🌿 Folk Prescriptions

In general, infants tend to lose appetite during summer due to heat, but with autumn’s cool, clear weather, many regain their appetite. However, autumn is also characterized by wind, rain scarcity, and dry climate—making anorexia common in infants.
Causes include:
1. In autumn, especially late autumn, temperature fluctuations increase, and weather changes frequently. Some parents fear infants catching cold and dress them too early in thick, non-breathable clothing (e.g., cotton undersuits), causing excessive sweating during activity or play. Sweating leads to reduced gastric juice secretion and decreased appetite. Excessive sweating opens pores; wet clothes drying on skin easily trigger colds, coughs, and fever. Illness requires injections or medication, disrupting digestive secretions. Antibiotics reduce normal gut flora and intestinal vitamin synthesis, causing digestive dysfunction and poor appetite, resulting in anorexia.
2. Another group of anorexia occurs in infants newly entering kindergarten or daycare in autumn. Entering a new environment causes discomfort, especially in timid, introverted children, leading to mental distress and loss of appetite. Even if not new entrants, those who spent a long summer vacation at home may feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable with collective life, meals, and surroundings, reducing appetite.
3. Autumn’s weather—windy, rainy, variable, and dry—is termed “autumn dryness” in Traditional Chinese Medicine. After cooling weather sets in, inadequate hydration, especially in sweaty infants, easily causes constipation. Hard stools cause difficulty defecating, and prolonged retention in the colon allows putrefactive bacteria to decompose waste, producing toxins absorbed into the body, causing dizziness and appetite loss.
Prevention and treatment of autumnal anorexia can involve health measures such as proper diet and improved daily care to gradually restore appetite.
Diet-wise, for infants newly entering institutions, during the first 1–2 weeks, prepare favorite foods like wontons, steamed buns, mantou, baked noodles, vegetable rice, or stewed rice—foods with appealing color, aroma, and appearance—to stimulate interest in eating. With teachers’ care, children gradually adapt to group meals. Once eating becomes enjoyable, appetite naturally increases. At home, adjust family meals to resemble institutional menus, vary food types and flavors, avoid repetition. Flavors should approach group meal standards, not overly salty or strong.
Ensure balanced meat and vegetable intake. To prevent anorexia caused by constipation, emphasize drinking water and eating cool, fresh fruits and vegetables—like radishes, lotus root, lily bulbs, water chestnuts, yam, bananas, and pears. Combine coarse and fine grains to increase dietary fiber, allowing adequate water absorption in the intestines, restoring normal bacterial counts, enhancing bowel movement, softening stools, improving constipation. Once waste is promptly eliminated, appetite naturally improves.
Care Measures: Prevent colds and enhance innate resistance:
1. Regularly take children to green areas with fresh air for outdoor activities. This aids calcium and phosphorus absorption and strengthens adaptation to changing weather.
2. As summer transitions to autumn, human skin adapts slowly to temperature changes. Clothing should not be added too quickly. Adjust according to weather changes—ideal if the back of the neck remains dry. Keep innerwear dry after activity. For sweat-prone children, place a small towel on the back during activity and remove it afterward.
3. Cultivate good eating habits: avoid picky eating, limit snacks, maintain regular routines. This ensures good appetite and balanced nutrition, crucial for preventing deficiencies in nutrients like zinc and iron.