In Chinese medicine, we are always interested in how the environment plays a role in health challenges people are facing. A Chinese medical text, named Treatise on the Differential Treatment of Warm Disease (Wenbing tiaobian), which was written by Wu Tang (1758-1836), states, “Winter is supposed to be cold, but if it turns out to be warm instead, then yang is not going into its customary state of storage and the populace will fall ill with warm diseases as a result.”
Although winters are normally characterized by cold weather, this year we had an abnormally warm, rainy winter. Due to this seasonal abnormality, the weather may have allowed for a pandemic disease to occur and spread rapidly. Also, since there was a wetter climate, it allowed damp pathogenic influences to infiltrate the environment, and then into our bodies.
BUT, is this just Mother Nature’s way of hitting the “RESET” button, and reminding us of who is in charge?!
With global pollution always on the rise, environmentalists have been trying without much success to reduce the amount of pollution and wear on the environment that humans have. However, due to COVID-19 shutting down factories and limiting travel, satellite data over China and Italy have indicated that there are less harmful gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
Additionally, animals seem to be filling in the spaces where humans usually populate during this time of isolation. Dolphins and swans were seen swimming in the Venice canals, and monkeys are roaming cities in Thailand.
Although COVID-19 is serious, scary, and having negative ramifications on the human population… Maybe we can take this as a wakeup call when we think of moving forward, where Mother Nature kicked our butts and forced us to listen.