Are your feet cold? Most people’s are. Many are unaware.
Good circulation in the body yields warm hands and feet. Good circulation means that your qi and blood can make the necessary circular voyage around your body with ease. When the roadways become congested or blocked, this is where the un-ease begins.
All of your vital organs are located in the torso. Your arms and legs extend to hands and feet. These appendages are the furthest from your organs. Our body’s circulatory system is complex, but you can think of it simply; circular voyages to and from the vital organs. When your circulation is compromised, the function of your organs is depleted. For example, your blood vessels are narrowing due to poor circulation. The heart now has to work extra hard to pump the blood through the body. The heart is doing its best, and continues to do so, but over the weeks, months, years, it becomes weaker. Another example: your feet and ankles are like ice most of the time. The blood flow is slower due to the temperature. The heart has to work extra hard to pump the blood. It does this for a few years and you begin to suffer from the its inability to pump the blood down and back up the legs. The organs aren’t being nourished by the blood, and therefore, suffer and dis-function.
This leg warmth is a very easy (and inexpensive) way to be preventative about your health. Follow these simple tips:
Wear slippers in your house; avoid bare feet (yes, even in the summer) The bottoms of your feet are the furthest from your heart. As you mature, your circulation will decrease. Your feet are prone to the energy (cold) that comes from the floors or the earth. This will eventually crawl up the legs and cause circulation issues.
In the cooler months, wear proper socks that go up to the calf muscle
Add leg warmers or wear long underwear (get the heat tech by Uniqlo! it’s thin and warm)
Soak your feet at night in a bucket with warm water up to your mid calves for 10-20 minutes before bed. Find a way to make this easy (like keep the bucket in the shower/tub area, sit on a stool while you soak so you needn’t lug a bucket of water to somewhere). This is the most effective way to improve your health!!!!
Dress for the season. Protect your body with clothes.
Sometimes I feel quite daunted by the huge cultural gap between east and west. I have many friends that are family physicians, who struggle to explain to their patients the most basic health information (west to west). For me to explain why you should keep your feet and legs warm seems like a common sense kind of thing, but many people don't even realize that their feet are cold in the first place. Which seems quite bizarre that we could become so numb that we do not even feel our own bodies.
I was helping my TCM doctor translate to some patients, and the most common issue is the cold that develops in the legs and causes their circulation to slow or congest. It is mostly due to not protecting the legs from getting cold in the first place.
With an increase in warmth in the legs, the circulation will flow much more easily, alleviating many issues - from insomnia, leg pains, fibroid tumors and many other symptoms.
Does this make sense to you? I hope its helpful. Keeping the legs warm is just one small life habit that makes a huge difference. There are many other easy tips that can improve the health of your body…Stay tuned. I’ll be adding more to my blog over the next few months.