Monthly Archives: January 2015

Ayurveda for Effective Weight Loss

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There are many factors involved in becoming overweight and in deciding what is the most effective means of reversing that condition.

Your Appropriate Weight

Ayurveda recognizes that there are different healthy weights and builds for different people. By genetic nature, some people will have heavier builds than others. Heavy-built individuals are still healthy at weights that might be considered unhealthy for individuals with a genetically lighter constitution.

During an Ayurvedic consultation one of the first steps is to use the technique of pulse assessment to determine a person’s “body type”. This understanding of body type is important as too often the ideal body size image portrayed by the media and advertising is not natural or even healthy for a particular individual.

Root Imbalances at the Basis of Overweight Conditions

There can be many factors creating the overweight condition, and it is important to determine which ones are predominant in each individual. For example, people often assume that weight gain is created by an imbalance in Kapha. In fact, many times the underlying imbalance is that of either Vata or Pitta. It is important to identify these underlying factors in order to begin a successful program to create balance.

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Proper Diet

Dietary knowledge is a foundation of the Ayurveda approach. Knowing your body type and level of balance and imbalance helps provide an understanding of which foods to favor and avoid. In general, “avoid” foods are foods that are hard to digest, clogging to the physiology and heavy in nature. As a general rule, those looking to lose weight should favor foods that are easy to digest, help cleanse the physiology, strengthen digestion and balance metabolism.

Creating Strong Digestion

Our ability to digest food is as important as what we eat. Incompletely digested foods create toxins and impurities that are eventually absorbed, travel throughout the physiology, and localize in the tissues, disrupting their function. This process is at the basis of a wide variety of complications in the overweight condition.

Preventing Toxic Build-Up

It is one thing for extra tissue and structure to accomulate in the body. When the accumulation includes damaging toxins, the serious effects of being overweight begin. According to Ayurveda, almost every major disease condition, from arthritis to allergies to cardiovascular disease, is caused by the buildup of toxins in the tissues and by blockages in circulation.

This is why an Ayurvedic weight loss program will include purification treatments as well as dietary and herbal recommendations and life-style changes.

Panchakarma Detoxification and Rejuvenation Therapy

The most powerful treatments for removing toxins and opening the channels of circulation are the traditional detoxification treatments of Ayurveda, Panchakarma. The daily combination of Ayurveda massage, heat and internal cleansing therapies provide a deeply powerful cleansing for the entire body.

Stress Management

Many individuals experience that improper eating habits and craings are worsened by heightened stress, anxiety and mental fatigue. It is common to find that accumulated stress and mental imbalance drive the eating behavior at the basis of overweight conditions.

Learning the Transcendental Mediation technique provides a simple and effective tool to remove the mental and stress components of the overweight condition

Proper Lifestyle and Daily Routine

One of the most important factors for balancing digestion and keeping our natural cleansing processes strong is to have a lifestyle that does not disturb natural bodily rhythms. When we eat, sleep and exercise in constantly fluctuation patterns, the body loses its natural balancing cycles and can not digest, cleanse or heal itself as effectively. Therefore, regularity in our daily routine can be extremely important in maintaining a healthy, balance physiology.

For more information on consultation, panchakarma treatments or The Raj Weight Loss Program, visit The Raj Ayurveda Health Center:

www.theraj.com

Ayurveda Consultations: Know Yourself to Heal Yourself

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Ayurveda differs from conventional western medicine in that it acknowledges each individual as a unique being in nature and takes into consideration the ongoing imbalances that accumulate from day to day, season to season, year to year. It does this by starting from a unique point of reference.

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Ayurveda Pulse Assessment

According to Ayurveda, the material level of our body, including the cells, tissues and organs, is organized and directed from a deeper, more fundamental level of biological intelligence. Ayurveda pulse assessment is the tool that allows a trained expert to evaluate the state of balance and activity at this fundamental level. The focus is not on the structural state of our cells, tissues and organs, because that level is only symptomatic, controlled by an underlying level of intelligence.

Ayurveda identifies the three main agencies of biological intelligence as the three “Doshas”: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. These doshas govern, respectively, movement, metabolism and structure. These three organizing principles control all bodily functions and are responsible for maintaining health.

Disease and disorders occur when the free flow of these three principles is blocked or become imbalanced in some way. The body’s natural healing mechanisms are most effective when Vata, Pitta and Kapha are functioning normally and the channels of communication and circulation in the body are unobstructed.

How Knowing Your Body Type Affects You

Ayurvedic pulse assessment evaluates the inherent balance of Vata, Pitta, Kapha that we have by nature, and also identifies any imbalance present in their functioning.

Body Type

Each Individual has unique qualities of digestion, metabolism, elimination, body mass, bone structure, temperament, etc. This is because the levels of activity of Vata, Pitta and Kapha vary from individual to individual. The relative level of activity of the doshas in an individual creates his or her body type.

Body type is important because it determines the proper diet, exercise, and daily routine for an individual. Body type also helps predict what health disorders a person is prone to and is a powerful aid in structuring a health prevention program.

Imbalances

Health disorders are ultimately due to imbalances on the level of biological intelligence, which are disruptions in the proper functioning of Vata, Pitta and Kapha. On the basis of a person’s pulse assessment, an Ayurveda expert can determine whether there is an imbalance in Vata, Pitta and Kapha, and can recommend the proper approach, using Ayurvedic modalities. Ayurvedic modalities recommended at The Raj include diet, herbs, lifestyle changes, Panchakarma, the Transcendental Meditation technique, yoga, and Vedic technologies such as Maharishi Light Therapy with Gems, Maharishi Vedic Vibration — all designed to restore balance to the body and mind.

For more information on Ayurveda consultations at The Raj Ayurveda Health Spa visit:

 www.theraj.com

Managing Stress Affects Health, Memory, and Body Weight

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Life is full of ups and downs, and some of them can be stressful. If we are lucky, stress is a short-term event. But often situations occur that keep us stressed for days, weeks, or months. This experience of non-stop stress can cause significant damage to our health, mind and emotions. Understanding the mechanisms of our stress response can help us minimize and control the damage.

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The medical dictionary describes stress as “any physical, emotional, social, economic or other factor that requires a response to change.” The human body is brilliantly designed to react to stress in order to survive. It does so by activating the secretion of the hormone cortisol. This initiates a cascade of physiological responses.

Cortisol is meant to be a “quick fix”. It turns “off” many of our normal physiological mechanisms while it turns “on” many temporary mechanisms. It is the source of the “fight or flight” response. Ideally after an emergency situation has been resolved our metabolic functions go back to normal.  If we are under constant stress, however, the long-term secretion of cortisol can compromise our health and permanently alter our metabolic process.

Some of the documented results of long-term stress include:

Results of Long-Term Stress

1. Weakened immune response leading to heightened vulnerability to infection

2.  Memory loss: excess cortisol can overwhelm the hippocampus and actually cause atrophy. Studies of the elderly have indicated that those with elevated cortisol levels display significant memory loss resulting from hippocampus damage. Luckily the damage incurred is usually reversible.

3. An increase in abdominal fat. Researchers at Yale University found slender women who had high cortisol also had more abdominal fat. Abdominal, or visceral, fat is a key player in a variety of health problems Visceral fat has been linked to metabolic disturbances and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In women, it is also associated with breast cancer and the need for gallbladder surgery.

While we may not be able to eliminate the stress in our lives, we can take measures to give the body the relief from stress that it needs in order to stay healthy.

Stress-Busters

1. Decrease consumption of caffeine and alcohol, both of which impact cortisol levels

2. Go to bed by 10:00. Getting six hours or less over time can significantly increase cortisol levels. It takes a full 7 to 8 hours of sleep to give your body enough time to recover from the day’s stresses.

3. Practice a stress reduction technique.

The Transcendental Meditation technique (TM) has been found to lower cortisol levels. The lowering is greater in those who practice TM regularly. The longer people practice TM, the more pronounced is the effect.

TM was also found to decrease the time it took for the body return to normal functioning following stressful stimuli. This is significant because high cortisol levels can actually create a self-perpetuating loop by disrupting the delicate feedback balance that tells the brain to stop releasing cortisol.

Researchers concluded that the Transcendental Meditation technique gives the body a reprieve from experiencing stress, and as a result, the body care respond more normally to stress stimuli of short duration.

4. Schedule a week of Panchakarma treatments

Multiple studies have shown that massage therapy can lower cortisol levels, increase dopamine and serotonin (our happy, feel-good hormones), and lower excitatory hormones like norepinephrine and epinephrine.

A week of luxurious in-residence treatments can provide a much-needed break from the day-to-day pressures at work and home.

More Stress-Busting Recommendations

  • Get more spinach in your diet.  Spinach has magnesium, which help balance your body’s production of cortisol.
  • Eat more citrus fruits.  Research has shown that citrus fruits like oranges and kiwis have high content of vitamin C, which help slow the production of cortisol.
  • Make sure you’re getting enough healthy omega-3 oils in your diet.  These healthy fats not only inhibit inflammation, but also help lower cortisol levels and reduce stress.
  • Get some Holy Basil in your diet!  This tasty herb is an adaptogen herb, which is a unique class of healing plants that help reduce the production of stress related hormones.
  • Research has shown that zinc helps inhibit the production of cortisol.  Vegetarians can get zinc from cashews, pumpkin seeds, spinach and beans.
  • Good news! Dark chocolate has high levels of anti-oxidants that help decrease inflammation and slow the secretion of cortisol.  Just make sure that it’s at least 70% dark chocolate.

Arming ourselves with an understanding of the stress response and minimizing stress and its impact on our minds and bodies is key to maintaining balanced health. This is why any responsible health program must include stress reduction techniques. Learn more about Panachkarma treatments and learning the Transcendental Meditation technique at The Raj, Ayurveda Health Spa:

www.theraj.com

Is Your Honey Healthy?

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The special healing quality of honey has been acknowledged throughout history. From the Charaka Samhita, the original textbook of Ayurveda, to the Ebers Papyrus of ancient Egypt, to the writings of Hippocrates, honey has been recognized as having significant medicinal properties. Raw honey is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-fungal. It contains significant amounts of: B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, C, magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium chlorine, sulfur, and phosphate. Taken in its proper form, honey is one of nature’s most healing substances.

But honey can also have a toxic effect in the physiology. This happens when we eat honey that has been heated far above the normal temperatures of a beehive. Heating past the maximum hive temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit changes honey’s essential composition and degrades its quality. Many of the healthful organic compounds and enzymes in honey are destroyed or inhibited by heat.

The ancient Ayurvedic texts warn that during the heating (including baking or cooking) process, honey becomes hardened and difficult to digest. The toxin created by heated honey causes the shrotas, or fine channels of the physiology, to become clogged, blocking the flow of intelligence in the body. According to Ayurveda, this specific kind of ama is very difficult to remove by simple detox methods, such as sipping hot water, home oil massage or exercising. If you have a history of eating heated honey, you may want to consider Panchakarma treatments (Ayurveda detoxification treatments).

Given this knowledge, it is best to only buy raw honey (honey that is unheated and minimally processed) and to never use honey when cooking meals or baking. Check carefully breads, cereal or other other packaged foods to be sure they do not contain honey. Many health-conscious bakeries and companies now use honey, thinking it is better than sugar. Also, most commercial honey you see in supermarkets is not raw honey. Read your labels carefully to make sure the honey you purchase has not been heated or pasteurized.

If you like to add honey to tea or milk, don’t do so while it is boiling. Wait until your beverage has cooled to a temperature that is comfortable for sipping before adding honey as a sweetener.

A consultation using Ayurveda pulse assessment can help determine if you have problems with ama. For more information visit The Raj Ayurveda Health Spa:

www.theraj.com