Ayurveda Blog No 5.

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 The Blogs on Ayurveda have been contributed by Dr. Nikhil Mehta. In case you would want to contribute to Bandra Blogs please feel free to write to us. 

You may remember the example of boy going to gymnasium and how he created problems about his health by drinking unnecessary water. This habit of drinking excess water also creates so many other problems. One major of them is common cold. Remember body cannot throw away all the excess water. It is just not a simple procedure that on one end we are putting water in and on other end it comes out. After digestion like food, water also gets mixed with blood and then circulates in the body and at last goes to kidneys. Kidneys filter the blood and takes out the excess water. This whole process has certain limitations. Kidneys can filter blood upto certain quantity. Naturally body can not throw this excess water easily. This water gets converted into kapha (mucus) and stored where ever it founds space in the body. One very good   space is our sinuses and chest(lungs).

I have seen  so many patients with chronic complaint of running nose. They have taken all the treatments available  but still their complaint of running nose, sinusitis has not gone. The answer is very clear tome. Their water drinking is too much. Many of them felt better by  just reducing their water consumption. Not a single medicine  was used for them. For certain others reduction in water consumption along with some medicines  and treatments was needed.

You must have noticed so many around as especially westerners carrying a water bottle with them and using it religiously every now and then. And on other hand continually  cleaning their nose with paper napkin. Isn’t it?. Some people drink water which is cold, chilled in nature. This is more dangerous. Naturally the water is cold and on top of it they are using chilled one. This creates another great problem. Even this excess water of normal temperature decreases the body temperature especially around abdomen.( Check the temperature around your abdomen and back. Also compare with others.)  And if one drinks cold temperature  water then the effect is much more.

Usually person drinking more liquid especially cold  ones will have cold abdomen. You know the law of nature. Coldness leads to constriction and hotness leads to expansion. This increase coldness around abdomen causes constriction of organs inside. This leads to difficulty in passing out of gasses.  After every digestion gasses gets formed in abdomen If they remains inside, can not come out then pressure develops inside  the abdomen. This pressure leads to restlessness, pressure over the chest, palpitations, fast and deep breathing ( breathlessness), bloating of the abdomen ( usually after the meals). Due to this accumulated gas in abdomen, one will not get feeling of hunger. When abdomen becomes empty one feels hunger. Such patients usually complaints about not getting feeling of hunger.

One reason is excess drinking of water and other is accumulation of gases. Even if they feel hunger,  after eating very less quantity of  food they will feel full. Eating less food eventually will lead to weakness and wear and tear of the body. This cold body will also show one more symptom and that is freezing of the movements, restriction of joint movements, catching of the joints may be at neck, at back, in the knees etc. And if you try to get rid of this excess coldness by reducing the water intake, drinking hot water, taking shake with heating pad or hot water bag, taking steam, applying worm oil to affected parts or even hot water bath, you will notice the change. You will get some relief in catch, the gasses will start coming out as burps or passes out from below. As gases comes out the pressure created inside the abdomen will get relived and symptoms generated due to that will get reduced. The pressure over the chest, the breath, restlessness, bloating will come down. See up to what extend water can create imbalance in our body. For common cold, indigestion, bloating, freezing of the joints and so many other problems we keep on fighting by doing investigations, taking medicines and treatments from so many pathies. But it we do not take care of our water imbalance, the problem will not get solved.  

There are so many other reasons for the above problems. One  or many reasons coming together may create such problems. In such cases our treatments should be holistic. We must take care of every cause.  If we take care of water imbalance and may found some relief, fine, then we must find out and take care of other reasons. Is it clear to you? So be careful about your quality and quantity of water intake. 

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Ayurveda Blog No 2.

Click here for 1st Blog in this Series.

The Blogs on Ayurveda have been contributed by Dr. Nikhil Mehta. In case you would want to contribute to Bandra Blogs please feel free to write to us.

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In the last article we saw, that one must learn the art of remaining healthy, remaining balance. And for that knowledge from an experience, your own experience is important. Now I will give one example of how experience helps us to remain healthy.

A professor from a college came to me with the complaint of severe headache since three months. He had already done all the modern investigation about it including scan of the brain. Nothing came out of that. I took his detail history. The cause came out was very simple, logical and most important was experiential. Since last three months his job timings changed. Previously he used to get time to have proper lunch but with new timings it was not possible to him.

So he used to have not so heavy breakfast, just a tea or coffee at the time of lunch and a good dinner. But his body was asking something different. He was not hungry at the time of breakfast, had a good hunger at lunch and moderate hunger at dinner. Naturally he was not getting a appropriate food at the time of lunch. And now his experience starts. His headache starts after the lunch time and gradually becomes severe till evening. On Sundays when he was at home and eats properly at the time of lunch, he was free of his headache. His experience was his master, my job in this case was just to direct his attention to this experience. And then everything was simple. He knew what to do. He actually started doing that, taking out some time for good lunch and he got the results. No need of a doctor, no need of medicines, just looking towards oneself and learning from the experience. Every time it may not be so simple but most of the time it is like that only.            

Now an exercise for you:

Start getting friendly with yourselves, your body and your mind. Start becoming  aware of different experiences happening to you. May be you can note down this experiences in book or you can keep them in your memory. See that whether this  are happening again and again. Like above example, a person was hungry, not having food and headache begins, Or you are getting exposed to sun and headache begins etc. If it is happening again and again start correlating cause and effect relationship. Verify it.

You are eating chilly and getting acidity and not having it and not getting acidity. Then yes, you have diagnosed your problem. You are started becoming your own doctor. Let us talk about many experiences in next article. Share your experience with us. We will move together on the road of health.

Law of hunger

Let us move ahead. So we are just trying to learn from our experiences, what is good and what is bad for our health. To derive proper meaning from our experiences we must take some help from the theoretical part of Ayurveda. We must know the basic principles of Ayurveda and certain other things. In previous article we learned that the spices like red chilly, black pepper increases heat within our body. Like this there are so many laws which helps us to balance our  health.

These are laws of daily routine which indicate when to have most important meal?

when to sleep?

when to exercise?

there are laws about food, when to eat and how much to eat?

Ways to know you have overeaten or have eaten less food, which food type should  be taken in a large quantity and which should be taken in a small quantity?

Which food varieties give  good strength to the body?

How much water one should have?

Which fruits are good for health?

There are laws about seasonal cycle, in which season what type of food should be consumed?

What to avoid?

What are the rules about exercise & sleep in each season?

What medicines  and treatments are of use in particular season?

There are laws about cooking food, there are laws about mixing the food types and so many other laws.

The knowledge about these laws will help us arrive at correct meaning from our experiences. Let us take example of the law about hunger. The law says you must have the food when you feel good hunger. The very first question arises here. What is good hunger?

Most of us eat on time. We do not consult our body but we follow the instructions of the watch, we look at the time. We have forgotten the real hunger. When one feels hunger, he starts feeling little restless, a feeling of emptiness in the stomach, a lightness in the body, he gets burps without smell etc. Everything may not happen but some of above will happen to him. Today we don’t have time to wait till we feel hungry. Eating when one is not hungry can lead to indigestion. And this indigestion can create so many other problems.

Now suppose one has very good hunger and if he eats on proper time he will really enjoy the food. May be the food is very simple, still he  will enjoy the food. He will get to know the taste of the food in real sense. If he eats properly he will feel satisfied. The body was demanding food and you have given it to body in appropriate amount, at appropriate time, body gets satisfaction and you can experience it. If you put more, what will happen? Rather than pleasantness, you will feel heavy and dull.

Yes, of course, after meal one feels little dull. That is obvious. And that is why one should not immediately indulge in active work. Body wants you to take little pause. As the dullness goes away you can start with active work, active physical work. If one overeats then he will feel extreme dullness and he will feel sleepy. He will feel that the stomach is tight, he may feel some restlessness also. Remember your experience when you eat at some party or marriage functions.

Another experience to learn from over eating is that one will not feel hungry for the next 6 to 8 hours. So that’s about overeating. And if one eats less food than required by the body then what will be his experience?  Yes, he will not feel satisfied after eating His mind will keep on asking him for this or that food items. He will not feel energetic as he has not fulfilled the demands of the body. As the body has not got what it wants, he will not feel energetic. Or in other words he will feel tired or even fatigued after the meal.                                    

Also he will get hunger within 2-3 hrs. If he is eating less  every day deliberately then he  is surely going to suffer from so many things. He will feel tired & energy less every day. He cannot perform his daily duties and work well. And slowly his body will show all the signs of wear and tear at a very early age. Simply he will become old at an early age. He will experience wrinkling of the skin, hair problems, teeth problems, eyes and ear problems and different bone problems.

Unfortunately today people either over eat, eat at wrong times, not eat properly or eat less. A very strange phenomenon. Mind you, most of the diseases originate at this point. Actually over eating is a problem for us since ages. But today everyone knows so much about overeating and problems shoots up from it that they are going to other end of eating less which can also lead to same amount of diseases.  There is a fear regarding eating in every one’s mind. That is why we must learn to eat rightly, in right quantity. Neither less nor more. This is the art one must master.

To be Continued….

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At MyBandra.com, it is our endeavor to provide you information that is useful to you. As part of this we start a new series of blogs on health related issues. In our HEALTH blogs we will try and  provide tips from specialists in health related fields to give us some useful information. Please send us your feedback on this series so that we can continously improve our offerings.

The Blogs on Ayurveda have been contributed by Dr. Nikhil Mehta. In case you would want to contribute to Bandra Blogs please feel free to write to us.

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Ayurveda - an Introduction

Ayurveda is something to do with experience. We have narrowed it down to herbs and medicines but it has much wider horizon. The word Ayu means the life and veda means knowledge come out of experience. So Ayurveda means experiential knowledge about life. In other words it is the wisdom about what is good and what is bad, what is beneficial and what is not to our life. So everything, every thought, every action responsible to maintain our life comes under the domain of Ayurveda.

Maintaining life means balancing our physical, mental, social and of course spiritual health. Our miraculous body and mind has the strength to maintain and balance our health. It is not necessary to run to a doctor for every little thing. We need to understand ourselves and know what is good and what is bad for us. If we realize the imbalance inside us at the earliest and know the ways to rebalance it, we will become independent about most of our health problems. This exactly is Ayurveda, the experience about the life.

It is the experience of ancient sages, ancient scientists, it is the knowledge and wisdom of ancient sages compiled together and is available for us to guide our health. And any common man can learn, can take advantage of this wisdom. It is not a monopoly of particular class or a particular group such as doctors. Rather every one must learn to be responsible for his own health, how doctor can take care of our health every now and then.

Let me make it simple - Any person a doctor or a common man eats his food with lots of spices like black paper, red chilies etc. What will happen? What will they experience? Naturally they both will feel hot within, they may feel sweating at their forehead and they may need extra water to balance this heat within. It is an experience. And it is not monopoly of the doctor, any person can also experience the same feelings.

The point I am trying to make is that any one can experience the day to day happenings. Every action we perform is an experience. Sleeping early, sleeping late, eating less, eating more, exposure to sun, exposure to wind, exposure to air conditioning, eating sweet, eating heavy or light, spicy or sour, drinking less or more water, every action is a experience. This will affect your body and you may feel something because of it. The feeling may vary from person to person rather we say the effect may vary from person to person.

Let me simplify it even further. Let us take the earlier example of the Doctor and the common man eating red chilies. We have come to conclusion that both can experience the feelings generated due to eating chilly.  Now let us assume that any two persons are eating chilies. Both are feeling the warmth due to it. But one person becomes restless, uneasy and other becomes more comfortable after that. Why so? What went wrong?

Actually nothing went wrong. Now we are learning a more subtle ayurveda, more subtle truth. Earlier was the generalized experience, generalized truth, generalized law of nature that anything hot such as a red chilly or black paper will generate heat inside the bodies and that heat will give rise to certain feelings, certain signs within.

The later was more individual, more personal experience. Yes, due to red chilly, heat was generated inside the body of both, but for one it was troublesome and for other it was beneficial. Now comes an individual variation. The first one may be having already heated up body, so this additional heat was not needed by this body, rather that created imbalance and he became restless. The other person may be having the cold body, so this additional heat was needed by the body, rather that created balance and he became comfortable.

In simple words,

1. Any human being has a capacity to experience.

2. There are so many object, things, action which can create such experiences in us. E.g. bodily action, as talking, walking, sleeping etc or  eatables as food, drink, medicine etc or object like wind, sun, water etc and lastly  the emotion’s such as anger, fear, jealousy, compassion, forgiveness etc.

3. In general they create a same effect in an individual, a generalized effect. A red chilly will not create a heat in one person and coldness in another. The cold water will not create a cold feeling in one and heat in another.

4. Lastly these effects may be beneficial to one and harmful to other. An individual variation.

At this stage a question may come in your mind. What this is it all about ? My dear friend, it is ayurveda. You, as a person should develop an art, an art to know what is good and what is bad for you, how much is good and bad for you?

Once you start mastering this art. You can keep control of your health. You can balance your health. Slowly you will realize that most of the time you are responsible for your ill health. Your actions are the cause of your ill health and you can control its happening to certain extend. And I can also put it a step further that how a doctor, how someone else is responsible for your ill health.

That is why one must learn the art of remaining healthy, remaining balance. And for that knowledge from a experience, your own experience is important. I will give one example(in the next article), how experience helps us to remain healthy and then a home work for you, an exercise for you.

To be Continued….

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