Summer: Clearing Heat Without Chilling the Spleen — The TCM Playbook

Chinese medicine reads the year the way a farmer does: each season has a job, and health means doing your part of it. Summer heat drains fluids and appetites, but iced drinks injure the spleen; the art is cooling the outside of the body with warm fluids inside.

The herbs of the season

The shortlist for this season: Green tea, Dandelion, Pomegranate. Each covers a different corner of the seasonal picture, and you rarely need all of them at once.

Green tea (Lu Cha) is cool in nature, and in the clinic it lifts the spirit and sharpens the head and eyes.

Dandelion (Pu Gong Ying) is cold in nature, and in the clinic it benefits the eyes and soothes a hot, sore throat.

Pomegranate (Shi Liu) is warm (peel), neutral (fruit) in nature, and in the clinic it the juice nourishes yin and quenches thirst.

How to keep it simple

Pick one herb and one habit rather than rebuilding your whole routine. The seasonal logic works through consistency: small correct choices, repeated for the length of the season, is what the tradition means by prevention.

Start low, watch how your body responds, and give it a fair run of a few weeks before judging. If something feels wrong, stop; that feedback matters more than any article.