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Around 40% of all males at the age of 40 to 70 will also exhibit signs of menopausal symptoms, but most will refuse to seek clinical help.

Basically everyone goes through this stage sometime in their lives; while the females are likely to start at the age of 41, the males start a bit later at the age of 51.

Unfortunately, statistics have shown that when the stress levels from daily lives and work increases for metropolitan citizens, there is a trend for females to have early signs of menopause. Some white collar office ladies have experienced her menopausal stage at the age of 24.

White colloar office ladies experience early menopause at 24

There was a medical summit held in Guangzhou City People’s Political Consultative Conference Hall (廣州市政協禮堂) which invited medical specialists from Beijing, Shanghai, Gouangzhou, and other China cities to talk about health risk management on 10 common diseases including lumbar disc protrusion, menopause syndrome, men’s sexual dysfunction, female infertility, etc…

The director of the gynecology department in the Guangdong Chinese Medicine Hospital made a speech on menopause syndrome. A recent survey in mainland China suggested that the average age for women starting menopause has lowered by 5 years. 20% of women experiencing menopause syndrome is under 40 years old. The reason for the modern educated women having early signs of menopause are due to the fast rhythm of life, heavy work-related stress, high frequency of miscarriage, etc… Among the survey, the women with higher education level, introverted personality, and higher standards of living quite often have the most visible and earliest signs of menopause.

She pointed out that she diagnosed two patients this year that showed early signs of menopause. One is a 24 years old white collar female manager. At the time of diagnosis she has already stopped having periods for one year, and is having symptoms such as exhaustion, insomnia, and feelings of inferiority. The other female patient is a university graduate in a medical school which also experienced early signs of menopause in her twenties. Both of them has the common problem of stress management.

Males showed low response to clinical help for menopause

In a worldwide study on menopause, among females between the age of 45 to 55, 16% experienced absolutely no symptoms, while the other 84% showed at least one visible menopause symptom. 64% of the population usually self-medicated by performing the appropriate exercise, eating habits and mood adjustments.

Our society is well aware of menopause in women, but not so quite the same for knowledge of menopause for men. Not only does males experience menopause, 40% of men between the age of 40 to 70 showed symptoms of menopause syndrome. Because males do not have visible signs of having “stopped menstruation” as in females, it is rather difficult to spot menopause in men. Due to the lack of knowledge and feelings of embarassment, most men do not voluntarily seek medical advises after having symptoms of menopause.

Related herbal products

• Concentrated Koo Sar Pills [Regulate Menopause Pill]

Medical News exercise, guangdong, gynecology, inferiority, infertility, insomnia, lady, lumbar, man, menopause, menstruation, miscarriage, mood, stress, university

Catching a cold is a very disturbing sickness for most people. Some people say that you can increase the healing process from a cold by eating spicy food that speeds up the removal of nasal discharge and phlegm. On the other hand, the opposing argument thinks that you should avoid spicy food that increases heat (火氣) in the body system. So with these two different ideals, which one is correct?

Nasal discharge and phlegm is not really a bad thing

During a cold, the respiratory passage forms small amounts of nasal discharge and phlegm that can cause an unpleasant feeling. Most people probably think that those are "bad" for the body and tries to clear them as soon as possible.

The common believe is that spicy food increases the healing process by increasing the production of excretions in the respiratory passage. As such, the rumours spreading around Internet forums claims that pungent foods such as vinegar, ginger, chilli pepper, onion, can help relieve cold symptoms. But in FACT, nasal discharge and phlegm are not enemies of the body. Without them, our life span will be much shorter.

When the walls of the respiratory passage touches a foreign object, it produces a sticky substance which wraps around the object and then increases the movement in the passage to discharge the foreign object.

Getting a cold or flu often results in inflammation in the respiratory passage. Nasal discharge and phlegm in this case helps to clear the virus, bacteria, waste and dead cells arising from the inflammation.

Of course, eating spicy food can also stimulate the body to produce excretions and increase passage movement. However, there is no scientific evidence suggesting that doing so can increase the healing process from a cold.

Inhaling steam cannot kill off viruses

Cold and flu is caused by virus infections, and viruses infections are occuring in body cells. Flu virus does not exist in the walls of the respiratory passage, but rather they attack the cell tissues underneath the passage to infect the body.

The intake of steam or spicy food can probably promote the production of sticky substances, but it will not have an affect on the flu virus that have already invaded deep inside the body. We can only rely on the body immune system to eliminate the virus; increasing the movement of only one organ in the body has little impact on how the body reacts to the virus infection.

Inhaling steam has been a folk remedy in the western culture. Researchers have studied patients who inhale steam to increase the temperature of the nostril to 43 degrees celsius. They concluded that the virus density in the respiratory passage did not decrease, and so inhaling steam cannot kill off virus infections.

There exists numerous rumours such as these that brought many misunderstandings regarding the cause and effect of remedies.

Some have recognized the behaviour of the body to sweat when recovering from a fever during a flu infection. And they have hastily concluded that exercising and sweating helps to promote healing from a flu.

These misconceptions often neglect to note that sweating is an effect of fever recovery, and not the cause of healing from fever and/or flu.

Related herbal products

• Andrographis-400
• Bi Min Qing Wan (Nasal Allergy Pill)

Medical News cold, flu, inflammation, nasal, phlegm, pungent, spicy, vinegar, virus

From the past, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has always been based on repeat experiements and attempts to discover healing formulas instead of using scientific ways of research and analysis. A recent study shows that the in vitro antioxidant activity is related to the Chinese classification of yin (陰) and yang (陽).

In TCM, herbs are known to have four natures and five flavours. The four natures can be cold, hot, warm and cool, while the five flavours are pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Basically the natures are classfied by how the body reacts after the intake of the herb, and the flavours are simply the taste of the herb on the tongue.

It was known that the Huangdi Neijing (黃帝內經), also known as the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, categorized the natures and flavours of Chinese herbs as pungent and sweet flavour grouping in yang, while the sour, bitter and salty flavours grouping in yin. It was possible to study and compare the therapeutic properties of different Chinese herbs based on the yin and yang compositions.

After examining 45 Chinese herbs and their category properties, the study found out that on average herbs that have the bitter flavour belonging to the yin character had a significant higher antioxidant property than herbs that have the pungent and/or sweet flavours belonging to the yang character.

The research gives some idea to finding and relating Chinese herbs to antioxidant actions, which means delaying the process of aging of the body system. By knowing how the natures and flavours react on our body we can better select the herbal medicines and food diet that best compliments our unique body system.

[eCAM 2008 5(4):429-434; doi:10.1093/ecam/nem054]

Medical News aging, antioxidant, bitter, medicine, salt, sweet, taste, tcm, therapeutic, yellow emperor, yin yang