What Chinese medicine foot bath is the most beneficial to health? What are the contraindications of Chinese medicine foot bath?

Soaking your feet in hot water can improve local blood circulation, drive away the cold, promote metabolism, and ultimately achieve the purpose of health care. Soaking your feet with appropriate Chinese medicine also has a certain effect on athlete's foot. So, what Chinese medicine is best for soaking your feet? Let's follow the editor of Encyclopedia Knowledge Network to learn more.

What Chinese medicine foot bath is the most health-promoting

1. Mugwort: warms the lungs

According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, mugwort is a warm, bitter, non-toxic herb. It has the effects of restoring yang, regulating qi and blood, expelling dampness and cold, stopping bleeding and stabilizing pregnancy. It is also commonly used in acupuncture, so it is also called "medical herb". Soaking your feet in mugwort can also improve lung function, which is very beneficial for people with chronic bronchitis and those who are prone to coughing up white phlegm.

The method of soaking feet with mugwort is similar to that of soaking feet with ginger. Generally, 30-50 grams (a small handful) of dried mugwort is boiled in water for soaking feet. The cooking method is the same as mentioned above.

Patients with severe cold and dampness can soak their feet in wormwood once a week. They can also drink a cup of ginger and red date water (10 dried red dates plus two slices of ginger, boiled in ten bowls of water for two hours) as an auxiliary while soaking their feet in wormwood water.

When soaking your feet with wormwood, you should pay attention to drinking more warm water, eating less cold food, and taking a rest. Discomfort in the head, face, throat, and chronic bronchitis caused by false heat and real fire can be relieved to a certain extent.

People with fever, low blood pressure, and diabetes should soak their feet in wormwood under the guidance of a doctor. Soaking your feet in wormwood should be done 2-3 times a week, not too frequently. Because soaking your feet in wormwood can lead the fire downward, it can sometimes cause insufficient blood and qi in the head and face, easily causing dizziness, headaches, and emotional changes.

2. Safflower: Prevents frostbite

Safflower is a commonly used Chinese medicine in gynecology. It can promote blood circulation, relieve menstruation, remove blood stasis and relieve pain. People who are prone to frostbite and skin cracks in winter should soak their feet with safflower in autumn, which can play a good preventive role.

Take 10-15 grams of safflower (about a handful) and boil water to soak your feet according to the method mentioned above, which can prevent and improve frostbite. Every winter, some people's hands and feet often crack and break, 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 a certain extent.

If you use 30-50 grams of dried mugwort and 10-15 grams of safflower to boil water and use it for foot soaking, it can also improve blood circulation, prevent and relieve varicose veins and peripheral neuritis.

If you have poor blood circulation, numbness in your hands and feet, or blood stasis in your lower limbs, you can soak your feet with these two herbs. After soaking your feet, not only can the blood circulation problem be improved, but also the sleep quality can be improved to a certain extent. Soaking your feet with safflower and wormwood during a cold can also play a certain therapeutic role.

3. Ginger: Dispels cold

In traditional Chinese medicine, ginger is a pungent and warm medicine that can dispel cold and relieve symptoms, and has relatively few toxic side effects. Modern medicine believes that ginger can stimulate capillaries, improve local blood circulation and metabolism. People who are afraid of cold and have cold hands and feet can soak their feet in ginger.

It should be noted that soaking your feet with ginger does not mean soaking the ginger in hot water for a while. Instead, you should take 15-30 grams of ginger (about half a medium-sized piece of ginger), flatten it, put it in a pot, add half a pot of water, cover the pot and boil it with hot water for about 10 minutes. After boiling, pour out all the ginger water and add an appropriate amount of cold water to about 40℃ (generally it is appropriate not to feel hot). When soaking your feet, the water should cover your ankles, and it is best to rub your feet while soaking.

Many of the medicinal ingredients in ginger are small molecules, so covering the pot to prevent them from volatilizing. The amount of half a piece of ginger is the amount of water in a basin used for foot bathing in general households. If the amount of water used for foot bathing is large, or the symptoms of fear of cold are more severe, the amount of ginger can be increased as appropriate. After soaking feet in ginger water for a period of time, the symptoms of fear of cold can generally be improved to a certain extent.

4. Cinnamon: Reduces swelling

Cinnamon, also known as cinnamon bark, official cinnamon or fragrant cinnamon, is a common household spice along with Sichuan peppercorns. Both have the effect of warming the kidney yang. Soaking your feet with them can relieve edema caused by kidney disease.

Nephrogenic edema is edema caused by kidney function problems or diseases. It usually occurs first in loose tissue areas, such as eyelids or face, ankles, and is most obvious in the morning when you get up. Pressing the skin of the edematous area with your fingers may cause depression. If you have nephrogenic edema, you can boil 15 grams of pepper and cinnamon (a small handful or a small piece) and then soak your feet. The boiling method is the same as boiling ginger. Continuous use of this method to soak your feet can have a certain effect on reducing swelling.

If edema symptoms start from the sagging parts of the body (such as the legs) and gradually spread to other parts of the body, it may be cardiogenic edema caused by heart function problems. For this type of edema, you can choose to use the ginger boiled water mentioned above to soak your feet, which can promote blood circulation in the lower limbs, thereby achieving the purpose of helping to reduce edema.

What are the taboos of foot soaking

1. The foot soaking time should not be too long, 15-30 minutes is appropriate. When soaking your 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 who feel chest tightness and dizziness should temporarily stop soaking their feet and take a rest. Diabetic patients have poor peripheral sensory ability, so family members should test the water temperature first to prevent burns.

2. It is not advisable to soak your feet within 1 hour after a meal. After a meal, most of the blood in the body flows to the digestive tract. If you soak your feet in hot water immediately after a meal, the blood that should flow to the digestive system will flow to the lower limbs instead, which will affect digestion and absorption over time and lead to nutritional deficiencies. Therefore, it is best to soak your feet 1 hour after a meal.

3. It is best to use a wooden basin for Chinese medicine foot bath. The chemical composition in copper basins and other metal basins is unstable, and it is easy to react with the tannic acid in Chinese medicine to produce harmful substances such as tannic acid iron, which greatly reduces the efficacy of the medicine.

4. Children should not soak their feet in overheated water for a long time. Because the arch of the foot begins to form in childhood, it is important to protect it from an early age. If you often use hot water to wash your child's feet, the ligaments on the soles of the feet will become loose, which is not conducive to the formation and maintenance of the arch of the foot and is prone to flat feet.

5. Women should not use Chinese medicine to soak their feet during menstruation. The problems that women encounter during menstruation are more complicated. If you use Chinese medicine to soak your feet without identifying the cause, it will not only fail to relieve the symptoms, but may also aggravate symptoms such as dysmenorrhea. Therefore, if women want to use Chinese medicine to soak their feet to treat menstrual health problems such as dysmenorrhea, it is best to consult a doctor and use the right medicine according to their own situation.

Soaking your feet at 9 pm is the best way to protect your kidneys

The reason for choosing this time period to nourish the kidney is that this is the time when the kidney meridian qi and blood are relatively weak. Soaking your feet at this time will increase the body's heat, and the blood vessels in the body will expand, which is beneficial to blood circulation, thereby promoting blood circulation in the body. At the same time, the nerves that have been tense all day and the kidneys that have been tired all day can be completely relaxed and fully adjusted by soaking your feet at this time, and people will feel comfortable.

"Hot water foot bath can not only nourish the kidneys and liver, but also improve sleep quality." If you do a few minutes of foot massage after soaking your feet, it will be better for blood circulation and further regulate the internal organs. After soaking your feet, it is recommended not to do other activities and fall asleep after a few minutes, which will have a better kidney-tonifying effect.

How long is the best time to soak your feet?

Experts say that the water temperature should not be too hot when soaking feet, and it is appropriate to keep it at about 40 degrees Celsius. The soaking time should not be too long, and it is appropriate to soak it for about half an hour. Since metal is easy to cool, it is best to use a wooden basin as a foot soaking container, in which you can put some salvia miltiorrhiza and angelica, which are good for promoting blood circulation; or put some forsythia, honeysuckle, isatis root, and chrysanthemum to play the role of reducing internal heat and clearing away heat.