As the saying goes, "Eat your scallions, ginger, and garlic, and you'll cut your illnesses in half," which has a certain scientific basis. Scallions, ginger, and garlic are not only essential seasonings in daily life but also miraculous medicines.
Throughout history, many famous people have used scallions, ginger, and garlic for health preservation and treatment. Confucius understood the health benefits of ginger. In the "Xiang Dang" chapter of the Analects, he said: "I do not eat ginger that is not sprinkled with it, nor do I eat much of it." This means that Confucius' diet included ginger all year round, but he never ate too much of it at a time. Confucius deeply understood the benefits of diet therapy for the body and developed the habit of chewing a piece of ginger after each meal. The sage Confucius lived to the ripe old age of 73, which was quite high for that era, and this is inextricably linked to his scientific dietary habits.
Ginger has effects such as warming the middle jiao to stop vomiting, resolving the exterior to dispel cold, etc. The earliest existing monograph on Chinese medicine, the *Shennong Ben Cao Jing*, records that ginger has effects such as "warming the middle, stopping bleeding, inducing sweating, and expelling wind," and can treat damp pain and abdominal pain and diarrhea caused by exposure to cold. Use 30 grams of sliced ginger, 15 grams of scallion white, add an appropriate amount of brown sugar, and decoct it into a soup. Drink it while warm to treat common colds due to wind-cold, cold abdominal pain, or getting soaked in rain, or the initial stage of a cold without sweating, headache, and fever. Generally, it can be effective immediately. Ginger contains gingerol, zingiberene, and shogaol, which have analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects. When you have a toothache, cut a small piece and place it on the aching tooth, bite down with your teeth, and it has an analgesic effect.
Scallions are nutritious. In addition to containing carotene, vitamins A, B, and C, and minerals such as iron, calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium, they also contain volatile oil. The main component of this oil is allyl sulfide, which has strong bactericidal and inhibitory effects on bacteria and viruses. When respiratory infectious diseases are prevalent, eating raw scallions can be preventive. Additionally, scallions can effectively treat colds.
Eating more scallions can enhance digestive function and expel impurities from the body. If you pay a little attention, you will find that after eating more scallions, your bowel movements will feel particularly smooth.
Garlic has effects such as sterilization, killing insects, detoxification, and preservation. When used as medicine, it can be sliced, mashed, or juiced. Garlic contains a substance called allicin, which has a strong bactericidal effect and can kill many types of bacteria. During seasonal changes, eating a few cloves of garlic daily can prevent intestinal infectious diseases.
Mashing an appropriate amount of garlic and taking it orally, or using 60 grams of purslane to make a decoction and steeping the mashed garlic in it, filtering the juice, and taking it orally in two doses daily can prevent dysentery, enteritis, and other intestinal infectious diseases. Dripping 10% garlic juice into the nostrils, 2-3 drops at a time, once a day for two consecutive days; or taking a small amount of mashed garlic, wrapping it with cotton, and alternately plugging it into the nostrils can prevent influenza.