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Perspectives from TCM
Dino, very interesting. I did ditch my winter coat for two thinner layers so that I feel a bit of cold during this winter. It might have helped, I dont know.
Do you do anything to get more "dark"?
Yes, you can buy special glasses (for example UVEX orange etc.) that filter blue/green light which are the most problematic. The best thing however is simply to go sleep when night comes with pitch-black room, however I understand it is very difficult for many people so the glasses can help. This stuff is related to melatonin metabolism so it is also important to go outside during noon so the circadian clock knows when it is day and when is night (during noon go to the sun, during night go to the dark, very simple indeed but difficult to apply). By the way, doing this constantly is very important for meditative purposes as you will put in place a cycle which consists of serotonin-melatonin-serotonin-melatonin etc. "buildup". When the buildup is high enough, you start to produce pinoline and after a while you produce DMT. DMT is "psychedelic" (called the "god molecule") and will show you a few things about the nature of reality which is very difficult to get in books and "real life".
In summary, from my perspective, everybody should respect the night and the cold, in brief Winter. This is also maybe why Ketogenic Diets can have powerful effects (in Winter it is not only dark and cold, but you find very little sugar if you live in Nature).
Best,
Dino
But what about the countries that are hot all year round? I don't think it's a necessity for health.
Here in nz our houses aren't very well made and electricity costs are high so a lot of people go cold in winter. Combined that with dampness it's a cause of a lot of health problems here.
I have joint pain and it is definitely not friends with the cold.
There are very few places where there is "heat" all year round and even there (say Equatorial places) rivers seas etc. are mostly cold so if you spend regularly time in the water it is a kind of cold adaptation. Then it is maybe related to the type of people. White's ancestors most probably were very well cold adapted or we would not be here. Australian aborigines sleep on the ground during nights in the desert where it can easily reach 0-1° celsius. Same for many other people like in many places in Africa (In Somalia and Ethiopia they spend many night sleeping outside with very low temperatures), etc.
What I mean here is not to go totally extreme and live naked outside all year long but to welcome back the cold and the night in your life by not overheating, not putting too much clothes and basically spend as much time as possible in the cold and in the dark when there is cold and dark. The body knows very well how to adapt to the global environment but it doesn't know what to do when we cheat with it (like one minute is it -10° then we go home and is 22°, this is quite a shock).
Also, like everything, it may not apply to everyone but as far I have been able to observe, the few people who tried to adapt to the cold and the dark have really drastically increased their energy, stamina and wellbeing not speaking about the health in general. Those who did that while at the same time taking breathing retraining techniques and meditative practices have changed their lives in a matter of weeks. There are on the internet a lot of people coping with arthritis/MS/etc. by doing these techniques.
Try it yourself: take the coldest showers you can stand for a month. Go outside whatever the weather and try to enjoy it. As soon as it is night, sleep in dark room if possible otherwise buy filtering glasses and wear them as much as possible at night.Do this for a month and see for yourself what happens. Also I strongly encourage you to read "What doesn't kill us" book which is about the Wim Hof method and sheds light on a few factors involved here (brown fat, vasodilation/constriction, etc.).
In any case, it seems to me that if there is wide-body inflammation then heating it more doesn't bring balance but increases the heat even more. The heat therapy would in my opinion apply to someone who's losing body temperature and very cold, not the opposite. Tibetans use tummo (which is extreme cold exposure) in order to train and increase their "inner fire"; they don't take hot baths for the purpose. In Finland they swim in ice-cold water for the same purpose (not because they are crazy as people believe).
Now I will put my filter glasses down and go to sleep in my pitch-black room as it is night here in Switzerland. 😉
Best Regards,
Dino
Quote from Guest on March 22, 2019, 12:27 pmThat's interesting. What about burdock root in chinese medicine? It's supposed to be a blood purifier and liver aid. I wonder if it's useful for vitamin a detox
I have checked it up, unfortunately burdock root is considered cold in Chinese medicine, we typically use the it for sore throat. But the Japanese use it in their cuisine. Whether to use it or depends on your belief I guess.
Effect of Low Environmental Temperature on the Metabolism of Vitamin A (Retinol) in the Rat
In addition, at least 20 times more retinoic acid was necessary to maintain growth and survival in the cold than at 25°.
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article-abstract/92/4/474/4778398?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Maybe cold showers do help VA toxicity?
Early explorers noticed many groups that were comfortable in the cold.
Quote from StarFire on March 22, 2019, 3:58 amTCM is more than two thousand years old and Poison A is a modern man-made catastrophe. Besides, orange carrot is a foreign import and Chinese version of carrot is the white radish. A wise Chinese TCM practitioner in Florida used to say "Do not confuse Technology with Science". Technology has advanced tremendously, for example, using MRI technology we can see inside the human body with such details, but are we able to heal more people with those technology? Apparently not.
Technology and science are now at a level where we are able to diagnose and potentially cure diseases better than ever before in history. The practical reality though is that Western medicine is often divorced from science, for example many surgical procedures commonly performed are not scientifically supported. Drug companies perform sophisticated and corrupt pseudo science in order to profit. Often the treatment is much worse than the problem. It is a business and simple cures are not good for business. It is not just about money though but I won't elaborate here.
I'm not addressing you here @starfire I'm writing this for everyone: Chinese medicine is often though of as woo woo or witchcraft because it has a knowledge base that is not discoverable by using the five senses. Eastern yogis and qigong practitioners had to use special abilities such as internal vision (still taught from master to disciple by bone setters in some African nations) to discover and map the chakra and meridian systems as well as understand the energetic aspects of the organs. This is even more apparent when one sees how interconnected this knowledge is with yogic kundalini and spiritual qigong practices for opening "gateways" in the head. The knowledge these sages gained was then passed to ancient medical professionals who assisted nobility and the upper middle class and were paid based on results and might lose a head if they weren't very helpful. They had to get results. Good luck finding a decent modern TCM practitioner though in the West.
Quote from Guest on March 22, 2019, 12:30 pmHow is it then that many people reverse their disease by adopting cold adaptation methods? I personally take cold showers since a few years and go outside in shorts almost the whole year whatever the wheather and I am never ill.
A friend of mine has dramatically improved his health by swimming every day in a lake here (water can drop as low as 3-4-5°).
With regards to Cold adaptation, I have read about such techniques in books that teach it to boost testosterone, which would contribute to more "Yang" energy.
The "Yang/Positive" energy I mentioned is not equivalent to "Heat/Warmth" in temperature sense. Although, in the example of "Original Point Therapy", external heating element were used for this purpose, this is really his teaching only and not in the traditional teachings. In TCM, external heat is applied in Moxibustion where dried Argy Wormwood Leaf is burned and directed towards acupuncture points for treatment and health purpose.
Nevertheless, westerners and asians do have different physiology, we often puzzle at how westerners can take all that cold and raw stuff as well. The younger generations will point at the westerners and say "How come they can do that?" and ignore the advices, but more often than not, we are usually the ones to pay the price (may be later in life) when we ignore the ancient wisdom.
Just as Cold Adaption has helped you and your friend, many are helped by OPT with its heat therapy as well. It's really up to us to apply wisdom in choosing the right way and not just blindly follow others.
Quote from Guest on March 22, 2019, 12:40 pmAlso, just to complete my previous post, I believe that "heat" is not what is missing nowadays as we basically live in an eternal summer. Winter (ie cold and darkness) is missing from our lives as we cheat with Winter by heating our homes, heating our cars, heating our water, etc. and by having "lights on" all year round even during december nights. This is not natural. Getting the "cold" and the "dark" back in our lives is a big part of the health equation in my opinion and so far it has worked well for me.
You have a good point here. One of the four classical text of TCM, "Huang Di Nei Jing" written more than two thousand years ago, has been giving such advice.
The basic advice is to emulate nature, Spring = grow/sprout, Summer = develop/expand, Autumn = reduce/consolidate, Winter = store/"hide". When I was in China, in the autumn and winter, they will have "mutton hot pot". Mutton is a "high warmth" meat, but they are not taking this to offset the cold. It is to use the "Storing" action of Winter, to store this essence into the body. You can compare it to bears eating a lot to store up for hibernation.
BTW, you are supposed to sleep early and wake up late in the winter, so cold and dark is good in the winter.
Quote from Guest on March 22, 2019, 10:01 pmI'm not addressing you here @starfire I'm writing this for everyone: Chinese medicine is often though of as woo woo or witchcraft because it has a knowledge base that is not discoverable by using the five senses. Eastern yogis and qigong practitioners had to use special abilities such as internal vision (still taught from master to disciple by bone setters in some African nations) to discover and map the chakra and meridian systems as well as understand the energetic aspects of the organs. This is even more apparent when one sees how interconnected this knowledge is with yogic kundalini and spiritual qigong practices for opening "gateways" in the head. The knowledge these sages gained was then passed to ancient medical professionals who assisted nobility and the upper middle class and were paid based on results and might lose a head if they weren't very helpful. They had to get results. Good luck finding a decent modern TCM practitioner though in the West.
I totally agree with you, I haven't even talked about Qi and meridien (not that I'm an expert), but this forum is about low A , so I don't want to go too far off topic.
Cheers!