Washing your hair during menstruation is permissible, but use lukewarm water and dry your hair promptly afterward. Women's immune systems are weaker during this period, and neglecting this can compromise health, potentially triggering gynecological issues or migraines. The notion that washing hair during menstruation is forbidden is a folk belief. Historically, women had long hair and lacked modern hair dryers, so hair took longer to dry, potentially affecting the head and inducing headaches.
Dietary considerations during menstruation:
1. Avoid cold and raw foods; opt for warm and hot options. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that blood flows with warmth but stagnates with cold. Consuming cold foods during menstruation hinders digestion and damages the body's yang energy, leading to internal cold. This cold stagnation impedes blood flow, causing scanty menstruation or even dysmenorrhea.Even during the hottest summer months, cold beverages should be avoided during menstruation. Opt for warm foods like kelp, red dates, sorghum, coix seeds, lamb, and apples. Limit cold, slippery foods such as pears, water chestnuts, water caltrop, winter melon, Chinese broccoli, and hemp seeds.
2. Avoid sour and spicy foods. During menstruation, women often experience fatigue, weakened digestion, and poor appetite. Therefore, meals should be light and easily digestible. Steer clear of overly sour or pungent foods like mountain ash berries, pickled vegetables, vinegar, chili peppers, mustard, and black pepper.
3. Prevent iron deficiency by balancing meat and vegetables. Iron is an essential trace element for the human body. It not only participates in the synthesis of hemoglobin and many important enzymes but also plays a crucial role in immunity, intelligence, aging, and energy metabolism. Due to significant iron loss during menstruation, supplementing with iron-rich foods is vital.Fish, lean meat, animal liver, and animal blood are rich in iron with high bioavailability, making them easily absorbed by the body. In contrast, plant-based iron found in soybeans and spinach has lower absorption rates. Therefore, during menstruation, it is important to balance animal and plant-based foods in your diet, appropriately increasing animal-based foods to meet the special iron requirements of this period.