12/05/2015
How to drink water
The Rumor: You must drink eight glasses of water a day. We’ve all heard it before: To have perfect health and perfect pores, you need a die-hard dedication to drinking water. In fact, everyone from our doctors to our favorite preachy fitness magazines says we need to down eight glasses a day.
But is it true?
Let me share my opinion from TCM/CCM perspective.
Basically our opinion is : respect your body, if you feel thirsty, drink some water ( I mean water, better warm water, it should not be soda, or coffee, or coke). If not,don't drink.
There are two reasons behind this suggestion: 1. Even pure water digestion will consume your energy, in TCM word, it's Yang Qi; and cold water will cost more Yang Qi to digest, because your body is warm, the first step of icy water digestion would be to heat the icy water into warm, not to mention the damage it gave to your stomach and spleen;
2. Nowadays, many people get spleen Yang Xu (sick, and lack of warmness or Yang Qi), to check it, just look your tongue in the mirror, if it gets a white (thick) coat, which means you are lack of YangQi in Spleen, or even kidney. It means you have problems in digesting water and there is wasted water in your body (湿气, wetness). So in this case, you already have wasted water, you should not drink more. Actually, in this case, you seldom feel thirsty.
To conclude, in TCM/CCM, we respect the nature, respect the body, if you feel thirsty, meaning it needs water, if not, don't drink, it will consume your Yang Qi (阳气，energy), and leave more wasted/dirty water on your body.
Rachel 2014-3-17
