluid retention in bodyirc_mi
  • Hair loss, dry hair and moist in the ear

 

  indigestion

If you have 3-4 signs and symptoms mentioned above, you need to pay attention to your digestion.  In Chinese medicine, it is caused by DAMPNESS/PHLEGM (Tan Shi). They are usually mentioned together as they are considered as similar pathogenic (disease causing) originality. 

Why our body develop dampness and phlegm? 

In order to explain how phlegm happens, I want to share a story of P:

P works full time, he is a busy sales person, with a pretty stressful job.  He usually wakes up late because he had some alcohol with clients the night before, so he doesn’t have time to eat breakfast anymore.  Sometimes he doesn’t even have time for a decent lunch that he will just grab some fried chicken or fish and chips then quickly finish it during a tight lunch break.  Dinner time usually is his biggest meal time.  He eats a big portion of steak with cold drinks and dessert.  Exercise?  Don’t even mention it.  He’s too tired after work to do it.  Most of the time he stay in the office with central air-con.  Gradually he found his body out of balance with feeling tired when waking up in the morning, muscles tight and sore on both thighs, lacking of motivation and concentration which affect his work, getting diarrhea and bloated abdomen easily.

P is a virtual character that typically reflects most of the complains and lifestyle of my patients who had been diagnosed with excessive dampness and phlegm in our clinic.

Unhealthy diet, sedentary life style, and work stress are 3 main reasons causing people dampness and phlegm.

Here are 7 ways you can do to reduce the phlegm:

  1. Drink less icy cold beverage
  2. Avoid to stay in the air-con room for too long
  3. Eat more high fibre, multi grain food.   See the recipe of 5 grain rice and 5 grain porridge 
  4. Make your salad room temperature
  5. Eat less spicy, greasy and meaty food
  6. Drink less alcohol
  7. Regular exercise — The key to exercise is maintaining it.  Make sure you do it daily no matter how quick or how long, either by running or jogging or by just walking your dog.  It is always beneficial to get your body moving.

fiber

 

If you frequently experience the symptoms listed above, please see your medical doctor for a check-up or visit our experienced Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners who can help you.