Cold and flu season often hits hard. It’s easy to fall into the habit of treating symptoms as they arise instead of working on prevention, or taking measures to rebuild our immune system after a fight with the cold or the flu. Traditional Chinese Medicine offers an approach that helps to revitalize the immune system and maintain its function, allowing you to recover quickly from your symptoms, and preventing further illnesses.
The cold and flu season was particularly bad this past year in Calgary. Many people were sick for 2-4 weeks and then suffered with an annoying cough that just wouldn’t go away weeks to months after they’ve gotten over their initial illness. For some people, this kind of cough is dry and unproductive while for others, it produces various amounts of sticky phlegm.
Why is it taking so long for this cough to disappear?
In Chinese Medicine, your lungs are directly related to your immune system and they take quite a hit during the cold and flu season. When you are healthy and your immune system is strong, so are your lungs. But as you are continually exposed to more pathogens (such as coworkers, family, and friends who are sick), your lungs and Wei Qi (defensive-immune system) continue to weaken and rebuild until the pathogen exposure becomes too great and the defensive system becomes too weak, causing you to become sick.
During the cold or flu, your entire respiratory tract continues to be weakened by coughing, sneezing, congestion, and phlegm. Following an illness, your lungs are naturally weaker and need to be strengthened. Depending on how severely ill you were and how healthy you and your immune system are normally, will all factor in to how long it takes for you to make a complete recovery from lingering symptoms such as a chronic cough.
Treating the Illness but not the Recovery
When we are sick, we usually take medication or seek therapies to help us get rid of the symptoms of our cold until we are feeling better. But afterwards, when we are ‘over it’, we often do nothing to aide in the recovery of our immune system and lungs. Our immune system doesn’t just jump back to being at 100%, which is why so many people who were just sick, get sick again right away. The immune system is busy repairing the inflammation and affected tissues that suffered during the illness, lowering the defensive capabilities.
Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine are excellent for recovery from illness and rebuilding the immune system. There are specific TCM/herbal formulas designed for this exact purpose. There are also specific TCM/herbal formulas for those lingering coughs that just won’t go away. The herbs work by opening and moistening the lungs and transforming phlegm to stop the cough. Cupping over top of the ribs and lungs can also be a nice treat for an area that has been overworked and is in much need of some TLC to get back to regular functionality.
Moreover, TCM/Acupuncture always consider your body as a whole, and will help your body overall, like your energy levels for example, and not just your symptoms.
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