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6.2. Vadose zone chemical characterization
Hydrotherapy is a well-known, cost-effective remedy in both Eastern and Western cul-tures. It has been developed as one of the traditional Chinese medicine treatment methods, which can be applied for detoxi-fying, pain relief, weight control, and clarifying the skin, depending on the char-acteristics of the diseases. There are three important components of therapeutic bath remedies: (1) the herbal formulation that can be prescribed, depending on the condi-tion; (2) the water temperature and duration (time and frequency); and (3) the applied location, that is, whole-body immersion, half-body bath, foot bath, hand bath, eye bath, and so forth.
Before prescribing an herbal bath formula, practitioners will ask questions and diag-nose the symptoms and signs in accordance with traditional medicine criteria prior to establishing a treatment plan. This will show the terms as used in TCM: upper Jiao, mid-dle Jiao, lower Jiao, deficiency, excess, and stagnation. These terms include the com-mon conditions, such as edema, myalgia, dermatitis, and venous insufficiency.
A bath in itself has enormous effects on our body and spirit, while it calms the mind and relaxes musculoskeletal tension, as well as aids a good night’s sleep. Hydrotherapy can be used for either relaxing or stimulat-ing blood circulation and the peripheral and central nervous system.
Benefits of Herbal Bath Treatments
• Promote blood circulation
• Alleviate transudate edema
• Facilitate cardiovascular function
• Excrete metabolic skin waste
• Aid sleep and calm the mind
The best time for a half-body bath is between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m., one to two hours prior to bedtime. The water should be a little warmer than normal body tempera-ture 98.6°F–102.2°F (97°F–99°F). Before soaking your body, test the temperature of the water with your hands. In a half-body bath, only soak below the umbilicus; your upper body should be dry. At first, it takes longer for forehead perspiration to break out. It will take 20 minutes or more to begin sweating.
If you have severe venous congestion or vein problems, you should ask your health practitioner before embarking on hydro-therapy. This therapeutic bath is a medici-nal remedy and needs preconsultation with a practitioner.
Scrub and Moxa Soap
While treating patients for body reshaping, bathing and showering are recommended as extended home treatment modalities.
It is recommended that you examine your body for any abnormalities while taking your daily bath or shower. By bathing and showering regularly, you improve your skin’s hygiene and the blood circulation of your lower extremities. Skin is shed daily, as new cells grow and reach the surface every one to two months. The rate of skin cell turnover actually slows down as we age due to changes in hormones and peripheral blood circulation. Using scrub products
helps to exfoliate the shedding of superficial dead skin cells and stimulates blood flow.
The benefits of body scrubs are
• Exfoliation can help to slough off dead skin.
• They increase blood flow to the skin surface.
• A rubbing and mild pressing action can help move and drain lymphatic systems.
• They refresh the skin’s texture.
For boosting the effectiveness of treat-ment, moxa soap is recommended for cer-tain conditions, such as scar tissue, severe lymphatic congestion, skin trouble, and blood circulation problems. For treatment of types T and S, I have started to make moxa soap for patients. Moxa soap is made of one-year-fermented moxa floss in special fluids.
Muscle Meridian Stretching
The muscle meridian system has been developed as the part of physical therapy in China for maintaining body posture and as a health exercise. Qi gong is a holistic sys-tem of motion and postural coordination with proper breathing and connecting of the inner organ systems. Traditionally, Qi gong practices aim to cultivate health, train spirituality, and balance Qi, especially in martial art. In my clinic, the basic concepts of muscle meridian movement are reported after treatment.
Connect Your Inner Motions
Even though we are not aware of it, our inner body system is constantly moving.
In fact, if you feel internal motions such as
palpitations or shortness of breath, these are possibly irregular symptoms and signs of ailment. Nevertheless, if you connect your inner body motion, you easily reach medi-tation moments.
Find your pulse on your wrist with your fingertips, and then wait for a while; you will feel the definite rhythmic beats from your wrist pulse. While you put your fingertips on your wrist, focus your breathing and the beat of your pulse. These two essential body beats are different, and if you focus on them one by one, you can feel the two different rhythms at the same time. Most of the time, we are focused on our outer environment and ignore our body. This newfound aware-ness will be a good start to maintaining your health.
Practice Moving Your Hands and Feet Slowly and Gently
Just as your life has a direction, most motion and movement have the intention of acting
“toward,” which is a directional characteris-tic. Once the direction is decided upon, then the motion is followed, and most directing motion is initiated by the distal body, such as the fingers and toes.
First, loosen your arms and focus on not locking your joints; then try to move your second finger toward the right and left in a circular motion. Then decide on one direc-tion that your finger will follow and move your arm gently in the same direction while focusing on your second finger.
The distal segment can be influenced by proximal segment motion, especially soft small movements. If we need more powerful motions and movements, our joints lock and tense up to resist external shocks. Even posture that is maintained for long periods will result in locking
the joints and maintaining a bending posture. Pressing the joints together causes increased stability, while traction facilitates movement. For loosening the extremities, unlock all joints and start to move your fingers and toes with inten-tional direcinten-tional motion.
During physical rehabilitation, dynamic muscle motion can also be emphasized on distal movements. Distal movements, such as finger and toe movements, should occur first and should be completed no later than halfway through the motion pattern to proximal muscles and joints.
Circular Motions
Muscle meridians cover the entire body in the relationship of yin and yang. However, on the extremities, three yin and three yang meridians flow on the six dimensional aspects that are connected to neighboring meridians. On the torso area, three yang feet meridians cover the front, back, and side.
Unlike movements of flexion and exten-sion of joints, a muscle meridian balance test can be done by the circular movements of several joints, such as ankles, wrists, arms, legs, and the neck and waist area. The cir-cular motions are continuous movements turning side to side. This motion is impor-tant to diagnose and treat body reshaping of the six body types.
For waist circular motion, initial prac-tice and stretching with a pillow are rec-ommended for type M2, because sudden movement can cause muscle tightness and can be rather uncomfortable.
Pillow stretching includes lying down with a pillow under your midback area, side of body, or abdomen, depending on your position. Once you feel the waist and back
area loosen, twisting your waist is an exer-cise good for strengthening your oblique muscles and the side muscles of your abdomen.
These three steps in muscle meridian stretching methods are recommended for each body type’s treatment session.
Diet and Nutrition Diet Recommendations
Asian food recipes and varieties are count-less and include a huge variety of different cooking styles, food sources, and dietary references. Even though it may be difficult to identify the most common main food due to regional varieties, the basic philoso-phy of cooking and selecting food depends on understanding food quality and its characteristics.
Each food relates to an element of internal organ function, and food classification follows the four basic energetic criteria, such as flavor, thermal nature, organ network, and direction of movement.
Similar to Chinese herbal mixtures, certain food combinations are prescribed because of their specific functions, tastes, and Qi properties. For example, if someone has common cold symptoms, they will be told to cook with spicy ingredients, such as green onion or ginger, to induce sweating and promote the relief of symptoms. Eastern diets have developed through empirical observations and are used to treat medical conditions.
When selecting foods, it is beneficial to consider the body condition, the weather, and the individual’s emotions. Proper portions and the right choice of food can benefit your body, which has a medicinal
effect on body function. If you choose the wrong foods, it can be harmful to your health.
Sleep and Breakfast Habit
I sometimes recommend that my patients skip dinner or eat before 6:00 p.m. during body-reshaping treatment periods. This is because several types and conditions need a 12-hour fasting period in order to gain good results from treatment sessions. Sleep takes up most of the fasting period and break-fast is the break of break-fasting, which alerts and fuels brain function.
If you eat a late dinner or overeat at dinner-time, it may lead to a restless sleep because when we sleep, our digestive system slows down and becomes sluggish. Furthermore, salivary flow is reduced during sleep, caus-ing a dry mouth in the morncaus-ing. Durcaus-ing sleep, all the muscles relax except those of the diaphragm. The relaxation of the sphincters between the intestinal sections helps to prepare for excretion soon after you wake up and your intestine is active.
For this reason, eating late at night is not rec-ommended, as our inactive state will prevent enzymes and stomach acids from converting food to energy. This causes a bloated feeling during the day. Bloating and congestion are not good, especially for the type P group. The 12-hour fasting diet is usually recommended for instituting daily healthy eating habits.
It is well known that skipping breakfast is associated with a larger waist circumfer-ence, metabolic risk factors, and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. One study suggests that eating in the morning is more satiat-ing and may reduce the total energy intake throughout the day. Busy mornings make it hard to prepare a good solid meal and to
even have 30 minutes to enjoy breakfast in your dining room. Instead of warm solid meals, more and more people choose simple juice protein, soft cereal, or liquids to feed their empty stomachs. Hunger suppression and the sensation of fullness depend on the volume of ingested food rather than calo-ries consumed. Moreover, gastrointestinal activity is distinctly different, depending on whether liquids or solid foods are ingested.
Most healthy individuals usually stop eat-ing when they feel full enough. This mech-anism is related to the physical stretch on stomach walls induced by the volume of food ingested. According to a TCM author, the stomach’s main function is that of “rot-ting and ripening” food. Before propul-sion into the small intestine, ingested food is prepared for digestion and absorption in the stomach. This initial stage of diges-tion takes several hours to break down and reduce the size of solid meal components.
This process involves fundic relaxation and contraction, the proximal part of the stomach associated with early satiety. The gastric emptying duration is about 240 minutes for solid food. For this reason, if you eat solid food for breakfast and lunch, you can reduce the extra caloric snack or sweet drink between mealtimes.
Personal Planning
It is important to set a realistic goal on the steps of your life ladder. Small achieve-ments can lead to continued motivation.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle does not have a due date, nor is it a quick fix. Your plan should aim at forming basic practical habits throughout your lifetime.
You can lose weight in several months or weeks if you remain dedicated. And you
can take a flattering picture by exaggerat-ing your posture. However, these feelexaggerat-ings of accomplishment do not indicate a condition of good health.
Your body is constantly changing, day and night, bloating and depressed, taller and shorter, and swelling and wrinkling.
We do not live for a one-day photo shoot or a big event. Well-being is the fundamental purpose, and weight loss or body reshaping is the intentional direction to that purpose.
The methods for attaining health are in your lifetime and lifestyle, and cannot be obtained by the number on the scale or the picture in your imagination. Here are some tips for personal planning:
• Set one habit goal each season—four healthy habits per year. Formation of habits takes time, at least three months, so establish a few healthy habits and try them one by one each seasonal quarter.
• Start with distal motions and continue with medial movements and exercises.
Sudden movement or exercise of large muscle groups can lead to muscle tenderness or injury; therefore, body performance must have a good sense of dynamics controlled by individual muscle and tendon movements. Before starting an exercise program, soften and loosen your distal extremities at home regularly.
• Check your whole body, morning and night. In the morning, scrubbing the skin can help to awaken your body, so spend more time scrubbing your arms and legs. At night, a 20-minute bath three times a week is recommended.
Otherwise, a 15-minute footbath is recommended. Unlike with morning
scrubs, it is a good idea to focus on the tendon and sole of the foot.
• Food and basic meal philosophies are harmonizing, not discriminating.
Prior to establishing a diet plan,
your gut system and circulatory system should be checked. A healthy digestive system based on a relaxed state is more important than your food selection.
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