Gao Wenfeng, Deputy Chief Physician, Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.
Tongue coating refers to a thin, white and moist coating on the back of human tongue. Tongue coating is an important part of TCM diagnosis system. Observing the changes of tongue coating is helpful to identify the location, nature and prognosis of the disease.
The better your tongue looks, the healthier you are. The uglier the tongue, the worse the health. Therefore, tongue diagnosis is about "face value".
What does a normal and healthy tongue look like?
The standard healthy tongue picture looks ruddy and clean. Red is bloody, but it is also clean.
Red means that the blood is full, but clean, which means that there is no invasion of evil spirits. Sufficient righteousness, no evil. Can people be unhealthy?
The tongue coating is white and thick. What happened?
If the tongue coating is white and looks less rosy, it means that you are weak and afraid of the cold.
Where is it empty? It is blood deficiency. As we all know, blood is red, and if the tongue wants to be ruddy, it depends on the supply of blood. When the blood is not enough, we can only take the lead in supplying important organs, and other organs will get less blood, and the tongue will appear pale and white in such a remote place.
In addition, it also shows that there is more cold in the body, because there is more cold and insufficient yang. Yang is the driving force of human blood. Without motivation, the blood circulation is slow, the blood flow is small, and the blood vessels in the tongue are not full enough. Of course it becomes pale.
However, patients with damp-heat are generally less affected by the tongue, and dry tongue will be accompanied by symptoms such as dry mouth, bitter taste and burning pain. Clinical treatment is generally based on clearing heat and promoting diuresis. Avoid eating too much spicy food, you can choose to eat melon, mung bean, red bean and other foods. At the same time, you can also go to the hospital to follow the doctor's advice and choose drugs such as Rhizoma Coptidis, Herba Agastaches and gypsum for conditioning.
Here, I recommend a delicious mutton soup with angelica and ginger. Angelica can replenish blood, mutton can replenish yang, and ginger can replenish blood and yang slowly, which can be ruddy and warm. At ordinary times, you can also use Artemisia argyi 10g, dried ginger and cinnamon powder to soak your feet, and you can also tonify yang.
This article first appeared in People's Daily Health Number on May 28th, 2022, "Gao Wenfeng, director of andrology of traditional Chinese medicine" and "Your tongue betrayed your health, come and see your tongue coating". Part of the content has been deleted and the copyright belongs to the original author.
(Health Times)