For people with healthy digestive systems, even though the weather is very cold, drinking some cool boiled water and eating some cooling foods, such as white radish, lotus seeds, cucumber, winter melon, and bananas, is not only harmless but also beneficial to the body.
In the cold winter season, a steaming hot pot with lamb, dog meat, goji berries, and other warming foods that dispel cold and support yang can generate more heat to combat the cold. However, warming foods tend to be high in calories. Eating them not only easily leads to weight gain but can also cause lung heat to flourish, leading to "dryness" in the body. In severe cases, it can even trigger upper respiratory or gastrointestinal illnesses. Therefore, it is advisable to appropriately eat some cold dishes and "sweet-cold" foods with cooling properties to have a certain moderating effect, which is more beneficial to your health.
1. Don't forget to prevent "internal heat" in winter
In winter, people often wear thick clothes and spend most of their time indoors with heating or air conditioning. Coupled with the dry winter air and relatively low activity levels, it is very easy for internal heat to accumulate and not be released in a timely manner. If you consume too many warming foods like lamb and dog meat, it is easy for the body to become overloaded with heat. Depending on the location of the internal heat, there are often different clinical manifestations. For example, heat accumulation in the upper jiao can manifest as upper respiratory tract infections, pharyngitis, tonsillitis, or oral mucosal ulcers. Heat in the middle jiao can manifest as a thick tongue coating, yellow urine, constipation, and thirst. Heat in the lower jiao can often induce or aggravate cystitis or hemorrhoids. Therefore, in winter, for friends with healthy digestive systems, if you can selectively eat some "cooling" foods according to your physical condition, it's like letting your digestive system go for a "winter swim," which can improve your ability to resist the cold.
2. Appropriately eating "cooling" foods in winter is beneficial to your health
For people with healthy digestive systems, even though the weather is very cold, drinking some cool boiled water and eating some cooling foods, such as white radish, lotus seeds, cucumber, winter melon, and bananas, is not only harmless but also beneficial to the body. When the weather is cold, people tend to eat greasy, high-calorie foods, and with less outdoor activity, it's easy to gain weight, especially in the chest, abdomen, and buttocks. Eating some cold dishes can force the body to warm itself during digestion, burning more fat, which is very beneficial for weight loss. Russian scholars have confirmed that drinking cool boiled water in winter can prevent colds and pharyngitis. In particular, drinking a glass of cool boiled water upon waking in the morning can enhance the liver's detoxification ability and the kidneys' excretion function, promote metabolism, increase immune function, and help lower blood pressure and prevent myocardial infarction.
3. Warming and cooling foods should be paired
In daily life, there are many cooling foods, such as rabbit meat, chicken, duck meat, eggs, seaweed, honey, sesame, tremella, lotus seeds, lily bulbs, white radish, Chinese cabbage, celery, spinach, winter bamboo shoots, bananas, apples, etc. These foods are best eaten with warming foods. For example, in winter, many people like to stew beef, which is a warming food. If you add some white radish while stewing, it's a good combination of cooling and warming. Radish has a pungent-sweet flavor and a neutral nature, with the effects of promoting qi, resolving stagnation, and eliminating phlegm. It can balance the "dry-warmth" of the beef, not only supplementing qi but also aiding digestion. Furthermore, in the dry winter weather, people who often use foods like red dates and goji berries for nourishment can easily get "heaty" if they eat too much. It might be a good idea to add some cooling lotus leaves during cooking for a better nourishing effect.
4. Whether to eat cooling or warming foods also depends on your body constitution
Although cooling foods have a calming, cooling, and anti-inflammatory effect, they are not suitable for everyone. People who normally have symptoms of yin deficiency, such as feeling hot and dry, having hot palms and soles, or night sweats, can appropriately choose "sweet-cold" foods. For example, cardiovascular patients with accompanying symptoms like weakness, poor appetite, low-grade fever, dry stools, or edema can eat cooling duck meat in winter to tonify deficiency and clear heat. On the other hand, people with a weak spleen and stomach should avoid cold-natured foods and cooling tonics and can instead eat some warming foods. At the same time, you should be careful not to over-nourish. Consuming too much heat can accumulate in the body, leading to the leakage of yang qi, which disrupts the body's balance.