TCM Basics 101: What is Dampness?
Now a lot of my patients will ask me what exactly is dampness when I do a diagnosis for them about their body condition.
In fact it is a condition that most of us have, especially in Singapore.
So here goes the answer to the long awaited mystery:
Dampness is also known as 湿气. It can also and commonly exist together with 痰, which is in direct translation known as ‘phlegm’. So the common combination that is seen in most people is called 痰湿.
Dampness is an imbalance arising from having too much moisture/water trapped in the body. You can see it as a little bit like water retention but not entirely and not exactly. It is a condition that you get when your body didn’t have the optimal condition to remove the excessive water in the body. Over time, it can become more viscous and transform into a thicker kind of dampness known as ‘phlegm’ or 痰. (But also, phlegm can arise from indigested food so the concept is not just a simple transformation from water, TCM concept is complex isn’t it?)
When too much of phlegm and dampness exist in the body, it can make you feel heavy, lethargic, for some it may present as swollen puffy face and limbs, eyebags, loss of appetite, weight gain (surprise! A lot of people who have weight gain is not because of simply fat gain, I’ll write another post on this), heavy vaginal discharge, candida/thrush.
This dampness can arise from various factors and in my clinical practice, they can come from:
1. Environment
2. Your born body constitution
3. Your digestion condition
4. Your diet
1. Environment
In Singapore and a lot of Southeast Asia countries, or for those regions which are situated close to sea, people tend to trap more dampness in their body because the ocean and sea are water elements and dampness arises when there is too much of that.
2. Your Born Body Constitution
This is called the innate body constitution that you carry with into this world. And this I use my Metaphysics skills to help patients diagnose and understand their own body constitution better. People who often trap a lot of dampness in their body are mostly (but not all) weak in their Stomach or Spleen.
3. Your Digestion Condition
As mentioned above, when your digestion is weak, the food that comes in does not get fully digested and will be transformed to dampness or phlegm (for worse cases) trapped in your body.
4. Your diet
Some foods tend to produce more dampness and phlegm in the body and in summary, dairy and sugary foods are the main culprits of that.
Read about Weight Gain from Digestion Induced Dampness here.
So ways to rectify and help to manage dampness?
Read the full post about Everything you need to know about Dampness here.
Foods that Resolve Dampness
Here is the list of foods that resolve dampness: rice, rye, millet, wheat, barley, mung bean, adzuki bean, tofu, tempeh.
Read more about some foods that can help with Dampness here such as Barley, Chinese Yam.
Further reading: