Summer Insomnia: Eat More Sour Foods
As summer arrives and temperatures rise, it's easy to lose your appetite. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) suggests that early summer is a time to increase sour foods and decrease bitter ones to nourish the stomach's energy. Consuming more sour foods can help transform into yin energy, which promotes sleep.
Four Major Causes of Insomnia
1. Psychological Factors: The fast pace and intense competition of modern life, along with increasing conflicts, put people in a constant state of high tension. This can lead to conditions like anxiety, depression, and neurosis, which in turn cause insomnia. More commonly, temporary psychological fluctuations, such as emotional instability, depression, over-excitement, or anger, can also trigger insomnia. This is the most common cause of insomnia.
2. Physical Factors: Physical exhaustion or illness, such as pain, skin itching, coughing, heart disease, asthma, vomiting, or diarrhea. This type of insomnia is often associated with an illness and closely related to its progression.
3. Environmental Factors: Changes in lifestyle, moving to a new residence, or stimulation from sound and light.
4. Chemical Factors: Consuming stimulating beverages (alcohol, coffee, strong tea), medications (Ritalin, amphetamines, ephedrine, ginseng), or smoking before bed can also cause insomnia.
First, maintain a positive and optimistic mindset, face pressure correctly, and avoid psychological imbalance from setbacks. At the same time, develop good sleep hygiene habits, such as keeping the bedroom clean and quiet, away from noise and light; avoid drinking tea or alcohol before bed. The bedroom should be dark enough, as darkness helps the brain's pineal gland produce melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. Additionally, you can create conditions that facilitate falling asleep. For example, taking a hot bath, soaking your feet, or drinking a glass of milk half an hour before bed. If you stick with it consistently, you will establish a "sleep-conditioned reflex."
Sour Food: Vinegar to Relieve Insomnia
Long periods of busy and stressful work can lead to a buildup of lactic acid in the body. Once lactic acid accumulates, it can stimulate the brain's nerves, easily causing fatigue and sleep disorders. Acetic acid not only effectively inhibits lactic acid production but also accelerates its oxidation, reducing its accumulation in the body. This eliminates or alleviates fatigue, making it easier to fall asleep. Furthermore, TCM believes that sour and sweet flavors generate yin energy. Consuming sour and sweet foods can thus effectively promote sleep. Vinegar is a sour substance, and consuming more of it can stabilize your mood and improve sleep.
Of course, drinking more vinegar isn't always better. One tablespoon a day is sufficient. It's best to dilute it in warm water to avoid corroding your teeth, and you should rinse your mouth afterward. Choose vinegar made from grains like broken rice, bran, sorghum, or corn, such as rice vinegar. Grain-based vinegar contains various amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that the body needs.
It should be noted that people with stomach ulcers or excess stomach acid should avoid this method to prevent worsening their condition.
Adding Vinegar to Your Diet
In the hot summer, due to blood flowing to the body's surface, relatively weakened gastrointestinal function, and high stress, many people often find their food tasteless, eat less, and consequently have reduced nutrient absorption. Diet and nutrition experts recommend preparing more fresh, appetizing, and heat-clearing sour drinks to facilitate better nutrient absorption and improve appetite. For example, adding a moderate amount of vinegar when eating high-protein foods like chicken, duck, or fish can help fully break down the protein for better absorption. Also, drinking some vinegar after a meal can aid digestion and kill bacteria, preventing intestinal diseases.
Dietary Recommendation: Braised Pork with Sour Hawthorn Vinegar
Hawthorn can be divided into sour and sweet varieties, with the sour type being more popular. Using hawthorn in cooking is not uncommon due to its effect of strengthening the spleen and aiding digestion, as well as its high content of sugars and vitamin C. It should be noted that TCM considers hawthorn to be only for digestion without nourishment, so those with a weak spleen and stomach should not consume too much of it.
Ingredients: 500g pork belly, 100ml hawthorn vinegar, 10g dried tangerine peel, 1 star anise, 15g garlic (peeled and smashed), salt, light soy sauce, and peanut oil as needed.
Method: Wash the pork belly, cut it into cubes, and stir-fry until fragrant, then set aside. Soak the dried tangerine peel in water, then cut it into small pieces. Heat oil in a wok, add the smashed garlic and star anise and stir-fry until fragrant. Add the pork belly and stir-fry over high heat until the moisture is gone. Add an appropriate amount of water, light soy sauce, tangerine peel, and hawthorn vinegar. Cover and simmer over medium heat until the ingredients are cooked through. Finally, reduce the sauce and season to taste.
Sour Food: Schisandra to Relieve Insomnia
Schisandra, also known as mountain pepper, weight scale, medicinal schisandra, vine, or five-flavor fruit, was recorded in the "Xinxiu Bencao" (Newly Revised Materia Medica) of the Tang Dynasty as having "sweet and sour flesh, a bitter and pungent kernel, and a salty taste," hence its name. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is highly valued for its effects of tonifying, strengthening, nourishing yin, and calming the spirit.
Schisandra, Chinese Yam, and Longan Porridge
Method: 100g fresh Chinese yam, 15g longan pulp, 3g schisandra berries, and appropriate amount of sugar, 50g japonica rice. Peel the Chinese yam and slice it. Place the slices with the longan pulp and schisandra berries in a pot. Add the washed japonica rice and an appropriate amount of water. Cook into a porridge and add sugar to taste. Take one dose daily, for breakfast or dinner.
Schisandra Cake
Grind the schisandra berries into a fine powder and sift it. Use 10g at a time. Mix 100g of glutinous rice flour with the medicinal powder after it has been fermented. Steam the mixture in a steamer. Eat it warm before bed once a day. This remedy is quite effective for nocturnal emissions, excessive dreaming, palpitations, and insomnia.
Schisandra and Goji Berry Tea
This is very suitable for busy people who have no time to cook medicinal soups. Every day, just put some goji berries and schisandra berries in a thermos, add hot water, and drink it as it steeps, until the flavor is gone. This tea helps nourish the heart and brain. Drinking it consistently can greatly improve insomnia.
Ingredients: 6g schisandra berries, 9g goji berries.
Method: Wash and chop the goji berries. Use the schisandra berries that have been processed with vinegar, wash them. Place the ingredients in a thermos, pour in boiling water, and let it cool slightly before drinking.
Schisandra and Rehmannia Root Decoction
12g Rehmannia root, 30g lily bulb, 20g jujube seed, 10g炙远zhi (processed Polygala root), 10g schisandra berries, 10g glossy privet fruit, 20g eclipta, 10g dragon's tooth fossil, 30g oyster shell. Decoct in water. Take one dose daily, in two divided doses. Indicated for insomnia due to deficiency of heart yin and malnourishment of the spirit and soul.