🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Common dietary tonification methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine include: plain tonification, clear tonification, warm tonification, and strong tonification:
1. Plain tonification has two meanings: one is using foods that are neither hot nor cold, with neutral nature, such as most grains, fruits, vegetables, some poultry, eggs, meats, and dairy products—including glutinous rice, corn, adzuki beans, cabbage, quail, pork, milk, etc. The other is using foods that can tonify both qi and yin, or both yang and yin, such as yam and honey, which tonify both spleen and lung qi and yin; goji berries tonify both kidney yin and yang. These foods suit general people for health maintenance.
2. Clear tonification uses foods that are nourishing without being greasy or obstructive to the stomach, with neutral or slightly cooling nature. Sometimes it also uses purgative foods to resolve excess conditions, such as clearing stomach heat, promoting bowel movements, enhancing digestion and absorption, expelling old and generating new, achieving tonification through purging. Common clear tonifying foods are mainly fruits and vegetables, including radish, winter melon, watermelon, millet, apple, pear, daylily, etc.
3. Warm tonification uses warm and hot natured foods for tonification, suitable for those with yang deficiency or qi-yang deficiency, such as cold limbs, aversion to cold, weakness, fatigue, clear and frequent urination, or edema. It is also commonly used for winter tonification in ordinary people. Common examples include walnut kernels, dates, longan flesh, pig liver, eel, sea shrimp, etc.
4. Strong tonification uses highly effective, rapidly acting foods to meet urgent tonification needs. This method requires attention to constitution, season, and condition to ensure effective tonification without imbalance. Common strong tonifying foods include mutton, dog meat, deer meat, deer fetus, deer tail, deer kidney, softshell turtle, bear paw, trout, yellow croaker, etc.