Herbal Remedies For Haze Discomforts (草药治烟霾病)

Malaysians and majority of SEA countries are besieged by haze caused by opening burning in Indonesia for about two months now. Many people suffered from eyes and respiratory problems. While adopting advices from experts such as putting on face mask, drink more water, reduce outdoor activities and seek medical helps; there are some herbal formula that could help to alleviate minor haze related discomforts.

For example, I had dry and swollen eyes for the past two weeks and I just consume a pot of my herbal formula a day for two days and I passed out plenty of hot air from my stomach and presto! My swollen eyes were gone!

Below are some simple herbal formulas for your reference:

For dried eyes or eyes related discomforts (but not virus related red eye syndrome! Please seek medical help first.):

One should make a pot of hot tea out of chrysanthemum (菊花), mulberry (桑叶) and licorice (甘草). Since dried eyes are caused by heat in our liver system, the above three herbs serve to remove heat from lever and nourishes our eyes. The sign that the herbal tea is working is that the person would pass out hot gases and he/she may visit toilet for one or two times more often than usual.

For throat irritations:

One can drink honey or loquat (枇杷) juice to smoothen throat irritations.

For lung irritations:

Herbal tea such as peppermint (薄荷), honey or siraitia grosvenorii (罗汉果) should be consumed regularly.

In addition to the above, during haze time one should also consume fruits such as watermelons, honeydew, wax gourd, sugarcane etc. But herbs to avoid are ginger, peppers, chili and fruits with high sugar content such as mango, rambutan and jackfruit. Since the above food sources produce excess heat and moisture to our body, we would certain feel uncomfortable and starting to feel fever and cough.

Unwary patient would resolve to take cough medicine and if the syndrome did not reduce; he/she would take antibiotic instead. On the other hand, a TCM herbalist would only consume chrysanthemum tea in large quantity to discharge the excess heat. Once the heat is gone, cough would subside.

So you see, herbs can be of tremendous value to fight against haze related problems.