"Heatiness" is a distinctive term, particularly prevalent in southern China, where numerous conditions are attributed to it. Consuming fried foods, spicy dishes, grilled items, stir-fried meals, or baked goods can all trigger heatiness, manifesting as acne, sore throat, headaches, mouth ulcers, abdominal pain, or constipation.Southerners often combat internal heat by drinking herbal teas or consuming soups made with heat-clearing ingredients, leveraging the properties of certain foods to help purge bodily heat.
These teas effectively clear internal heat:
1. Chrysanthemum Pu'er Tea
Brew chrysanthemum flowers with Pu'er tea. Chrysanthemum clears heat and reduces liver fire, while also aiding weight loss, beautifying the skin, clearing acne, and lowering blood lipids. Ideal for those with excessive liver fire.
2. Rose and Ophiopogon Tea
Roses nourish blood, enhance complexion, reduce heat, and fade blemishes. Ophiopogon, slightly cooling in nature, nourishes yin, generates fluids, moistens lungs, and relieves coughs. Combined, they prevent and treat heat-related symptoms.
3. Peach Blossom Lemon Tea
Peach blossoms, neutral in nature with a bitter taste, promote bowel movements and reduce swelling through diuretic effects. Lemon stimulates fluid production, quenches thirst, and clears heat to combat summer heat. This combination is ideal for summer consumption—it relieves summer heat and thirst while clearing heat, reducing acne, stimulating appetite, refreshing the mind, and aiding weight loss and fat reduction.
4. Notoginseng Flower Tea
Notoginseng flowers clear heat, generate fluids, regulate liver function, and lower blood pressure. Brewing them into tea helps reduce internal heat. If you experience restlessness, irritability, or excessive heat due to stress, drinking notoginseng flower tea can be beneficial.
5. Honeysuckle Tea
Honeysuckle tea is an ideal summer cooling beverage, offering benefits like clearing heat, relieving summer heat, moistening the lungs, resolving phlegm, and nourishing the blood. On sweltering summer days, a cup of honeysuckle tea effectively cools the body and reduces internal heat.
6. Peppermint Tea
Many summer iced drinks incorporate peppermint not merely for decoration, but because it possesses properties that clear heat and disperse wind. Brewing peppermint into tea helps clear heat, promote urination, and reduce internal heat.
Beyond these teas, numerous herbs and foods can clear internal heat. They can be categorized by function as follows:
1. Bitter-cold heat-reducing foods: Most bitter foods possess cooling properties, effectively clearing heat and reducing inflammation. Common examples include bitter melon, snails, bitter greens, ferns, and eggplant.
2. Dampness-draining and fire-reducing foods: Individuals with excessive dampness are also prone to internal heat. Those experiencing heat due to dampness accumulation can consume dampness-draining foods to clear internal dampness. Common examples include winter melon, coix seed, amaranth, duck meat, mung bean sprouts, Chinese cabbage, watermelon, and adzuki beans.
3. Sweet and warm heat-clearing foods: Some individuals cannot tolerate overly cold foods due to constitution or health conditions but still need to reduce internal heat. Sweet and warm heat-clearing foods are suitable in such cases. Examples include lily bulbs, codonopsis root, white atractylodes, black plum, mustard greens, and red dates.
4. Yin-nourishing and heat-reducing foods: Suitable for those with yin deficiency and excessive heat, night sweats, insomnia with vivid dreams, or heat in the palms and soles. Common options include kelp, spinach, pumpkin, white fungus, pork liver, and laver.
5. Heat-clearing and detoxifying foods. These foods are well-known for their excellent heat-reducing effects. Examples include mung beans, water chestnuts, cucumbers, chrysanthemum flowers, and Isatis root.
Beyond these, certain blood-cooling and fire-purging foods further aid in clearing internal heat. Blood-cooling options include lotus root, snow pears, shepherd's purse, water chestnuts, and raw rehmannia root. Fire-purging foods encompass Chinese goldthread, celery, white radish, anemarrhena rhizome, and scutellaria root.