Health tips for kimchi-making season
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By Song Sang-ho
The cold weather, which began earlier than usual this year, is pushing housewives to prepare kimchi. Making kimchi for the upcoming winter and spring before it gets too cold is an annual event in Korea. Housewives can’t be negligent in this with kimchi now globally known as a healthy fermented food.
In this important time of the year, we need to pay attention to body posture. Most housewives squat down while making kimchi. However, in November, when they usually make it, the weather is cold enough to be called early winter. If the housewives stay in a crouched posture for a long time in this cold weather, their joints will be silently shouting in pain.
The joints get abused from the beginning of the kimchi making, which starts with salting the cabbage. One head of salted cabbage weighs about two kilograms, which is twice as heavy as an unsalted one. When the joints are used excessively to move salted cabbage, the tendons around the wrist and elbow can easily get injured and infected.
Squatting and working for a long time can cause knee pain. Seasoning the cabbage in this posture with the knees flexed at more than a 130 degree angle produced a loading seven times the person’s body weight. If this over-stressing pressure persists, the knee joints can get damaged, and the pain will be aggravated in patients who have arthritis.
The cold weather in November worsens the joint pain. Low temperatures cause vasoconstriction and muscular contraction, decreasing blood circulation around the knee. Decreased circulation makes the muscle and tendon stiff, disabling their functions to support the knee joints, causing pain, and increasing the risk of injury. Cold weather decreases physical activity, and thus makes the muscle smaller, which results in weakened joint support. This also aggravates arthritis.
Women in their 40s and 50s need to pay special attention to their joints and postures during the kimchi-making season. Menopausal women have markedly lowered bone density due to a lack of calcium. Hormonal changes also occur, and this sharply decreases bone density and weakens the cartilages. Even a light impulse can be damaging for these women.
Therefore, housewives involved in kimchi-making need to keep the following in their mind. To reduce loading on the knees, do the work on tables, and use chairs. Make sure not to bend your knees too much while working. Wear many layers of clothes to keep the body warm.
It is also important to pay attention to the spine. The spine gets easily stressed out by slight flexion of the trunk; between 30 to 50 degrees flexion causes pressure that is six times higher than that of an extended or straight spine. Keep the trunk straight while you make kimchi. Too much crouching and squatting will stress out the spinal muscles. Carrying the kimchi close to the body can reduce loading on the lower back.
Dish washing can cause trunk and lower back pain due to excessive muscle tension. Placing a foot on a footplate that is 10-to-15-centimeter-high, one foot at a time, can distribute the bodyweight, reducing the load to the lower back.
If the pain gets worse after kimchi-making, use a hot pack. Heat increases blood circulation and thus reduces joint pain. However, in case of a sprained ankle, use an ice pack to decrease the swelling in the joint. For temporary pain, visit a doctor for an accurate diagnosis and treatment. It is not easy to find cartilage damage in the early stages; a doctor’s examination is essential.
Healthy meals for the family are important, but the joint health of housewives should never be overlooked. Healthy housewives can make healthy food. I wish that everybody in the family helps out in kimchi-making by taking different roles for a healthier kimchi-making season.
The writer is the president of Wellton Hospital in Seoul.