My legs swell every afternoon - A female Chinese medicine practitioner's daily anti-swelling secret

Every afternoon and evening, my calves become swollen and painful as if they have been soaked in water. My pants and shoes become tighter. When I press the inside of my calves with my thumbs, the skin will sink into a small indentation, which takes a while to float up. Sometimes after eating particularly salty and spicy food, my face becomes swollen when I wake up the next day. The swelling is more obvious before menstruation. My food intake remains the same, but my weight increases by more than two kilograms? What should we do in these situations?

What habits make you prone to edema?

• Often eat ice cream, drink cold drinks, and eat sweets; or eat lettuce salad for a long time to lose weight; drink vegetable and fruit juice on an empty stomach before eating hot food in the morning; like to eat cold fruits and vegetables: watermelon, pear, pomelo, grapefruit, orange, kiwi, dragon fruit, banana, cabbage, white radish, and aloe vera.

• If you like to eat strong flavors (salty, MSG, hot sauce, satay, kimchi, sauerkraut...), excessive salt intake will cause water to be retained in the body and difficult to excrete.

• Sitting and standing for long periods of time at work, and love wearing high heels.

What causes constitutional edema? How to improve?

If you have weak spleen and stomach function, or have been fond of ice cream, cold drinks and cold food for a long time, the most direct damage to the spleen and stomach function is caused by your diet. From the perspective of Chinese medicine, "if the spleen fails to function properly, dampness will be generated from within", which means that the spleen's transportation and transformation function is abnormal, and it cannot properly handle the metabolism of body water, causing the pathological products of "water and dampness" to remain in the body. In the long run, it will also damage the yang energy of the internal organs, causing the body's various metabolic circulation functions to decline, and it is easy to gain weight!

My daily anti-swelling strategy

1. You can drink coix seed juice and red bean water early in the morning to reduce edema.

2. For those who need to stand or sit for a long time, it is recommended to wear elastic socks to prevent swelling of the lower body and varicose veins.

3. Sitting in the office for a long time - it is recommended to stand up and move around every hour. The feet hidden under the office can be exercised at this time (alternately hooking the soles of the feet up and stepping down, 30 times every hour) to enhance the blood return to the heart.

4. In the afternoon, make a cup of ginger black tea and massage Sanyinjiao and Yinlingquan.

5. Go home and prepare dinner. When cooking, remember to add more ginger slices or ginger shreds to remove moisture. The diet should be light and avoid heavy-flavored foods to avoid edema.

6. After bathing, you can massage the Sanyin meridians and massage the Sanyinjiao and Yinlingquan points again.

7. Soak your feet in hot water before going to bed to accelerate blood circulation in the lower limbs and eliminate leg muscle fatigue.

8. Do 50 aerial bike strokes before going to bed every day to tighten your thighs and lower abdomen, then lift your feet for 20 minutes.

9. When sleeping, use two pillows to elevate your calves to increase blood circulation.

★Diet to improve constitutional edema

Eat more diuretic and swelling-reducing foods. Such as barley water, winter melon ginger soup, red bean water, four spirits soup (for those who want to lose weight in the morning), young ginger dishes or ginger black tea

【Ginger Black Tea】

Drink a cup of ginger black tea every afternoon, and bring 2-3 slices of cut ginger from home (it is recommended to wash the ginger with the skin and soak it together, which has a stronger diuretic and swelling-reducing effect!) Or grind it into ginger juice first, and add it to the black tea brewed in tea bags. For office workers who often stay in air-conditioned rooms, ginger black tea can not only reduce edema, but also has the effect of resisting cold.

★Dietary considerations to prevent calf swelling

What you should really follow is the following low-salt diet! !

People with edema should strictly adhere to a low-salt diet to avoid water retention in the body. Not only should the amount of salt added when cooking be reduced, but many processed foods also have large amounts of salt or MSG added during the production process. These invisible salts can easily be consumed unknowingly, and excessive intake can cause water to be retained in the body, resulting in edema of the face or lower body! !

The following are foods that are easy to overlook but are high in salt. People who are prone to edema should eat less:

Chili sauce, shacha sauce, kimchi, cheese, various pickles, pickles, mustard tuber, smoked ham, sausage, fermented bean curd, fish floss, fish balls, meat balls, noodles, candied fruit, bean paste, sweet noodle sauce, ketchup, oyster sauce

Increase exercise to promote water elimination, such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming or aerobic exercise such as walking on the spot for 20 minutes. Exercise can contract muscles, promote circulation, eliminate edema, and promote fat burning.

★Acupoint massage to reduce edema

Prevent varicose veins, eliminate leg pain and swelling, and beautify calf curves

Massage timing

Press each acupoint 30 times alternately, each time for 5 seconds, at least once in the afternoon and evening. Especially for girls who feel swollen legs in the afternoon, you can also secretly cross your legs and massage frequently in the office!

★Sanyinjiao acupoint

[Location] 3 inches above the tip of the inner ankle (about four finger widths), in the depression at the posterior edge of the tibia

★Yinlingquan Point

【Location】 Bend your knee to the bottom, the depression at the end of the inner side of the knee (close to the end of the calf), the depression at the turning point of the posterior edge of the tibia

★ Massage and tapping of the three Yin meridians

The so-called "Three Yin Meridians" refer to the Foot Jueyin Liver Meridian, Foot Taiyin Spleen Meridian, and Foot Shaoyin Kidney Meridian. These three meridians mainly run along the inner side of the legs. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that "Yin meridians govern blood", so the dredging of the Three Yin Meridians is related to the lymphatic and blood circulation in the lower body. After bathing, you can strengthen the patting of the inner leg meridians to improve leg swelling and beautify the leg curves.

Direction of tapping: Because the three yin meridians of the foot run from the foot upward to the chest and abdomen, when tapping, follow the meridians from bottom to top, from the inner side of the calf, inner side of the thigh to the inner side of the groin.

Patting method: Use your hollow palm, a massage stick or a brush to tap and pat from bottom to top thirty times, alternating between the left and right feet.

This article comes from: Beautiful and Sweet Love─Dr. Zhang Wenxin's Chinese Medicine Beauty Book

※For more information, please see "Dr. Zhang Wenxin's Chinese Medicine Beauty Book"