Some people will present with the symptoms of dry eyes and lassitude, dry mouth and lips, dry stools and skin, and depressed mood, and they believe that they get inflamed or have “rising fire,” and adopt the method of purging fire, such as drinking cold herbal tea. However, the two TCM concepts of autumn dryness and rising fire are quite different. From the perspective of TCM, autumn dryness is externally contracted, while rising fire is due to internal heat, so they cannot be resolved by the same method.

It is appropriate to drink green tea in autumn, especially oolong tea, created in the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty. It is a semi-fermented or fully fermented tea. It has the actions of refreshing the mind, promoting digestion and removing greasiness, engendering fluids to quench thirst, sobering people up from alcohol, moistening the throat, promoting fluid production, dissolving phlegm and lowering qi.

A classical tradition after Autumn Begins is “putting on weight in autumn”, which probably arose out of the fact that people consumed lots of energy in summer in agricultural society. Therefore, entering autumn, people developed a tradition of eating more meat to increase nutrition and store fat in preparation for defending against the cold in winter. However, due to the current changes in dietary structure, the daily intake of fat and protein is quite adequate for most of us, so there is no need to deliberately “put on weight in autumn”. Moreover, for patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases or the elderly, blindly “putting on weight” may lead to the recurrence or aggravation of some diseases.