Why a special treatment for dry climates?

One must adjust herbal regiments for dry climates. Most herbal remedies for dry climates focus on drying phlegm. However, this tends to turn already dry phlegm into cement, so to speak. When treating respiratory conditions of a dry nature, one must moisten the lungs and the sinuses if satisfactory results are to be obtained.

Chinese Herbal Medicine recognizes the need to make adjustments because of climate. In the fall, a dry time in China, doctors adjust their herbal remedies to include more moistening and less drying herbs.

In the United States, while the precedent is there, the treatment of dry disorders is not emphasized. When I graduated from Chinese Medicine school, I thought I should consider these moistening remedies in the fall months, and ignore them the rest of the year. In the dry states of the Rocky Mountain region, we have year round "autumn dryness." We almost always need to moisten the lungs when treating respiratory disorders.

So while the standard treatment of drying phlegm for respiratory disorders may work in Shanghai, London or Los Angeles, it will only complicate the problem in Colorado and New Mexico. Here in the west, we must moisten phlegm, giving it an avenue to leave the body. When moist, the lungs and sinus cavities will react favorably to an herbal formula designed to clear the lungs and sinuses.