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What foods help remove dampness?

Dec 10, 2025 Source: Cainiu Health
Dr. Sun Lianqing
Introduction
Under normal circumstances, various foods in daily life have the effect of removing dampness. Common examples include coix seed (yi mi), red adzuki beans, winter melon, Chinese yam, and ginger. Coix seed is cool in nature and has a mild sweet taste, making it a classic ingredient for eliminating dampness. It promotes the metabolism of bodily fluids and helps expel dampness, making it suitable for symptoms such as heaviness in the limbs and abdominal distension caused by excessive dampness.

Under normal circumstances, various foods in daily life have the effect of removing dampness. Common examples include coix seed (yi mi), red adzuki beans, winter melon, Chinese yam, and ginger. A detailed analysis is as follows:

1. Coix Seed: Coix seed has a cool nature with a sweet and bland taste, making it a classic ingredient for eliminating dampness. It promotes water metabolism in the body and helps expel dampness, making it suitable for symptoms such as heavy limbs and abdominal distension caused by excessive dampness. It is commonly cooked into porridge or soup, often combined with other ingredients.

2. Red Adzuki Beans: Red adzuki beans are neutral in nature with a sweet and sour taste, known for their diuretic, swelling-reducing, detoxifying, and pus-discharging properties. They help improve bodily edema caused by stagnation of dampness and are especially beneficial for individuals with lower limb swelling. They can be boiled in water or cooked with coix seed to make a dampness-removing soup.

3. Winter Melon: Winter melon is cool in nature with a sweet and bland taste, effective in clearing heat, promoting urination, draining dampness, and reducing swelling. High in water content and low in calories, it enhances urine excretion and reduces accumulation of internal dampness. It can help relieve symptoms such as dry mouth and dark yellow urine caused by a damp-heat constitution.

4. Chinese Yam: Chinese yam is neutral in nature with a sweet taste, capable of tonifying the spleen and stomach, nourishing fluids, and benefiting the lungs. By regulating spleen and stomach functions, it enhances the body’s ability to metabolize dampness. It is suitable for conditions such as poor appetite and loose stools caused by spleen deficiency and internal retention of dampness.

5. Ginger: Ginger is warm in nature with a pungent taste, effective in warming the middle jiao, dispelling cold, transforming dampness, and relieving exterior syndromes. It helps eliminate internal cold-dampness and alleviate symptoms such as abdominal pain and aversion to cold caused by cold-dampness. Drinking ginger tea regularly can achieve a certain dampness-removing effect.

When consuming these foods, attention should also be paid to contraindications and precautions. They should be reasonably combined according to individual body constitutions to ensure safety and effectiveness.

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