🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Autumn weather is dry, making the human body prone to injury from dryness, leading to dry skin, dry mouth and throat, cough with little phlegm, and other autumn-dryness syndromes. Many fresh fruits and vegetables abundant in autumn are rich in essential nutrients, offering benefits such as nourishing yin, moistening lungs, relieving dryness, and generating fluids. They also help treat lung-related conditions, making them ideal foods for autumn health preservation.
Pear: sweet and juicy flesh, tender and succulent, possesses functions of clearing heat and detoxifying, moistening lungs, generating fluids, and relieving cough and phlegm. Consumed raw, juiced, stewed, or made into paste, it effectively treats lung-heat cough, measles, elderly cough, bronchitis, etc. When combined with lotus root, honey, and sugarcane juice, its efficacy is enhanced.
Grape: rich in nutrition, sweet and sour, beneficial for nourishing liver and kidneys, enriching qi and blood, generating body fluids, and promoting urination. Eating raw helps nourish yin and relieve irritability. Crushed juice mixed with honey and concentrated into a paste, taken with hot water, is especially effective for treating irritability and thirst. Regular consumption benefits those suffering from neurasthenia and over-fatigue. After drying, grapes increase in iron and sugar content, becoming an excellent tonic for children, women, and those with weakness or anemia.
Date: nourishes stomach and spleen, strengthens qi and generates fluids, moistens heart and lungs, regulates nutritive and defensive qi, nourishes spleen earth, supplements five organs, treats intestinal disorders, and addresses deficiency. Widely used in TCM to treat pediatric autumn diarrhea, female emotional dryness, lung deficiency cough, insomnia, and other conditions—making it a versatile tonic herb.
Pomegranate: warm in nature, sweet and sour in taste, effective in generating body fluids and relieving thirst. Suitable for those with insufficient body fluids, dry mouth and throat, persistent thirst. Pomegranate juice or decoction can clear heat and detoxify, moisten lungs, relieve cough, kill parasites, and stop dysentery—effective for treating childhood malnutrition, chronic diarrhea, and long-term dysentery.
Orange: cool in nature, sweet and sour in taste, effective in generating fluids, relieving cough, moistening lungs, transforming phlegm, sobering, and promoting urination. Suitable for weak constitution, thirst after fever, alcohol intoxication, and excessive thirst. Juice or honey-concentrated preparation is particularly effective for lung-heat cough.
Sugarcane: juice is neutral in nature, sweet in taste, a superior remedy for clearing heat, generating fluids, moisturizing dryness, and nourishing. It aids spleen function, reduces phlegm, relieves cough, treats choking and vomiting, earning the nickname “natural replenishing decoction.” TCM frequently uses it as a cooling, fluid-generating agent for treating dry mouth, insufficient body fluids, constipation, and high fever with intense thirst.
Persimmon: moistens lungs, relieves cough, clears heat, generates fluids, softens phlegm and hard masses. Fresh persimmon eaten raw effectively treats tuberculosis cough, virtual heat in lungs, excessive cough with phlegm, and hemoptysis due to deficiency. Ripe soft persimmon treats feverish thirst, dry cracked lips, inner heat, and heat-induced dysentery.
Lily: thick and sweet, a nutritious tonic, excelling in moistening lungs, relieving cough, clearing the heart, and calming the spirit. Beneficial for bronchitis, bronchiectasis, and various autumn-dryness conditions. Cooked or decocted, it treats prolonged cough due to tuberculosis, spitting blood, and dry throat pain.
Radish: clears heat and transforms phlegm, generates fluids, relieves cough, aids digestion. Raw consumption treats feverish thirst, lung-heat cough, and thick phlegm. When combined with sugarcane, pear, and lotus root juice, effect is enhanced.
Water chestnut: edible raw like fruit or cooked as vegetable, effective in clearing heat, generating fluids, removing dampness, resolving phlegm, cooling blood, and detoxifying. Treats heat injury causing fluid depletion, dry mouth and throat, lung-heat cough, and thick yellow phlegm. Combined with lotus root juice, effect is further improved.
White fungus (Tremella): moistens lungs, resolves phlegm, nourishes yin, and generates fluids. Can be used in dishes or stewed, effective for yin deficiency with lung dryness, dry cough without phlegm, or sticky phlegm, and dry mouth and throat. When combined with lily in a porridge, effect is particularly good.
Note: Fresh fruits and vegetables should be consumed in moderation. Overeating or binge-eating may harm health. Fresh fruits contain relatively high sugar levels; elderly people and those with cardiovascular diseases should be cautious.