Natural beauty.
 
Real beauty comes from both the inside and the outside. When someone has an engaging, alive and charismatic personality, combined with genuine kindness and caring. Someone who embraces life and has a smile for everyone. Then this regardless of their age, creates real attractiveness.
 
However on the other hand, if you have the most physically beautiful person, but they are cold, selfish and shallow, then all desire for them is truly lost. So remember if you want true beauty don’t just work on the outside but build love and happiness into your mind and soul as well.
 
In Chinese Medicine to work on the outside, we also have to work on the inside, but this time we are referring to our physical organs. For these provide our skin, nails, hair and complexion with all the nutrients, hormones and energy they need to keep them young, fresh and vibrant. They even help to give sparkle to our eyes.

To help our organs it comes back to the simple principle of strengthening our general health, through such things as good diet, sleep, moderate exercise and good mental and emotional well being...

Before Reading this article, please read these others below for important background information  …
 
How having a cold body system can make you sick

How internal heat is the cause of many ailments

How foods can create cold in your body
 
 
The climate ...
 
Traditionally the climate played a substantial part on impacting upon peoples’ health.
 
You could imagine how difficult it must have been for someone who lived one or two hundred years ago to suffer from an illness like the flu in the middle of a harsh cold winter. Living in a cold, poorly heated house, it would have been very difficult to get the energy needed in the immune system to create white cells to fight off the flu or even a cold.
 
You could imagine how hard it would have been to get rid of a lingering chesty phlegm filled cough while living in an old damp house in the countryside during a freezing and wet winter.
 
You could envision also working out on the land in the wind or the rain, or in cold stone-floored factories at the turn of the century. 
 
Suddenly, little illnesses could turn into big life threatening ones. This would have been particularly problematic for the elderly, or for people with pre-existing conditions or weak constitutions.
 
This exposure to the harsh elements and extremes of nature would have been responsible for many diseases and even deaths in times of the past.

Such was their importance that Chinese doctors often referred to extremes of weather as external evils. They characterized these elements into categories of cold, damp, heat, fire, summer heat, dryness and wind.
 
Nowadays, we are not so vulnerable to the climate. We have radiators and central heating to keep us warm in the winter and air conditioning to keep us cool in the summer. Because of this, many of us have become complacent and unaware of just how damaging the weather can be. But even if we are not as directly exposed to the extremes, we can still be badly affected by them...

Autumn …
 
The sun starts to distance itself from our position on the earth and everything starts to cool down again. The summer has left us plenty of food to store and keep us going through winter.
 
Sometimes in autumn we can be affected by wind and dryness. Dryness can lead to chapped lips, dry skin and hair, dry eyes and dry cough. As it penetrates and dries internally, it can even lead to constipation. If fluid has been depleted from our blood, then our minds are deprived of it and the oxygen it contains which can lead to lower moods.

To boost fluids drink water, apple, mango and orange juices. And have plenty of neutral, sour and salty fluids. Foods that are oily, like nuts, seeds and olive oil will also help. All these foods have a common property, they all tend to hold and retain fluids in the body.
 
In autumn the wind can be a very dangerous element too. It tends to increase and drive the other types of weather deeper into us. In summer it can push the heat against our skin, drying it out more quickly.

Or with the cold in winter, it can push fresh cold against us constantly. This prevents our skin from having any chance to heat itself and can quickly drain energy, strength and life out from our bodies.

Always try to avoid exposure to the wind and keep the body well wrapped up to protect against it...

Spring …
 
Everything starts back up in spring. Leaves appear back on the trees, flowers start to peep out of the ground and come back into bloom. Animals wake up and come out of hibernation.
 
However for the human being, although it is a welcome time, with the sun and its energy returning; and all that has been stored and gathered over winter now being put to good use to rejuvenate the body, it can also be a very changeable and therefore dangerous time.

The body and mind can be tricked into believing too soon that the warm weather has returned. Because of this we turn the heating down and change our heavier, warmer clothes for lighter ones. Only to have the weather sharply swing back to the cold a week later, leaving many of us caught short and exposed to the climate. This can obviously weaken us and quite often causes problems like common colds.
 
It is again easy to avoid. Just be aware of it and keep extra clothes on you or within easy reach if the weather turns bad. You can leave such items like jumpers or hoodies in your car or at your desk at work...

There are three main categories regarding exercise that people usually fit into; those who do very little or none at all, those who do moderate exercise and those who partake in strenuous exercise.
 
Chinese and Eastern Medicines strongly differ from the current Western view of exercise.

They believe that doing too much exercise or doing more intense exercise like running and aerobics can be unhealthy for the body and mind.

They feel that too much exercise uses up and weakens resources such as energy, nutrients and hormones in the body.

This can take them away from the vital organs that need them in order to stay strong and healthy…

Let’s start this blog post by taking a look at Western exercise…
 
There are different intensities of exercise in the West, from moderate paced walking to intense running.
 
In this article, we will concentrate more on the strenuous activities that are popular in the West; like running, aerobics and competitive sports.

That is anything that gets your heart thumping, pulse racing or your lungs panting hard for more than a short period of time. Or that breaks you out into a strong sweat.
 
In terms of health, there are benefits you can get from intense exercise, such as increases in circulation and a reduced risk in cancer. But these can also be achieved by more moderate exercise.
 
So the question becomes, should we really be doing hard intense exercises ?

Well let’s take a look at a few problems it can cause and see whether it is still worth it…

Is Western exercise really that effective for weight loss ? …
 
Something strange has happened in the West over the last few decades. Since gyms became popular, obesity levels have sky rocketed. It is claimed that exercise is great for weight loss, yet the results produced in our society seem to say the opposite.
 
A study by a team at the Louisiana University of 464 overweight women, who were assigned different levels of exercise for six months, found that the group who exercised the most did not lose significantly more weight than the other groups who did less.

Another study by researchers at the University Of Leeds published in the Journal Of Public Health Nutrition came to similar conclusions.
 
So what’s going on? ...

Lack of exercise.
 
 
We have seen how doing too much can weaken, wear out and damage your body in many ways, but so too can a lack of movement and activity lead to many problems and illnesses.
 
If you do nothing at all, organs start to become weak and things start to slow down and accumulate in the body. This can cause it to become blocked and stagnant on the inside. The heart and other organs will find it more difficult to do their jobs and will face a heavier workload and burden from this excess...

The right types of exercise…
 
If you ever visit China, you will notice that the parks are filled with people in the early hours of the morning. In them you will see the people perform many different types of activities. Above all else they love to do moderate and gentle exercises. You won’t see many sweaty and strained faces or puffing and panting individuals among the crowds. The Chinese exercise more frequently with less intensity, spending thirty minutes to an hour doing more easy going, less strenuous movements.
 
These moderate activities do many things in the body…

Over training is an increasingly common issue…


It affects both serious competitive athletes and the general public who may be doing their everyday jobs and then pushing themselves too hard running or in the gym or at aerobic classes in the evenings.


Signs of over exercising can be ...