Vinegar

A Kitchen Friend and More

Vinegar is more than a simple kitchen ingredient. In Chinese medicine, it is known as warm, sour, and bitter and has been used to help with many health issues. Here's what you need to know.

Good for Many Things

People have found vinegar helpful for conditions like nose-bleeds, itching, and certain types of food poisoning. It can also work on the liver and stomach, and help stop bleeding.

How to Use Vinegar

1. For Indigestion: Crush a small piece of fresh ginger and mix it with 1 or 2 cups of rice vinegar. Drinking this can help with stomach problems from eating too much fish or salad.

2. Cooking with Vinegar: Adding some vinegar to meats when cooking can make them easier to digest.

3. For Headaches: Cooking celery with vinegar is a way to help headaches.

4. For Fainting and Convulsions: In some cases, vinegar is boiled so that the person can breathe in the vinegar steam. This has been used to help people who faint or suffer from convulsions.

5. For Pain and Itching: Mixing vinegar with brown sugar and ginger and drinking a small cup of it can help with itchiness and pain from allergic reactions.

6. For High Blood Pressure: Soaking 10 peanuts in a small cup of vinegar overnight and eating them the next morning can help with high blood pressure.

Reports and Experiments

Vinegar has been used in many ways, and some people have told stories about how it helped them. In one factory, workers in the vinegar division didn't get sick when others did. In a hospital, some people were helped by taking vinegar and vitamin B-1 tablets.

Some tests even showed that vinegar vaporized at a hot temperature could get rid of almost all the harmful bacteria that cause certain infections.

Vinegar and Chinese Herbs

In Chinese language, vinegar is sometimes called bitter wine, and it's considered a friend of Chinese herbs. It's used a lot to help make herbs work better and to keep them from causing problems.

A Special Note

Some people have also used vinegar to lessen the pain caused by a certain type of pain in the bile ducts. They found that taking vinegar made the pain go away in just a few days.

Conclusion

Vinegar is an everyday item that has been used in many helpful ways. Its warmth, sour taste, and bitterness make it special, and it has been a part of Chinese medicine for a long time. Next time you reach for that bottle of vinegar in your kitchen, remember, it's not just for cooking, it's a part of a rich history of helping people feel better.