Hot weather - what to do to cool down the liver?

In the summer, the weather is hot, the human body generates heat, making many people prone to acne, dry skin, chapped skin, dark spots, and melasma on the skin, making people feel less confident. There are many causes, including the root cause of impaired liver function, or what oriental medicine calls liver heat.

At the beginning of summer, the hot and humid weather makes the human body unable to adapt, combined with irregular living and eating habits, making many people feel tired, restless, and uncomfortable. When it is hot, they often feel thirsty, have dry skin, and even have pimples and ulcers on the outside. According to oriental medicine, this is a sign of liver heat due to impaired liver function, also known as liver heat.

Hot liver from the perspective of traditional medicine

Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Hong Siem, Chairman of the Hanoi Oriental Medicine Association and Vice Chairman of the Central Vietnam Oriental Medicine Association, said that the living environment has a significant impact on human health.

According to oriental medicine, if the environmental temperature increases, it will increase the body's metabolism, which means the liver has to work harder, generating heat, thereby causing liver heat. If the liver has to work too hard, its function will decline, causing illness.

The liver is considered an important factory of the human body that helps metabolize, synthesize and eliminate toxins from the body. All food and drinks entering the body are synthesized and purified through the liver, nutrients are absorbed to nourish the body, and toxic substances filtered by the liver will be excreted.

According to oriental medicine, if the body is left with a prolonged state of heat, toxins and toxic heat from the body cannot escape, accumulating in the body, and over time will cause illness. According to oriental medicine, this is due to liver heat, meaning that the blood in the liver is hot and will cause illness.

In oriental medicine, there are two types: real symptoms and deficiency symptoms. Real symptoms are newly contracted diseases that cause liver heat - called liver blood heat (acute), and chronic diseases that cause liver heat are called liver blood heat - this is the deficiency symptom. Depending on the type of disease, oriental medicine will have the appropriate treatment, explained Dr. Nguyen Hong Siem.

What to do to cool the liver?

According to Dr. Nguyen Hong Siem, to avoid liver heat, each person needs to know how to protect their own health.

The most important thing to prevent liver diseases in the hot season is to have a reasonable and moderate lifestyle, exercise, and diet. You need to get enough sleep because the liver, like other organs in the body, needs time to rest and regenerate. A diet rich in green vegetables, ripe fruits, drinking enough water, and staying away from spicy foods is very good for protecting your health. Because in the summer, when the outside environment is hot, combined with eating a lot of spicy foods, the body easily generates heat, causing heat in the body, which will cause liver and blood heat.

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables helps cool the body.

To protect your liver health, absolutely do not abuse alcohol. Because the liver is an organ that is severely affected if the patient regularly drinks alcohol or is addicted to alcohol. The most serious complication that the patient can encounter is cirrhosis or liver cancer due to alcohol.

If you have chronic liver disease, you need to be monitored regularly. As mentioned above, there are liver heat diseases caused by chronic diseases, Dr. Siem noted.

In addition to the above notes, Dr. Siem also recommends that to avoid internal heat, people can use vegetables and traditional medicines that have the effect of clearing heat and detoxifying such as pennywort, fish mint, bitter melon, some common and easy-to-find foods that have good effects such as watermelon, lemon juice... or foods and medicines that are very commonly used in folk medicine such as kudzu (called cat can in oriental medicine), eclipta prostrata, horse head, dandelion, bamboo hose plant...

According to VNN