Hi everyone, I'm Susie
I'm from the UK.
You might have noticed that
Westerners have kind of different ideas about health.
Today I want to talk about
different health habits between the East and West.
I've split this into five interesting topics:
temperature
hot drinks
Chinese medicine
food
vitamins
I'm also going to talk about facemask wearing at the end.
We can't avoid this topic!
Alright, so first of all, the concept of temperature,
and specifically
temperature like the outdoors temperature causing illness,
I feel like this is just not such a big deal in the West.
Possibly when I was younger,
maybe my grandma might have said wrap up warm,
you know when you go outside,
but that's pretty much of it.
Whereas when I lived in Asia for a while,
people would often say to me,
You are wearing too little.
You should put on more clothes or you'll catch a cold.
So they really wanted me to wear more clothes, and I'm like,
why? I feel fine.
There's no problem.
But I guess there's this deep-rooted belief
that the temperature outside is going to give you an illness
or make you get a cold or catch a cold,
so I think that kind of belief is a little bit different in the West.
I might even go so far as to say
it's kind of the opposite these days in the West
because there's this trend of cold showers in the morning.
More and more people are taking 洗冷水澡.
And then also we have things like spas,
where you've got the cold water tub and then the hot water tub,
and you kind of switch between the two,
and the belief is that there's kind of health benefits in doing that.
Switching between hot and cold water tubs
seems to have some health benefits.
That's what people believe these days
I guess.
I also heard that in some Asian cultures,
there's this idea that you must cover your stomach when sleeping.
You have to cover your stomach with a blanket, right?
Even in the summer.
Maybe it has something to do with air conditioning
I'm not sure.
But in the West
there's no kind of rule about that.
You can just sleep with nothing on you
if you're really, really hot for some reason.
So yeah, that's kind of different.
Okay next, talking about hot drinks，熱飲料.
And this is a really interesting one that I found
there are big differences in between Asia and the UK.
Because when I was in Asia, people often said to me,
oh, you shouldn't drink cold drinks because you're a woman,
and it's gonna affect your woman parts.
You don't want cold water to go there
cause it's gonna maybe increase pain,
because it's more tense,
so you want warmth in that area.
Well, the first time I heard that I was like,
okay, cool.
I didn't really know what to make of it.
But over time the more and more people that said this to me,
the more I felt like,
oh yeah, I should. I should avoid cold stuff.
And so now, I kind of have that belief of,
yeah I don't really want to drink too many cold things.
So it's kind of seeped into my own belief system.
But yeah, so when I came back from Asia and lived in the UK,
I would start to order hot water in a restaurant.
And my friends and family's reaction would be like,
what are you doing?
You're not gonna put a tea bag in there?
I'll be like
no, it's just hot water,
you know, what's wrong with that?
It's just like ordering water
but it's hot,
and people just could not get their heads around that concept
and thought that I was really, really weird.
They're like
oh, why you gotta be so like kooky and differen
I was like,
it's not that bad.
Right, maybe the concept of periods is very different.
Also, just on the topic of periods,
it's more of a kind of unspoken topic in the UK.
I found that in Taiwan, people would often say,
oh your stomach hurts.
Has your period come?
Just quite openly like that, even if I wasn't very close with them.
And I'd be like
oh yeah.
Because it's kind of a secretive,
not secretive but an unspoken topic in the UK,
which is slowly changing,
with the whole sort of feminism stuff,
people are more and more comfortable
talking about their periods, I think,
but it's still a bit more of a taboo.
So next, talking about Chinese medicine
Chinese medicine
Surprisingly,
not that many people know much about Chinese medicine in the UK.
And the reason I'm surprised by that is because
there's been such a wave of health trends recently
from all over the world.
People becoming more and more interested in alternative medicines.
But when it comes to Chinese medicine,
I feel like it's still relatively rare
that someone will go and see a Chinese doctor, for example.
I mean, I live in Brighton,
which is known to be more of an alternative kind of city,
and there's only like two Chinese medicine clinics, I think, that I found,
and people just don't really know about them.
So
having said that,
acupuncture has become a lot more popular recently,
and it's even been used as a treatment
that doctors can recommend, like on the NHS,
so the NHS is the National Health Service.
Even doctors, Western doctors,
will prescribe acupuncture sometimes
for things like insomnia or pain,
so that suggests that there's solid evidence and research
backing that up.
Apart from that,
pretty much the perception about Chinese medicine here
would be acupuncture,
maybe some Chinese massage,
and also eating weird and unusual animals,
that's what people think of a lot.
The herb side of things, I think people don't know too much about,
they don't know which herbs,
they don't know that it's about maintaining your health
rather than treating symptoms, and that kind of thing,
so there's quite a big gap in the knowledge there, I feel.
Okay, moving on to food.
This is kind of related to Chinese medicine, I guess,
because there are certain foods that are believed to be beneficial for your health
depending on your kind of constitution,
such as ginger
ginger
goji berries,
that's goji berries,
grain soups
kind of grain soups, hot soups like grain soups.
And then things like mung bean & pearl barley shup
I actually really love bean & pearl barley shup
I really miss that one.
Now, you might be wondering how do we translate 粥 into English.
Can we call it a soup?
I think sometimes it's a soup.
Usually, I would say more like a rice porridge,
especially if it's eaten at breakfast time, if you call it a porridge,
people will kind of get the gist more.
If you're having it for dinner,
you might get some more confused faces like,
you're eating porridge for dinner? What?
Then, we've got things like 當歸，
which I don't know much about, to be honest.
I think it's angelica in English.
當歸雞，so like a chicken soup.
And then ginseng, so that's 人參.
These are some of the foods that
more British people might have heard of.
When it comes to foods that we tend to think of as being good for your health,
there aren't so many in general, I would say.
Chicken soup
is definitely still one that people would maybe suggest that you have if you have a cold,
but it's not like if you're sick,
people instantly recommend some food for you to eat.
I feel like it's relatively rare that someone says,
oh yeah, you should eat some chicken soup.
It's almost a bit old fashioned, I think.
If you're feeling nauseous,
maybe just plain food,
like plain rice, plain bread would be suggested,
but in general,
there's just not so much that's mentioned about food, to be honest.
Now, I just want to mention some other trends
that have been happening.
One which I've jumped on the back of is apple cider vinegar.
It doesn't taste very good
but it's believed to have health benefits like
lowering your blood pressure and sort of stabilising your blood sugar level.
So I take a small amount with hot water in the morning,
and it just makes me feel good.
I like it.
Coconut oil,
loads of people in the West are now obsessed with coconut oil.
I use it as a makeup remover,
and you can use it in cooking,
and I think it's believed to be less fatty
and better for you in terms of cooking oils.
Then we've got herbal teas.
If you go to the tea section of the supermarket these days,
there's gonna be so many different types of tea to choose from.
But they'll always come in a 茶包，it's always in a teabag.
Maybe it's not so common yet
to use the actual herbs and brew your own tea.
Some people do that,
but not as common as the tea bag way of doing it.
So what I've said so far is there's not that much knowledge
about maybe Chinese medicine,
not so many foods that people talk about so much.
I mean, clean, healthy, green food,
more and more people are concerned with that
and high-quality ingredients, for sure,
less kind of fatty, salty, sugary stuff.
But I think something that
is kind of a health thing here is vitamins.
People are thinking more and more about vitamins,
and there's more and more research coming out about
how different vitamins affect your health in different ways.
Vitamin D has been a hot topic recently, I guess.
Vitamin B, like B12,
is considered to be pretty important.
And then we have things like fish oil.
By the way, yes, in the UK we say vitamins,
and in the US they say vitamins,
so if you just heard me say that word and you were like,
what?
That's because it's like a UK/US pronunciation difference.
So you would be quite likely to find that
many people in the UK take a daily multivitamin.
Now, I've been taking this one recently,
and I would actually highly recommend it,
because I've tried lots of different vitamins,
and sometimes you take them
and I'll almost feel like it's a vitamin overload,
my body just can't deal with it.
And then your pee is like bright orange and it's kind of...
This one's a bit more subtle and it actually feels good.
When I take it, I feel like, okay I've got energy.
I feel more kind of balanced throughout the day.
That's just my own experience.
But it is actually a very reputable brand.
They are sponsoring this video.
The brand is called Wellwoman or Wellman for the men's version.
In this version, they have some special supplements
that are supposed to be good for women's health,
such as evening primrose oil and starflower oil.
It's also been designed to maintain overall health and vitality.
So, for skin
you've got biotin, B vitamins, zinc;
for the immune system,
it's got Vitamin D, Vitamin B6
which contributes to the regulation of hormonal activity
and energy release.
If you're not sure about which vitamins to take,
and if you're confused by all the information that's out there,
I would highly recommend Wellwoman.
Of course, this isn't medical advice
and speak to your doctor if you need to.
This brand has been reputable since 1971.
They've even received four awards from The Queen,
so I think that says something.
If you're interested,
definitely give them a try!
Lastly,
I'll still talk about wearing face masks.
Something interesting I noticed
regarding the face-mask-wearing thing is that,
first of all, obviously in the UK,
we've forgotten about face-mask-wearing pretty quickly.
And basically in the UK,
when you see someone wearing a face mask,
I feel like the belief is more, you're going to think,
oh that person wants to protect themselves.
Whereas in Asia, the belief is more,
that person is wearing a face mask to protect others from their virus.
So I just thought that was kind of an interesting,
maybe perspective difference.
Maybe here we're more individualist,
whereas over there it's more collectivist,
and that sort of reflects itself in the face mask kind of culture.
So it's kind of interesting
how just the perception of what that means
wearing a face mask is slightly different,
so yeah, that's just something to think about, I guess.
I hope you enjoyed today's video.
If you want to share your thoughts,
just leave a comment down below.
Thanks for watching. I'm Susie
and I'll see you next time!