As soon as winter arrives, the trend of "taking dietary supplements to the extreme" arrives amidst a flurry of activity. Major restaurants tout nourishing medicinal cuisine, and people at home often indulge in mutton hot pots and old duck soup for nourishment. However, eye discomfort also appears unexpectedly. Qiu Lixin, Director of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Ophthalmology Department at Beijing Tongren Hospital, says that winter supplementation should be moderate. Common, high-incidence eye diseases in this season, such as dry eye syndrome, are somewhat related to盲目 supplementation (blind supplementation).
Excessive dietary supplementation can lead to "internal heat" (shanghuo) in the body, which manifests in the eyes as redness, swelling, congestion, dryness, and fatigue. Clinically, the most common conditions are eye strain, dry eye syndrome, and styes. When one supplements too much and moves too little, the spleen and stomach cannot metabolize this energy, often causing "fire" to rise upwards, depleting the body fluids of the head and face. This reduces tear secretion, leading to dry eye syndrome or worsening eye strain. The supplements are often greasy, and with less physical activity in winter, the spleen and stomach are prone to accumulating warmth and heat, leading to poor secretion and blockage of the meibomian glands, which causes styes, or what people commonly call a "stye."
In the past, when materials were scarce in winter, people were often malnourished and frequently suffered from "diseases of toil" (laobing). Today, with abundant resources and people staying in heated rooms, nutrients accumulate, making them prone to "diseases of ease" (yibing). "These eye diseases are typical 'diseases of ease'," says Qiu Lixin.