How to prevent exogenous cough? Prepare early when the weather turns cold

Cough exists in both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, but in Western medicine cough is a symptom, while in traditional Chinese medicine it is not only a symptom but a major syndrome. From cough and phlegm, one can distinguish yin and yang, cold and heat, and deficiency and excess, interior and exterior. Whenever there is a cough, traditional Chinese medicine holds that it is always due to the lung failing to diffuse and descend, with qi rebelling upward and producing sound, but because the causes and individual differences vary, the manifestations of the illness, the pathogenesis, and the developmental changes will differ from person to person and are ever-changing.

The weather has now gradually turned cold. If people who already have lung diseases have, to varying degrees, begun to feel discomfort when their skin is exposed to wind and cold, because the lung governs the skin and hair and spreads defensive qi over the body surface, people with lung diseases have insufficient, or even very weak, lung defensive qi, so the more a person feels cold, the more depleted their lung defensive qi is, and the more susceptible they are to catching cold, coughing, and forming a vicious cycle. This is what traditional Chinese medicine calls one type of exogenous cough.

In traditional Chinese medicine, cough is divided into two major systems: exogenous cough and internal injury cough. Exogenous cough in traditional Chinese medicine is an exterior pattern. In healthy people, exogenous cough is mostly an exterior excess pattern, with a large amount of phlegm, a heavy cough sound, and high fever, reflecting a prominent struggle between healthy qi and pathogenic qi. From the phlegm, one can also distinguish cold, heat, wind, and other external pathogens. For example, clear, thin phlegm mostly indicates exuberant exterior cold; if it is yellow and thick, it indicates blazing heat pathogen; if the phlegm is mixed with foam, it mostly indicates an admixture of wind qi, and the more foam there is, the more exuberant the wind qi.

Wind-cold pathogen is a trend that is increasingly strengthening in the current climate, so healthy people should also not crave coolness and should do a good job of guarding against cold and wind. Although there is a saying of "keeping covered in spring and freezing in autumn," for the elderly, or for middle-aged people who already suffer from diseases (diseases other than lung disease), they should also actively guard against cold and keep warm, because after catching a cold, healthy qi will be weakened, which easily causes old illnesses to recur. Patients with lung diseases need even more to guard against cold and prevent colds, eat more lung-moistening foods, strengthen exercise, and prevent and treat disease.