Diet taboos during acupuncture

1. Do not eat cold drinks or fruits that are too cold within 1 hour after treatment.； 2. Do not eat overly spicy, fatty, sweet and greasy foods 24 hours before and after treatment that will increase the burden on the body. ； 3. Avoid foods that are completely contrary to the direction of your conditioning. In addition, most of the "you can't eat seafood, can't eat beans, and can't touch anything cold" messages posted online are over-interpretations and do not need to be followed across the board.

I have been in the acupuncture department for almost six years. Every day after receiving a consultation, I am chased by patients and asked more than a dozen times, "Doctor, can I have hot pot for lunch?" ”“Can I drink iced coffee at night? ”, I have even seen patients who dare not even drink warm water after getting an injection. They said online that they need to be hungry for two hours before eating, which is really outrageous.

Let’s first talk about the origins of those three core taboos. In the hour just after the injection, the meridians are relatively unblocked after the filiform needle stimulates the acupuncture points. Suddenly pouring something ice is equivalent to the water pipe that has just been opened suddenly being frozen. The Qi and blood will be stuck there after a short period of time. This may cause a slight loss, but in severe cases, people with weak spleen and stomach may suffer from stomachache on the spot. Of course, if you are looking for a doctor who does ancient acupuncture, or specializes in warm acupuncture or fire acupuncture, you may be asked not to touch the cold for 4 hours or even half a day. You can completely follow the doctor's advice - after all, different treatment ideas have different degrees of disturbance to qi and blood, so there is no need to go against the requirements of the attending doctor.

As for not eating overly spicy and fatty food, it is actually easy to understand: you are originally trying to treat eczema and reduce liver-fire, but your body is already heavy with dampness and heat. If you eat a spicy butter hot pot with iced Coke, the liver-fire will rise directly. It is equivalent to the doctor just giving you a cure to relieve the heat, and you add two more firewood yourself. It is surprising that the effect is good. Last month, I had a brother who came here for treatment of migraine. After having his head pierced for the first time, the pain was completely gone. In the evening, I went to eat roasted whole lamb with three bottles of cold beer with my friends. In the early hours of the next day, I had such a headache that I hit the wall. When I came for follow-up consultation, I was scratching my head and felt embarrassed, saying that I had known better that I had tolerated that drink.

The third one is more flexible and completely different from person to person. You got the acupuncture to relieve insomnia, so don’t stay up late drinking three or four cups of strong coffee on the day after the acupuncture. ； You are here to treat allergic rhinitis. You are allergic to mangoes, so don’t touch mangoes whether you need acupuncture or not. It’s that simple. Many people say that "you can't eat hairy things for acupuncture" is actually derived from this, but "hairy things" itself is an individualized concept. If you eat it and have no reaction, it is not your hairy thing. There is no need for everyone to avoid beef, mutton and seafood. I have seen too many patients follow the "general taboos" on the Internet and dare not even eat eggs for half a month. On the contrary, their nutrition cannot keep up and their recovery is slower.

Oh, by the way, some people say that after the injection, you can’t eat and you will be hungry for several hours. This is pure nonsense. As long as you don't eat iced food right after the treatment or eat until you feel uncomfortable, it's perfectly fine to eat warm home-cooked food normally. There was a little girl who came for weight loss injections before. She said online that she could only eat cucumbers and eggs after the injection. She came for a follow-up consultation feeling dizzy after being hungry for three days. I told her directly that you should eat home-cooked food as normal and don’t touch milk tea and fried chicken. She would suffer from hypoglycemia due to starvation and the loss would outweigh the gain.

If you are undergoing invasive treatments such as bloodletting and acupuncture, the doctor may additionally ask you not to drink alcohol or eat too spicy food that day. This is to avoid blood vessel dilation and aggravate local swelling or bleeding. It is an exclusive requirement for special treatment and is not a general contraindication for ordinary filiform acupuncture. Just don’t get confused.

To be honest, there are really not as many contraindications to acupuncture as you think. The key is not to go against the direction of your conditioning and not to put extra burden on the body. If you are really not sure whether you can eat something, directly asking the doctor who gave you the injection is much more reliable than the messy unified contraindications you can check online. After all, every doctor has different treatment ideas, so it is most accurate to follow the requirements of your own attending physician.