"If you want children to be safe, you will often suffer from hunger and cold" from the Ming Dynasty physician Wan Mi Zhai, which was put forward in response to the evils of secular parenting, which often overemphasizes warm clothes and satiety.

Theoretical meaning

In children, there are "three deficiencies and more than two." Chinese medicine believes that children's three spleens, kidneys, and lungs are often inadequate, and there are more than two organs in the heart and liver.

    "Neijing" said: "Eating self-doubling, the intestines and stomach is hurt. Don't be careless." It shows that poor diet can easily damage the spleen and stomach in children. A disease of the spleen and stomach results in a lack of qi and blood biochemistry. Because children have insufficient spleen, immature digestive system, and weak digestion ability, although they need nutrients, overeating and heavy gastrointestinal burden can cause stomach bloating, stomach pain, diarrhea, food accumulation and many other diseases.

     At the same time, Tang Sun Simiao repeatedly emphasized that newborn babies’ clothes should not be overheated in "A Thousand Gold Prescriptions", "don’t make the clothes too thick, which can damage the skin, damage the blood, and cause miscellaneous diseases." Pointed out the truth that children should not be too warm. Wearing too much and too warm will make it difficult for the child to dissipate heat and sweat too much, and soak the child's underwear. In this case, being blown by the cold wind is more likely to catch a cold, and it can also easily induce some skin diseases such as eczema and sweat spots.

Clinical experience

In clinical diagnosis and treatment, it is found that children are often prone to a variety of diseases due to overeating and overheating, such as:

    ① Food accumulation: Children often lack the spleen, the stomach is small and weak, and there is not much content. Excessive food exceeding the digestive capacity of the spleen and stomach will cause the food to stop accumulating in the stomach and form food accumulation;

    ② Diarrhea: If the diet is disordered and the spleen and stomach are injured from time to time, the water will become wet, the valley will be stagnant, and the essence of the qi will not be transferred, resulting in a decrease in pollution and diarrhea;

    ③ Vomiting: excessive fullness, exceeding the capacity of the spleen and stomach to transport and transform, damage the spleen and stomach, reduce the balance of the stomach, and vomit when the stomach qi rises;

    ④Cold: The lungs of children are delicate and vulnerable to external evils. In addition, too much food, over-warm clothes, internal heat regenerates, burning and sweating, and the pores are always open. Children with repeated colds;

    ⑤ Convulsions: excessive food, over-warm clothing, external evils are easy to invade, the pathogens change from sun to heat, and heat evils can easily change into fire and wind, so it is easy to see signs of strong heat, even convulsions, dizzy fainting (fainting), etc. .

 To sum up, "If you want children to be safe, often suffer from hunger and cold" has important guiding significance in the feeding of children. Too much food, too warm to wear, a disease of the spleen and stomach, imbalance of yin and yang, no source of qi and blood biochemistry, and no support for the whole body, all diseases will arise.

references

1. Ma Rong. Pediatrics of Chinese Medicine［M］. Beijing: China Press of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 2016: 8

The author of this article is Bai Lijuan, an attending Chinese physician at Chengdu First People's Hospital