Chapter 5
Ease and Disease: Health According to Ayurveda
In This Chapter
Learning about toxins and their effect on your system
Understanding the pathways of disease
Knowing the importance of your senses to your health
Exploring the role of the mind in illness
Evaluating the effects of time on your health
You might not have thought a great deal about what health means. Maybe you simply expect or strive for health, but, if you’re like most people, it’s not something you’ve carefully defined.
So what is health? In Ayurvedic terms, health is harmony. It’s a state of normality and well-being, and means being free from disease and discomfort.
The concept of health gets a little more interesting from here. According to Ayurveda, you’re a true reflection of the universe and so can’t be totally healthy if the environment around you is damaged and polluted. With Ayurveda, wellness is the ever-changing movement towards actualising your full potential while keeping in mind your abilities and individual needs.
Vagbhata, a physician in the Middle Ages, said that health is a state of equilibrium of the doshas whereby:
Your agni or fires are samavasta (in equilibrium).
Your dhatus (or basic life-supporting tissues in your body) are in a proper state of integrity.
The process of elimination of waste products of your body is regular.
Your atma (spirit), sense organs and mind are clean and bright.
Aligning body, mind and spirit
The word used to define health in Ayurveda is swastha, which literally means ‘to be established in the self’ – a true alignment of body, mind and spirit. In this state, the soul uses your body as a temple in which to realise itself and to help you attain four principal objectives:
Artha: To be able to have enough resources to live, meaning that you can perform your work and earn money to take care of your needs and those of your family. Meeting this duty without material comfort would be very difficult. The way forward with material wealth is not to become attached to it.
Dharma: Rightful duty, or performing the tasks that you’re meant to do for the betterment of society, the planet and yourself. Dharma is your true calling, whether you’re a driver, farmer, doctor or gardener. You can have different dharmas for different stages of your life.
Kama: The pursuit of your desires and satisfaction of your everyday needs. Kama includes your desire to live a long and healthy life. Suppress your desires and you wind up a fully coiled spring that can suddenly release with undesirable consequences. On the other hand, if you become too attached to your desires, you become their slave.
Moksha: The attainment of self-realisation or bliss eternal. This is the culmination of your life’s journey, or the Holy Grail spoken of for centuries by the mystics. Moksha means ‘liberation’ and ‘the experience of union within yourself’, or ekatvam (oneness), and it frees you from suffering.
In other words, your body is in a state of functional equilibrium if your hunger, appetite and digestion are not impaired or faulty, and your body can easily and regularly eliminate wastes such as sweat, faeces and urine. Your mind comes into play, too, before you can be said to be fit: true health encompasses a tranquil soul and mind, and sense organs that function efficiently.
In this chapter, I explore the progress of disease and give tips to keep you healthy.
Discovering Ama: Its Journey through the Body
Because a large part of health is the absence of disease, understanding how and why illness happens is important. The nature of disease is known as nidana in Sanskrit or pathology in the West. And disease has a lot to do with something called ama – the juices from food that aren’t fully digested. This is why Ayurvedic doctors often focus on digestion. Anything that exists in a state of incomplete transformation is volatile, and ama tends to accumulate as toxins in your system. The result is amaya, or disease caused by ama. Examples of this are joint pain when ama accumulates in the junctions between your bones, and mucous when your nose becomes blocked.
If you’re well, the doshas are safely in their homes, as follows:
Vata is located mainly in your colon.
Pitta lives mainly in your small intestine.
Kapha resides primarily in your stomach and lungs.
Flip back to Chapter 2 for the details about doshas.
In Western medical terms, ama equates to:
Atheroma: Plaques of cholesterol in the arteries.
Amyloid tissue: Protein that abnormally lodges in the tissues of the body and causes inflammation.
Pannus: Tissue that settles in the joint spaces of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, creating inflammation and eroding the articular spaces.
Keloid: Tissue that causes overgrowth of scar tissues.
The effect of vata dosha
Vata dosha (read Chapter 2 for a reminder of the doshas) is known as the king in Ayurveda, because nothing can happen without it. When it’s working well, vata dosha gives your nervous system the ability to exchange messages, and enables your body to digest food and eliminate your bodily wastes. That’s why so much of Ayurvedic treatment is dedicated to working with vata dosha. On the other hand, when it’s disturbed, vata dosha is overwhelmingly important in the active causation of disease. Vata dosha has the attributes of the wind and can, like the wind that you observe in nature, be increased, decreased, deviated or obstructed.
Derangements like these eventually lead to mental imbalance, which promotes sensory deprivation or excess, creating fresh disease in an ever-increasing spiral. An example of this is long-term, unremitting stress, when you become agitated and unsettled. Over time, this can lead you to make poor food choices in an attempt to pacify the feelings. This in turn can give you slow digestion, and then you start to accumulate toxins in your system. Further down the line, you gain weight and, if you continue down that path, it can lead to high cholesterol, hypertension and heart disease.
Almost all disease involves vata. One of its common and most important effects is to diminish the digestive processes and therefore the transformative actions that enable your body to produce new tissue. If your tissues don’t get the nutrition they need, ama forms and deposits itself in different parts of your body – especially those places that have already been weakened. Eventually, ama can mix with the doshas and manifests as disease. This is when signs and symptoms arise.
Answer the questions in Table 5-1 about signs and symptoms so that you can determine whether you may have ama in your system.
The symptoms of ama accumulation
So how do you know that you’re accumulating ama? Fill in the short questionnaire in Table 5-1 to help you find out. Answer either ‘never’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘always’, with one point for your answer.
Table 5-1 A Checklist of Symptoms
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Never |
Sometimes |
Always |
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I wake up in the morning feeling tired, dull and heavy. I need a dose of caffeine to get started. |
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I feel mentally dull, lack enthusiasm, and am easily fatigued. |
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In the morning, my tongue has a coating and/or my breath smells. |
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I often experience food as tasteless and have a very small appetite. |
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I regularly suffer a feeling of heaviness and indigestion shortly after eating. |
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My stools are heavy and sink, and they can smell unpleasant. |
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I have a lot of mucus and tend to get many colds over the year. |
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I often feel a sense of heaviness in my body, as though it has a blockage somewhere. |
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I tend to get constipation. |
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I often feel the need to spit. |
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I tend to put weight on that I can’t shift. |
If you scored between 8 and 11 points in the ‘always’ section, then you definitely need to address your diet and lifestyle by looking at Part III and Chapter 14. I also encourage you to enlist the help of a qualified practitioner who can really guide you. Between 8 and 11 in the ‘sometimes’ section sounds like it’s time for you to do something about your health before any problems become more serious. If you scored between 8 and 11 in the ‘never’ section you’re definitely on the right track to a long and healthy life.
Tracing the Path of Disease
In general, disease happens slowly. The development of disease is known in Sanskrit as samprapti, which means the birth of pain, and in Western medicine as pathogenesis. The strength of Ayurveda lies in the fact that it can address an illness at any stage. Each disease follows its own prescribed route because of causative factors such as inappropriate diet and seasonal indiscretions, like eating ice-cream in the winter when you have a cold.
In the upcoming sections, I illustrate the six stages of disease.
Accumulation: The start of discomfort
Accumulation, or sanchaya, is when your doshas become imbalanced. One or other dosha begins to increase within its own site, creating disparities.
Temporary disparities are normal, as long as the doshas return to their main homes – vata in the colon, pitta in the small intestine, and kapha in the stomach.
Accumulation causes mild discomfort which, if you’re primarily vata (refer to Chapter 4 to establish your predominant dosha), might be expressed as:
Anxiety
Constipation
Distension
Dryness in the mouth
Fear
Flatulence
Need for warmth
Weakness of the limbs
If you’re primarily pitta, accumulation can bring symptoms such as:
Aversion to hot food
Craving for sugar
Burning in the stomach
Irritability
Rashes
Sweating
Yellowish tinge to the whites of your eyes
Individuals who are primarily kapha experience the following during accumulation:
Craving for astringent and bitter tastes
Feeling heavy
Lack of appetite
Swelling
Tiredness
At this stage, you feel an aversion towards the cause of accumulation, so if you’re listening to your body, the disease path is easy to change. For example, if you’re primarily kapha in constitution, you started to feel slightly nauseous and heavy, especially after eating. As soon as you observe this fact, you realise that kapha dosha is on the increase in your system. The remedy is simple: just lighten your system by drinking ginger tea and abstaining from food until your appetite is restored.
However, your body may be so toxic with ama that it no longer operates correctly. This happens if you lacked awareness in the primary stages so didn’t pick up on the subtle signals of the body. In this case, you begin to crave more of the activity or the foods that caused the problem in the first place.
Treating yourself is easier in the accumulation stage than in later stages, and that’s why Ayurveda emphasises prevention. Never wait to treat an imbalance, but start straight away to do something about it. Part III gives you all you need to know to stay in balance.
Aggravation: Things not quite right
During the aggravation, or prakopa, stage, the dosha begins to move in more pronounced ways:
Vata dosha moves upwards into the higher part of the colon.
Kapha dosha takes its place in the upper part of the stomach.
Pitta moves to the duodenum.
During the aggravation stage, the dosha fills its container or seat – vata in your colon, kapha in your lungs and stomach, and pitta in your digestive tract. For example, if you’re a pitta and you eat a hot curry for lunch with a beer in the summer, you’re likely to feel hot and realise that you should cut down on spices. However, a friend invites you over in the evening and cooks a Mexican bean dish laced with Tabasco, which you wash down with tequila. After so much spice and alcohol, you probably won’t be able to sleep because of terrible heartburn.
If you’re a kapha individual, eating cold foods and dairy products during winter will cause aggravation; for vatas, dry, cool and light foods can cause unrest.
If you’re kapha, the symptoms of aggravation express themselves as:
Congested lungs
Desire for sleep
Coldness
Nausea
Vata individuals are subject to:
Coldness of the hands and feet
Intense desire for fluids
Gurgling in the stomach
Pain, especially in the thighs and lower back
Pitta individuals are subject to:
Heartburn with accompanying nausea
Acidity
Constant irritability
Thirst
During the aggravation stage, you need to bring the dosha back to its site of origin as soon as possible to prevent more serious problems.
You really need to take action now, because this is the point just before the aggravated dosha leaves your gastrointestinal tract, after which you may need medical assistance. Get the information you need in Part III and especially Chapter 12.
Overflow: Circulation through the system
The overflow (or prasara) stage is when the disturbed doshas start to spread around your body via the circulatory system. They settle first in places of previous weakness, like those that have experienced trauma.
During this stage, primarily vata subjects feel symptoms such as:
Aching
Dry skin
Dull eyes
Extreme fatigue
Restlessness
If you have a pitta predominance, you’re likely to experience:
Excessive body heat
Burning of urine and faeces
Kapha folks may get:
Increased salivation or water brash (heartburn with reflux)
Loss of taste
Vomiting
In this distribution stage, the doshas lodge in what are termed khavaigunyas or defective spaces in your body; these spaces have been likened to potholes in the road. Once the dosha has entered these spaces it invests the tissues with its qualities. For example, when excess kapha dosha enters your lymphatic system, you experience swelling of the legs and ankles.
Relocation: Finding a new home
During the relocation (or sthana samsraya) stage, circulating dosha begins to merge with tissues – in an old injury or other site of weakness.
When pitta enters a weakened site, it produces an inflammatory change that creates sharp pain and heat.
If vata is relocating, it causes atrophy and cracking of the joints known as crepitous.
Kapha moving from its home results in congestion and heaviness.
Warning bells go off during the relocation stage, and you experience what’s known as prodromal (herald) symptoms in Western medicine – signs pointing to what’s coming. Each disease sends a different signal. For example, in the relocation stage, diabetes makes itself known through increased thirst and urination.
At this stage, you really need to seek medical attention from your GP to stop things getting worse.
Manifestation: Symptoms brought forth
At the manifestation (or vyakti) stage, the disease is an entity and has a definite course. It shows signs and symptoms that make its diagnosis beyond doubt. During this phase, the doshas have fully merged with your tissues and made functional changes within your body’s systems.
At this stage, your disease acquires a name.
Diversification/specification: How complications set in
The end stage of a disease is called diversification/specification, or bheda. During this stage, the site of an illness becomes clear. For example, pneumonia can be viral, intestinal, lobar or broncho-pneumonia, and which type it is won’t be clear until the diversification/specification stage.
Complications set in at this stage in the other tissues of your body. These are secondary to the initial problem; osteoporosis, for example, can cause fractures of the bones, because it thins bone tissue.
You’re probably taking medicine now and are under the care of your doctor.
Knowing the Importance of Lifestyle for Your Health
You can’t control everything – and certainly disease that stems from hereditary factors is out of your grasp – but the good news is that many of the disease-causing elements are firmly under your control.
Diet and lifestyle are the main components of how and whether disease gets a chance to wreak havoc within your body. In Ayurvedic terms, the lifestyle choices you make balance or excite your doshas. Doshic imbalance then leaves you open to disease.
Broadly classified, three major causes of doshic imbalance exist, which I explain in the next sections.
Failure to acknowledge your inner wisdom
It’s the rare human who doesn’t ignore his or her inner wisdom now and then. Who among us hasn’t drunk too much alcohol, or eaten too much chocolate, or failed to get enough sleep? This kind of situation, though, always provides early warnings for you to act upon, but if your mind is clouded by tamas (inertia) or over-stimulated with rajas (activity – refer to Chapter 2 for more on tamas and rajas), you ignore the red lights. This is when your ego blocks common sense.
Your immune system is eavesdropping on your mind. So the more clarity you have in the relationship with your own inner wisdom, the greater the chance of your mind working in harmony with your bodily functions. The flipside is that if you ignore your inner wisdom, your body can become imbalanced in ways that lead to disease.
When you lead a balanced or sattwic life (see Chapter 2), you’re more able to make the right choices to maintain your health and do like the oracle at Delphi entreats us to do: nothing in excess. This quality of serenity leads you to the right actions, such as avoiding smoking, drugs and over-indulgence in activities which impair your health.
Suppressing your natural urges is another way that your inner wisdom comes into play. If, for example, you want to cry or need to urinate, but hold back on these urges, you upset the energy systems in the body.
The effects of time
Bodies just don’t last forever. Like anything, the effects of wear and tear over time take their toll and give rise to disorder and disease. Osteoarthritis, for example, is caused by plain old wear and tear on the joints.
Time also has an important effect in terms of seasons and weather. If you eat the same diet in winter that you eat in summer, you leave yourself vulnerable to disease, because you aren’t giving your body what it needs. Chapter 9 tells you more about eating according to the seasons.
Sensory indiscretions
Your senses help you navigate the world and can very decidedly affect how you function within it. You reach out to the world using your senses as antennae, and their feedback to your brain determines in large part how you operate in it.
When you misuse your senses, by listening to very loud music for an extended time, for example, you upset their balance. Doing so inhibits your ability to move gracefully through the world. The end result can often be disease.
On a daily basis, you may consume a diet of hoardings, magazines and television. Your nostrils are assailed by a vast array of natural, artificial and sometimes overpowering smells, while your taste buds are bombarded and your ears are incessantly tuned in to the noise of traffic and other sounds. Your senses are coping with far more than they were designed for.
In the following section, I offer tips for taking care of your senses.
Changing your lifestyle to reduce disease
The Lalonde study was a landmark investigation conducted by the Canadian Government into the main cripplers in society, such as cancer, heart disease, suicide and alcoholism. The study identified four independent factors that affect health:
The amount of medical research being done on the disease
The availability of health services for the afflicted
The environment of the disease – such as the workplace
The lifestyle or set of personal choices associated with the disease
The report’s most provocative conclusion was that lifestyle changes have the greatest effect on reducing disease for all groups and all age groups studied. Individual responsibility has the greatest impact on health.
Finding Great Tips for Enhancing Your Senses
Your senses are your conduits to the world. Properly respected and taken care of, they can bring great happiness to your life. But you might be thwarting or harming them without even realising it.
Check out the following tips to discover the factors in your sensory life that you can adjust. You can modify most of these elements with very little effort, and may see great benefits from small changes. Look for areas where you have room for improvement, and choose a few to actively work on.
Nurturing your hearing
Making sure your ears are a swift conduit for sound means avoiding loud noise and caring for your ears.
Keep white noise from fridges, traffic, washing machines, TVs and other electronic devices at a minimum. Low- and high-frequency sounds can increase vata dosha and your ability to handle stress.
Adjust your daily schedule to fit in two ten-minute periods of quiet meditation a day. Meditation brings many life-changing benefits, which you find out about in Chapter 6.
Embrace periods of quiet as often possible. Quiet reflection is the most valuable way to really tune in to yourself and attend to your needs.
Use a couple of drops of sesame oil in your ears each day. Doing so can protect your hearing.
Turn down the car stereo after you leave the motorway. Extraneous noise often leads to an inadvertent increase in volume while driving, so rest your ears by turning the volume down.
Seeing your world clearly
Because so much of what people absorb comes through sight, taking good care of your eyes is a critical (but easy) practice. Trying to make sure the things you set your eyes on are pleasant is a further way to support your well-being.
Have regular eye exams. Your optician can tell a lot about your health by looking at your eyes.
Don’t wear sunglasses all the time if you don’t need them for medical reasons. Lack of full-spectrum light into your eyes can lead to depression and headaches.
Work in a well-lit room using full-spectrum lighting. Fluorescent light can lead to fatigue, headaches, lethargy and diminished visual acuity.
If your eyes are strained, rest them or use palming. Giving your eyes a break enhances visual acuity in the long term. To soothe your eyes, briskly rub your palms together, then cup them over your closed eyes. Feel the heat from your hands, then open your eyes and enjoy the restful darkness of your palms.
Look away from the screen and change your focal length regularly when you do computer work. Computer vision syndrome is taking its toll on eye health. Try to look away from your screen every 20 minutes.
Create beauty in your surroundings. You internalise your environment mainly through sight. Textile designer William Morris was right on when he said, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’ A clean, beautiful home increases sattwa (balance; refer to Chapter 2 for more on sattwa).
Keep fresh flowers and plants in your home. Plants and flowers impart sattwa in your environment.
Don’t look at the television for protracted periods. When you do, your ciliary muscles, which control the focusing of your eyes, are held in constant tension.
Get at least 20 minutes of full-spectrum light every day. Your body seems to run in cyclic harmony with the constantly changing angles of sunlight through the four seasons. Lack of natural light can lead to depression and lowered vitamin D and melatonin levels.
Being good to your skin
It’s big, it’s all over you, and it’s too often neglected – your skin takes in so much from your environment. Take good care of it by giving it attention in the following ways:
Give and receive touch. Much research has come to light about the skin producing immunological factors. Stimulating the receptors in your skin by massage induces deep relaxation. Human touch can be one of the best stress busters.
Regularly apply oil to your skin. Ayurveda says that one of the best ways to maintain health and reduce vata dosha in your body is by using oil on your skin daily. Sesame oil is a good all-purpose oil.
In general, wear natural fibres next to your skin. Natural fabrics like silk, cotton and wool allow your skin to breathe properly and prevent rashes and fungal infections.
Avoid artificial creams and lotions; make an effort to find organic natural ingredients. Your skin is a large organ of nutrition in your body, so putting unsuitable materials on it transfers them directly to your bloodstream.
Avoid exposure to midday summer sunlight. To protect your skin from cancer, stay out of the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., cover up with loose long sleeves and a hat, and apply sunscreen of a minimum of factor 15.
Keeping your nose in order
Where would you be without your ability to tell whether the yogurt had spoiled? Or your ability to breathe, for that matter? Most people don’t think too much about their noses until they’re stuffed or otherwise out of whack. A few easy practices keep your nose functioning well:
Use a neti pot regularly to cleanse your nose. Keeping your nasal passages clean helps prevent sinusitis and other kapha-related problems in your head. (Head to Chapter 14 to find out how to use a neti pot.)
Put a couple of drops of oil or ghee in your nose every day. Nasal/head health is promoted by using pungent oils for kapha, cooling oils for pitta and warming oils for vata.
Avoid using strong-smelling perfumes and body products. Strong-smelling products not only create allergies and rashes but can incite headaches.
Use incense and natural aromatherapy oils to create a relaxing atmosphere in your environment. Fresh scented flowers are another nice way to achieve this effect.
Avoid using corrosive chemicals and detergents in your home. Not only are they harmful to your skin and the environment, but the smell can also be noxious.
Bringing general health to your sense of taste and diet
How satisfied your food makes you feel depends in part on the tastes you choose; your ability to taste those flavours is therefore an important determinant of how food functions in your body. Ensuring that your digestive system is in a good state for making use of that food is also important. The following tips address both of these aspects of your diet:
Use a tongue scraper daily. In Ayurveda, your tongue is a picture of all your internal organs. Gentle scraping stimulates your internal organs (and improves your oral hygiene).
Drink enough fluid to keep your urine pale yellow. Your urine should be a pale straw colour, clear, and without a strong smell (unless you’ve had asparagus, of course). Make sure that you keep your fluids up when you exercise or when the weather is hot. Vata and pitta people need more fluid than kapha individuals.
Drink only two cups of regular tea or coffee per day. Too much caffeine can lead to vata tremors. Most herbal teas are naturally caffeine-free and so are okay to drink throughout the day.
Don’t drink colas and artificial canned drinks. Colas contain phosphoric acid and other chemicals that compromise your bone density.
Eat little meat. Your intake of toxic chemicals drops dramatically when you cut down on meat, because animal fat stores toxins. If you do eat meat, buy organic. Meat raised in a humane way is not only far tastier, it has also had less exposure to manmade chemicals such as antibiotics.
Include as many flavours and textures in your diet as possible. Doing so creates satisfaction at all levels and helps you eat healthily.
Have fewer than five alcoholic beverages per week. Many studies cite alcohol as the cause of a range of problems, including damage to your liver. Government guidelines state a maximum of 14 units per week for females and 21 units for males. Those units are spread across the week, so no saving it all up for the weekend!
If you’re vegetarian, balance your proteins. Make sure that you get all the necessary amino acids to make complete proteins, as well as a source of vitamin B12. The chapters in Part III give you heaps of advice about diet.
In general, consume whole grains and unrefined foods. They are rich in nutrients and prevent constipation.
Whenever possible, consume organic and free-range food. The purer your food, the more nutrient-rich it is and the less likely it is to leave toxic residues. Using organic oils is especially important, because oils are fat-soluble, and therefore their harmful resides are stored deep in your tissues.
Match your food to the season. When the weather’s cold, vata and kapha doshas are more prevalent. So encourage the opposite qualities by eating warm, cooked food.
Don’t use a microwave to prepare food. This mode of cooking drives off moisture from food, which increases its rough qualities and vata dosha. It also has a detrimental effect on valuable enzymes.
Eat only when you’re hungry. Try not to eat just because of the time of day. Check in with yourself and see how hungry you are, and eat accordingly.
Limit frozen, tinned and processed foods. As much as possible, cook fresh food, which gives life to your body.
Take a day to fast or eat lightly on a regular basis. Many studies highlight the importance of resting your digestive system. Ayurveda suggests fasting as a first line of treatment.
Thoroughly chew food before swallowing. Releasing the valuable tastes helps to bring satisfaction with less food. It also helps valuable enzymes in the mouth mix with your food and convert starches into sugars.
Be aware of how your emotions affect your eating, and adjust what you eat accordingly. Many people eat to mollify emotions such as frustration and loneliness. Doing so inhibits digestion, and so your body forms ama.
Head to Part III for a wealth of information on getting the most from your diet.