1, what is good for soaking feet in winter?
Soaking feet is to act on local skin, muscles and joints through temperature and drugs, to improve its metabolism and enhance its function by using the skin's anti-evil, secretion, absorption, penetration, excretion, feeling and other functions, and to treat local and systemic diseases through the skin's absorption of drugs.
1. Ginger dispels cold
Ginger is a pungent and warm medicine in traditional Chinese medicine, which has the function of dispelling cold and relieving exterior syndrome, and has little toxic and side effects. Modern medicine believes that ginger can stimulate capillaries and improve local blood circulation and metabolism. People who are afraid of cold and easy to get cold hands and feet can soak their feet with ginger. It should be noted that soaking feet with ginger does not mean soaking ginger in hot water for a while. Generally, take15-30g of ginger (about half a slice of ginger with the same size), pat it flat, put it in a pot, add half a pot of water, cover the pot, and cook it in hot water for about 10 minute. After cooking, pour out all the Jiang Shui, and add appropriate amount of cold water to about 40℃ (generally it is better to feel it is not hot). When soaking your feet, don't let the water pass over your ankles. You'd better rub your feet when soaking.
2. wormwood warms the lungs
According to Compendium of Materia Medica, wormwood is a kind of drug with flat nature, bitter taste and no toxicity. It has the functions of restoring yang, regulating qi and blood, eliminating dampness and dispelling cold, stopping bleeding and preventing miscarriage, and is also commonly used in acupuncture, so it is also called "herb". Soaking feet with wormwood can also improve lung function, which is very beneficial to people with chronic bronchitis and easy to cough up white sputum.
The method of soaking feet with wormwood is similar to that with ginger. Generally, 30-50g (a handful) of dried wormwood is boiled in water to soak feet. The cooking method is the same as above.
3. Cinnamon can reduce swelling
Cinnamon, also known as Cinnamon, Cinnamon or Cinnamon, and Zanthoxylum bungeanum are all commonly used spices in the family, which have the functions of warming kidney and strengthening yang. Soaking feet with them can relieve edema caused by kidney disease.
Nephrogenic edema is edema caused by renal function problems or diseases. Generally, it first occurs in loose tissues, such as eyelids or face, ankles and ankles, and it is most obvious when getting up in the morning. Pressing the skin in the edema area with your fingers can lead to depression. If nephrogenic edema occurs, pepper and cinnamon can be boiled 15g (a handful or a small piece) and then soaked in feet. The cooking method is the same as that of ginger. Continuous foot soaking in this way can play a certain role in reducing swelling.
4. Safflower prevents frostbite
Flower is a commonly used Chinese medicine in gynecology, which has the effects of promoting blood circulation, dredging menstruation, removing blood stasis and relieving pain. People who are prone to chilblain and chapped skin in winter, using safflower to soak their feet in early autumn can play a very good preventive role.
Take 10- 15g (about a handful) of safflower and soak your feet with boiling water as mentioned above, which can prevent and improve chilblain. Every winter, people often have chapped hands and feet, but once this happens, it takes a long time to recover. Choosing to soak your feet with safflower can also prevent this from happening to some extent.
If you soak your feet with 30-50g of dried wormwood and 10- 15g of safflower at the same time, you can improve blood circulation and prevent and alleviate varicose veins and peripheral neuritis.
2. Precautions for safe foot soaking
First, the foot soaking time should not be too long, and 15-30 minutes is appropriate. When soaking feet, blood will flow to the lower limbs, and the brain is prone to insufficient blood supply. Patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and the elderly should temporarily stop soaking their feet and have a rest if they feel chest tightness and dizziness. Diabetic patients have poor peripheral sensory ability, so their families should try the water temperature first to prevent burns.
Second, it is not advisable to soak your feet within 1 hour after meals. After eating, most of the blood in the body flows to the digestive tract. If you soak your feet with hot water immediately after eating, the blood that should flow to the digestive system will flow to the lower limbs instead, which will affect digestion and absorption for a long time and lead to nutritional deficiency. So it's best to soak your feet after meals 1 hour.
Third, it is best to use a wooden basin for soaking feet with traditional Chinese medicine. The chemical composition in metal pots such as copper pots is unstable, and it is easy to react with tannic acid in traditional Chinese medicine to generate harmful substances such as iron tannic acid, which greatly reduces the curative effect of drugs.
Fourth, children should not soak their feet in overheated water for a long time. Because the arch of the foot began to form in childhood, we should pay attention to protection from an early age. If you often wash your feet with hot water, the ligaments on the soles of your feet will become slack, which is not conducive to the formation and maintenance of the arch, and it is easy to form flat feet.
Fifth, women should not use traditional Chinese medicine to soak their feet during menstruation. The problem of women's menstrual period is more complicated. If you can't find the reason, soaking your feet with traditional Chinese medicine can not only relieve it, but also aggravate the symptoms such as dysmenorrhea. Therefore, if women want to treat menstrual health problems such as dysmenorrhea by soaking their feet with traditional Chinese medicine, it is best to consult a doctor and prescribe medicine according to their own situation.
3. Who should be careful when soaking feet?
1. Diabetic patients
The skin of diabetic foot patients is fragile, and the peripheral nerves of the foot are insensitive to temperature, so they are easy to be scalded, leading to foot infection, ulceration and even amputation.
2. Patients with varicose veins and thrombosis
Varicose veins are mainly due to venous valve insufficiency. The increase of temperature will not change the function of venous valve, but only increase the local blood flow, but this increase of local blood flow will not change the speed of venous return, but will increase the burden of venous return.
3. Patients with beriberi
People with beriberi should not soak their feet with hot water when their condition is serious enough to blister, because it is easy to cause wound infection. Foot inflammation, dermatosis, trauma or skin burn are not suitable for soaking feet.
4. Patients with severe heart disease and low blood pressure
It is no problem for healthy people to soak their feet in hot springs, but special people should pay attention. For example, patients with heart disease and cardiac insufficiency, people with low blood pressure and frequent dizziness should not soak their feet with too hot water or soak in hot springs for a long time. Because soaking feet in hot water or soaking in hot springs will cause blood vessels to dilate, and the whole body blood will flow from important organs to the body surface, which will inevitably lead to ischemia and hypoxia of important organs such as the heart and brain. For people with heart disease and low blood pressure, it will increase the risk of illness.
5. The elderly
Old people who soak their feet for too long will have symptoms such as sweating and palpitation. Therefore, it is better for the elderly to soak their feet for 20 minutes before going to bed every day.
6. Children
Often soaking children's feet will affect the nerve and vascular function of the feet, make the plantar ligaments relax, which is not conducive to the formation and maintenance of the arch of the foot and increase the risk of forming flat feet.
In addition, infants do not feel the same temperature as adults. Adults think the water temperature is a little hot, which is already very hot for children. But they are not very expressive, so it is easy to burn the soft skin. From this point of view, it is not recommended to soak your feet with hot water. Just wash your feet with warm water every day. After washing, you can gently pinch your feet and relax your muscles.
4. Common methods of soaking feet
(1) mugwort leaves soak feet.
Take 50- 100g of dried Folium Artemisiae Argyi (depending on the amount of water, there is no strict standard), first add water to boil, then add cold water or soak feet after the temperature is lowered. If it's too much trouble, soak the mugwort leaves in some hot water for 20 minutes and then add water to soak your feet.
A few small prescriptions for mugwort soaking feet:
(1) wormwood and ginger can treat colds, arthropathy, rheumatoid diseases, cough, bronchitis, emphysema and asthma.
(2) wormwood and safflower can improve varicose veins, peripheral neuritis, poor blood circulation, numbness of hands and feet or blood stasis.
(3) Adding salt to wormwood is suitable for upper energizer with fire, which often leads to jealousy, toothache, sore throat, irritability, catching a cold due to excessive internal heat, and edema of legs and feet.
(4) 20 capsules of Chinese prickly ash are suitable for sweaty feet, smelly feet, beriberi and warm rash.
(2) Soak your feet with vinegar
Selection of vinegar: (rice vinegar or aged vinegar100-150g)
The role of vinegar soaking feet:
(1) can solve the problem of foot odor. Soaking feet with vinegar can sterilize and treat beriberi to some extent.
(2) It can relieve fatigue.
(3) It can moisturize skin, soften cutin and increase skin elasticity.
(4) It can dispel wind and dampness and improve the symptoms of chills.
(5) Treating sleep disorders.
(6) Vinegar can penetrate the superficial skin of feet, enhance blood circulation, remove human blood garbage and pathological deposits, and cure many chronic diseases.
(3) almond tea soaking feet
Bitter almond 45g, green tea 10g. Put the above medicines together in a pot, add 2000 ml of water, decoct for 30 minutes, remove residues and get juice. Apply 1 vial to face and arms, pour the rest into a basin, and soak for 30 minutes when the temperature is suitable. 20 days is 1 course of treatment. It can moisten skin, diminish inflammation and sterilize, supplement vitamins and minerals, and prevent and treat skin chlorosis, blackness and roughness, acne and scabies.
(4) Soaking feet with traditional Chinese medicine
For women with dysmenorrhea, we can try to stick to traditional Chinese medicine to soak feet to improve the condition of dysmenorrhea.
1. Qi stagnation and blood stasis type
Its symptoms are abdominal distension and pain before or during menstruation, dark menstrual blood with blood clots. People with such symptoms should reconcile qi and blood, remove blood stasis and relieve pain. Because women mainly live in the liver, the drugs chosen for foot bath are mainly drugs with foot-jueyin entering the liver meridian, and appropriate amount of menstrual vinegar is added, such as 30g of Green Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae Viride, 30g of Linderae Radix, 30g of Motherwort, Chuanxiong 10g, and safflower 10g. Add about two liters of water and about 50 ml of vinegar, boil it with strong fire, and fry it with low fire for 30 minutes. When the medicine is cooled to 50℃, pour the residue into a basin to soak feet. The amount of medicine in the basin should be immersed in the ankle joint. If the liquid medicine is insufficient, add appropriate amount of warm water. The feet keep moving in the medicine, so that the soles of the feet receive slight physical stimulation from the dregs for more than 30 minutes at a time.
2. Yang deficiency and cold excess type
Its symptoms are cold pain in the lower abdomen, less pain in hot compress and chills in hands and feet. The principle of warming channels and dispelling cold should be used to relieve pain. Because there is a saying in traditional Chinese medicine that the kidney governs the whole body yang, the drugs selected for foot soaking should be mainly those with insufficient yin entering the kidney meridian, and appropriate amount of salt water should be added, such as cinnamon, clove, linderae, angelica, Ligusticum chuanxiong each 15g, dried ginger, fennel and Evodia rutaecarpa each 6g, and a little salt can be decocted.
3. Deficiency of qi and blood
Its symptom is a dull pain in the lower abdomen during or after menstruation, and there will be slight pain when pressing the abdomen with your hand. The menstrual flow is small and pale, so it is necessary to replenish qi, nourish blood and regulate menstruation. Traditional Chinese medicine is called "spleen regulating blood", and the drugs selected for foot soaking should be mainly drugs that enter the Taiyin spleen meridian, and appropriate amount of sweet water can be added. For example, Radix Paeoniae Alba, Radix Angelicae Sinensis, Rhizoma Chuanxiong, Radix Rehmanniae Preparata, Rhizoma Atractylodis Macrocephalae, Eucommiae Cortex, and Radix Astragali 15g can be used for foot bath, and appropriate amount of maltose and boiled water can be added.