Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Ni Haixia

When it comes to traditional Chinese medicine for health care, Ni Haixia is inescapable. He is essentially a contemporary "health care breaker" who breaks down obscure Chinese medicine knowledge into something that ordinary people can understand. The core of his content revolves around "maintaining Yang Qi, reducing unnecessary medical intervention, and embedding health care into daily eating, drinking, and drinking." Fans regard him as his enlightenment teacher in Chinese medicine, while doubters think that some of his views are too extreme and do not conform to the logic of academic Chinese medicine. In fact, there is no need to be black and white. Just choose what suits you.

The first time I came into contact with his content was when I accompanied my mother to the health center downstairs for moxibustion in 2018. The boss played his lecture DVD on a loop at the front desk. He spoke loudly with a Taiwanese accent and said, "Don't buy thousands of tonics when you have nothing to do. If you can eat well and sleep well, it is more useful than ginseng and deer antler." At that time, my mother was deceived by a WeChat businessman into stocking half a cabinet of fish oil, anthocyanins, and collagen peptides. She ate them on time every day, but her blood lipid levels were still high during the physical examination. After hearing what he said, she went home and gave away all the unopened food. She cooked multi-grain porridge and went to bed at 10:30 every day. She went for a review half a year later, and her blood lipid levels had actually dropped to the normal range.

Most of his views on health care have no mysterious content, and are all about small things embedded in daily life. For example, the most popular one is "drinking ginger water in the morning". His logic is very straightforward: modern people blow the air conditioner all day in summer, wear navel-baring clothes with their ankles exposed in winter, and always like to drink iced milk tea and iced Coke. The cold and dampness accumulated in the spleen and stomach is heavier than the mold spots in old houses. In the morning, when the yang energy is about to rise, drinking a cup of warm ginger water is equivalent to adding a handful of firewood to the small stove that is just about to start, helping to drive away the cold and dampness. But my academic friends who study traditional Chinese medicine always complain that this view is too absolute. They say that for people who have internal heat deficiency, oral ulcers, constipation, and acne on their faces, drinking ginger water every day is like pouring gasoline on the fire. I have seen a little girl follow the trend and drink it for half a month. Three big blisters grew on the corners of her mouth. It hurt even to talk. It took almost a week to stop.

Some of his most controversial views, such as his opposition to drinking milk and his opposition to daily vitamin supplements, actually need to be discussed separately. He said that milk is used by calves to grow their bodies. Many adults are lactose intolerant. If they drink it, they cannot digest it and instead it will become blocked in the body and produce phlegm and dampness. Purified vitamins are not as effective as eating two bites of fresh vegetables and fruits. There is truth to this. A friend of mine who is lactose intolerant used to drink milk every day to replenish calcium. As a result, he always had diarrhea. After switching to soy milk and spending 10 minutes in the sun every day, his leg cramps were cured. However, the nutrition community also has different views. It is said that people with lactose tolerance drink about 300ml of pure milk every day, which is a high-quality source of calcium and protein. Office workers and vegetarians who usually have an unbalanced diet can supplement vitamin D and B complex according to the doctor's advice. It can indeed improve the problems of poor energy and weak legs. There is no need to kill them all.

In fact, many of my friends who are currently studying Chinese medicine first got started by listening to Ni Haixia’s lectures. In the past, everyone thought that Chinese medicine was about yin and yang and the five elements, and that the pulse was like tongue coating, which was too mysterious to understand. When he talked about it, he always liked to use examples from life. When he talked about "the transformation of yang into qi and yin", he took ice cubes in winter as an example: "Look at the hard ice cubes piled there. , is Yin. When exposed to the sun, it turns into water and runs away, turning into Qi and becoming invisible. The nodules, cysts, and fat on the human body are the cold and cold things piled up by cold and dampness. Spending more time in the sun and moving around will be more effective than any amount of medicine you take to soften and dissolve stagnation." The words are harsh, but I used to have pain in my shoulders and neck while sitting in the office with the air conditioner on. After listening to his words, I went downstairs to bask in the sun for 10 minutes every afternoon.

In fact, there is really no need to praise him as an all-powerful "miracle doctor", nor to scold him as a bluffing "magic stick". His content is originally meant to be a popular science for ordinary people, not a textbook for professional doctors. It contains not only the practical experience he has accumulated over decades of practicing medicine, but also the extreme content of his personal empiricism. Just like when you read a recipe from a food blogger, there is no need to copy the proportions of all the seasonings exactly. The one that suits your taste is the best. The same is true for health care. If you try the method he said and feel comfortable, then continue using it. If you feel uncomfortable after trying it, just stop.

When I was packing up old books at home a few days ago, I came across Ni Haixia's health care notes that I printed when I was in college. The edges were curled up, and there was an annotation written in blue pen by me at that time: "Drink ginger water in the morning to warm your stomach. Drinking it in the afternoon will cause insomnia." You see, to put it bluntly, the best health regimen is never copying the words of any master, but the most direct feedback your own body gives you. The greatest value of Ni Haixia is that many ordinary people who originally thought that Chinese medicine is metaphysics and health care is something only middle-aged and elderly people are willing to lower their heads to see if their three meals are regular, whether they always stay up until midnight before going to bed, whether they are greedy for cold drinks and drink too much ice, and are willing to return their attention to their own bodies. This is enough.