As the saying goes, "if you don't avoid taking medicine, it will ruin the doctor's hand." Taboo refers to the dietary taboo when taking medicine to treat diseases. Taboo is a characteristic of Chinese medicine treatment, which has always been valued by doctors, and its related contents are also widely found in medical books such as Neijing, Treatise on Febrile Diseases and synopsis of Golden Chamber. Practice has proved that taboo is reasonable. Because the common foods we usually eat, such as fish, meat, chicken, eggs, vegetables, fruits, sauces, vinegar, tea, wine, etc., also have their own properties, which have a certain impact on the occurrence, development and therapeutic effect of drugs. For example, Zhang Xingyun's book "Diet Therapy and Disease Differentiation" in the Qing Dynasty said: "Patients eat to nourish stomach qi and promote drug efficacy, so those who eat properly are the help of drug bait, and those who eat improperly are the enemies of drug bait." Therefore, patients should avoid certain foods when taking Chinese medicine.

For example, when taking traditional Chinese medicine for clearing fire, hot foods such as onions, garlic, peppers, mutton and dog meat are not edible; When taking warm Chinese medicine to treat "cold syndrome", you should abstain from cold food. There are also a lot of records in ancient literature: licorice, coptis, platycodon grandiflorum and ebony avoid pork; Mint avoids turtle meat; Poria cocos is jealous of vinegar; Turtles avoid amaranth; Chicken avoids eel; Honey turns into onions; Asparagus avoids carp; Schizonepeta avoids fish, crabs, puffer fish and donkey meat; Atractylodes macrocephala avoids garlic, peaches and plums. This shows that you should not eat certain foods when taking certain drugs. If you eat taboo food, the curative effect will be unsatisfactory or counterproductive. In addition, due to the disease, all foods that are difficult to digest or have special irritation, such as cold, greasy and fishy, should be avoided during taking the medicine. For example, children should not eat cold, sour and greasy food when they have a cold or a rash; When treating chest tightness and abdominal distension caused by qi stagnation, beans and sweet potatoes should not be eaten because these foods are easy to cause flatulence. Others such as edema patients eat less salt; Patients with asthma and allergic dermatitis should eat less "hair food" such as chicken, sheep, pig head, fish, shrimp and crab.

Taboo can't be absolute, it varies from person to person and from illness to illness. For general patients, especially chronic patients, if there are many kinds of fasting for a long time, it will not be able to maintain the normal intake of nutrients needed by the human body, but will reduce the body's resistance and be detrimental to health. Therefore, under the guidance of a doctor, you can eat some foods that increase nutrition appropriately to avoid nutritional deficiency.