Understanding Your Inner Climate with Ayurveda - Episode 312

Welcome to the Gladden longevity podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, where our passion is helping you to become an AJ hacker. On this show, we want to help you optimize your life energy, longevity, health and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering four questions. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? And how do we live young for a lifetime? Now here's today's episode of the Gliden Longevity Podcast.

Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gliden Longevity Podcast where we're here answering the big questions in life. How good can we be? How do we make 100 to new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? And how do we develop a 300-year-old mind? We know that Ayurvedic medicine from India has been around a long time, kind of like Chinese medicine. Those are some of the better described early forms of medicine. And we know those traditions have basically lasted for thousands of years. And today we're going to be talking with an Ayurvedic practition practitioner, Nidhi Pandya. That's N I D H I P A N D Y A. And she is someone who grew up in India, came to the us, Grew up in a Ayurvedic family, if you will, and now has seen some of the deficiencies in Western practices and is bringing her particular brand of healing and longevity into Western societies, working with both men and women. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. It's not a terrib long one, but we go into some interesting things and she has a book and a website and some other things that I think you'll find very useful. Welcome, everyone, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and today I'm joined by Nita Pandey. I hope I got your name pronounced right.

Nidhi Pandya.

Okay, Nidhi Pandya. Okay, I gotta pronounce the Y there. Great. So it's great to have you on the. On the podcast here. And it looks like we're going to be talking about some Ayurvedic insights into longevity. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of how you got to the point where you are right now.

Yeah. Thank you firstly for having me, Dr. Gladden. So I am a classically trained Ayurvedic practitioner, which means that I've studied Ayurveda, which is technically the science of life, that's the word. If you break it down, it's Ayu means life and veda means science. So people look at it as ancient Indian healing system, medicine system. It's a very relevant system. So I studied it from the ancient textbooks, which are dated about anywhere from thousand to five thousand years. All of it is written in Sanskrit. And that's how I got trained and I practiced today to bridge that gap between the great understanding of human life that those texts have and how we can stay well and live long to what the modern world is able to do and what's accessible. So that is my work. The way I got into this is I was raised in a family where my grandfather was an Ayurvedic healer.

Okay.

He lived to his, which is a lot living in a city like Mumbai. And I lived in a large joint family with 14 people. And I always joke that my, that firstly I was. It was my first language. That was my first language. I was indoctrinated into it. I learned the principles of Ayurveda not through prescription, not through instruction, but just as an everyday way of living. What you eat for lunch, what you ate for dinner, what was not being offered for you to you in certain seasons, how you looked at, you know, sleep and wake cycles, and it was just second nature. But I also used my entire household of 14 members as a laboratory and a playground.

Oh, so your best basically experimenting on your siblings, is that what you're saying?

Experiment? I was observing. I was, I was just an observer at that point. I was just shadowing.

You were, you were actually experimenting. You were. Try this, try that.

They listened to me. I could have actually gone that far. But, but they knew better. But I basically got a chance to actually see what happens, how different people respond differently to the same stimulus. And I was just always asking what makes people sick and what makes people tick. And I think that natural journey of been given this Ayurvedic wisdom, this legacy, along with the ability to actually take a, you know, understand what happens. And then when I moved to the west about 20 plus years ago, I realized out here that, oh my God, everybody's idea of health was just the fear of disease for the most part. And health always just meant the freedom that came from being well. Health was a very liberating concept, not a fearful concept. And I realized how broken the system was. I had a short stint at a. Trying to market, do marketing for a pharmaceutical company in my really early 20s. And that made me.

That must have been quite a jolt.

Oh, that was a Massive joke here in New York City. And then I, at that point, even though people could not pronounce the word, they didn't know the word. They were like, when I practice Ayurveda, they were like, are you what? Are you? Are you a what? Because they couldn't even understand I was saying a word. But I knew at that point that this is the only way that I just. It was a deep calling. It was an invitation. And here we are 20 years later, and the world has taken to Ayurveda beautifully.

So what brought you to the west in the first place? Why did you leave India?

I didn't want to leave India. I came here because I had, Yes, I had an arranged marriage. And my partner at that point lived here in the West.

Okay.

He was born and raised here. So that's how I found myself here.

Good. How's that worked out for you with the arranged marriage?

That has not actually worked out for me, but I love my life anyways.

Okay, so the marriage didn't survive, is that what you're saying?

The marriage did not survive. And I don't think, you know, since I'm saying that, I don't. I don't necessarily think that arranged marriage is the problem. And I think it's a great system when it's done in a great. Like these days, it's more like your parents introduce you to people that they think you could potentially match well with, if that happens at all.

Yeah, I guess that's what it is, right? It's not so much that you, you never get a chance to meet these people, but it's kind of like the parents are playing matchmaker for their kids. Is that kind of what it boils down to?

That is really what is left of arranged marriage in most of the urban parts of India or modern Indians living even abroad. And in fact, their children who grew up here, who tell their parents, can you please find somebody? Can you do the matchmaking? So that's your parents play matchmaker. So I don't think it is the arranged marriage bid that did not work out. It just. The whole equation just did not work out. And yeah, here I am.

Got it. So not to pry too much, but you were practicing the Ayurvedic kind of ways. Was that, was that in any way divisive in the marriage or not? So there were other things that made it not.

Not that was actually not divisive at all. In fact, I have to say, one of the things that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My ex husband took to really, really well because he realized when I met him, Dr. Gladden, he was getting sick like five, six, seven, eight times a year. And he had nasty melted, melty colds and constantly running nose and he just was sick. He felt like it was his immunity and he was doing all the modern day things. And then he saw me by contrast actually not getting sick very often and he started learning about all the things that I was doing and he started adopting them and you know, he basically stopped getting sick.

Interesting. Well, yeah, that's interesting. So tell us a little bit about your approach. I think you work predominantly with women, but obviously ayurvedic practices in medicine are for men and women. So tell us a little bit about your approach. You work, do you work individually with clients or are you more like writing books about what you do or how, how does, how does that go?

Yeah, so while I have a book, I have a book and I worked with, I have historically worked more with women, but I also work with men and I love how different the experience is and it's very interesting to me to understand that. But that being said, I'll tell you how I work. I work with people for only, you know, they have to commit to me for a minimum of four to six months.

Okay.

Is what they can. And I basically take them through a journey. But it's a more of a body plus mind approach because in today's day and age, a lot of times, you know, the so called poor wellness health habits are usually coping mechanisms that are coming from a deeper place. So I basically work with people, I take them on a journey and it's a, it's a few parts of journey and I just want to quickly go over it. We go into the identification of all the physical and the emotional patterns that a particular client has, you know, kind of developed in their body and their mind, their tendencies, etc. That has brought them to this current point. And that current point means this individual with all of these symptoms. And then I explore what I call what is their inner climate at this point. And we can explore that more if you choose to. And then we say, okay, this is your inner climate at this point. This is what brought you here, now starts and undoing and creating a new life. And for that I use every possible tool. And when I say that, it means nutrition shifts, lifestyle shifts, exercise, herbs, so herbal formulations, times, breath work. I will use music if I need to employ reading, whatever it takes. And then the goal is to educate and empower them to create a life that feels sustainable, where they basically have undone those patterns and they continue to live a life where they make naturally healing and joyful, both healing and joyful choices. It's a very whole holistic approach.

I love the approach.

And it's a reboot your existence. I said the whole idea is to reboot your system, to reset your system.

That's right, reboot the system. Yeah. We talk about rewriting the software in terms of, you know, how you go back and actually look at the things that you're living in reaction to or things that have happened to us either physically or mentally or spiritually, and then being able to identify those and heal those and then actually transcend them to where you become grateful for everything that ever happens. And that's a whole process that we work with people on as well. I'm curious kind of what your approach is there. How are you actually doing the rebooting slash reprogramming?

Yeah, so like I said, right. Like I think first it's important to identify the inner climate of the person. So I work with. My whole idea is to empower and educate and have people understand their own bodies just as well as they understand their clothing sizes or their gender preferences so that they can make those choices. So I work with this assessment of what is your inner climate. And I want to give you an example of. For example, somebody's in our climate is hot and dry. And what does that mean? If I told you outside, you would imagine hot and dry would mean a desert on the planet. But for a person who's gone hot and dry, I'm probably seeing all of these symptoms. I'll basically map their symptoms to a climate. And the symptoms I may have seen is maybe burnout, inflammation, usually sensitivity to the sun, maybe a skin rash that's kind of red and dry, maybe burning in their digestion. And then I often look at their causes and they're like. Or productive, you know, like trying to work out, work all the time, always living in the sympathetic mode of their. And they're doing caffeine and alcohol. So you buy kind of, you can see the story. There's a story and you can see that they become like this. Then I will employ, when I say I use all tools possible. Then we would start using lifestyle shifts.

So the hot would be. The hot would be like overstressed and the dry would be kind of a symptom of being overstressed. Is that correct or no?

Sometimes it's that sometimes people have gone long term, like low fat diets, like really high nutrient rich foods and just go Go, go, go, go over exercising, overworking, staying up too many nights. It could be somebody who's just like drinking every single night and just, you know, feeling very depleted. So there could be various causes for why that could happen, but usually like, for. I'm just using the example of one type of imbalance. And their, Their results could be then hot, you know, just having this hot and dry inner climate.

So how many different types are there? It sounds like there's two variables. And how many types are there for those two variables? Like hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and dry. I don't know.

Beautiful. That's exactly how it is. Right. So hot, hot and dry. There is hot and humid. Right. So this is here. The person would also have inflammation, but also puffiness. You know, could have like, growth with pus and psoriasis that has oozing liquids and maybe acid, maybe acid rather than burning and digestion kind of things. But they could also be cold and dry. And this is somebody who would just have really dry skin, have a lot of bloating, feel very cold and fragile all the time, maybe overly anxious, maybe cannot get a lot of sleep. See, and cold and dense would be somebody maybe who has excessive tissue. Everything is building in their body. So maybe obese, maybe, you know, cholesterol, high cholesterol, plaque in their arteries. They may have high sugar, they may be depressed, be stagnant, may just want to not move their bodies. Very sedentary.

Yeah.

So you're basically roughly four main types of climate. And the center point where everything, where the yin meets the yang, is warm and moist. So the place where everybody wants to be at is warm and moist, where life flows like our. Like our blood, like our urine, like our reproductive fluids, mother's milk, like the people we like warm and moist. Right. So then we kind of map out where, where they've fallen off this central point of warm and moist. And we say, how do we use foods, how do we use herbs, how do we use breath, how do we use lifestyle changes and reconfiguration of routines so the person can arrive by back to the center point of warm and moist, which is the optimum inner climate for life to thrive.

Interesting. So really it's about bringing people back into balance, sort of body, mind, spirit is what you're talking about.

Cool. The approach, Dr. Patton, is very systematic. It's very systematic, it's very logical. While when you initially hear it, it seems a little abstract, a little vague. But then when people start seeing their own symptoms and mapping Everything out. It starts to make a lot of sense.

Right. No, I can see. I'm sure it's a well thought out system. Is there actual. Well, I assume there's physical assessments that you must do as well as conversations. And then is there other testing? Do you do blood tests or imaging studies or any of that sort of thing, or is it all based on conversation and physical assessments?

No, traditionally Ayurveda used everything. Right. So questioning is one observation of the practitioner. Observing the movements, observing eyes, tongue. I will look at people's tongues if I can see pulse. Sometimes if I'm able to. Actually in the US I'm not allowed to. You know, we don't have a license as Ayurvedic practitioners, but we can still consult and coach. But otherwise in other parts of the world, I can actually like test their, you know, distension of their abdomen, check their knees, anything that I want to. And so it's basically plus, I will take all the blood reports that they can give me. So if they have blood work and like estrogen will tell us, like their hormones for women, hormone panels will always tell me that me a story of what's going on and what's happening with their climate as well. So I will take whatever they can give me, whatever imaging diagnostics, blood work they have, and plus I'll do my own.

Okay, got it. So you're not licensed to be able to order those things or do those things necessarily, but you have an understanding where you interpret that and integrate it into your system?

That is correct, yeah.

Okay, cool. And so this warm and moist, when you get people back there, is there. It takes three to four months to do that on this journey. Is there a tendency for people to kind of wander back off into, you know, one of the non warm and moist quadrants here, or do they, once you fix them, are they pretty well fixed or how does that work?

Yeah. So I think if you learn to live in this manner, you may have only slight deviations. I think once you get it, a lot of times people are doing things not knowing that the choices that they're making are actually damaging their inner ecosystem. So once learn and listen. I'm all about joy, right? So I'm not about like, let's not put food in your plate, but let's put it in a capsule instead. No, I'm all about making it as holistic as we can and bringing joy to your life. So once you understand that, you know, the concept of warm and moist and how easily you can bring it to your Foods, how easily you can bring it to your relationships, to how you plan your action and rest your productivity and repair. It becomes. It becomes a second nature. And also we've also worked on your mental patterns and coping mechanisms. You know, I mean, honestly, the person who's eating that extra bag of chips already knows, but it's, you know, that this is not going to serve my body, but it becomes a coping mechanism of sorts. Or somebody who's staying up binge watching on Netflix already knows, but he's uninspired to wake up early for his life or, you know, he's denying something else. He wants to be in somebody else's life on a, on a sitcom rather than his own. So, so we work on those mental patterns. I mean, the real goal is like not surviving but really thriving.

So you're kind of a combination of physician and psychotherapist and a nutritionist and an exercise physiologist, it seems like. Right. You're integrating all those things.

Yes. And I think here our Western world has kind of fragmented this and, you know, given it a separate role. But this. The truth is, if you give your. If you send your car, you know, for the service shop, they'll understand everything, understand the door and the oiling and the brakes and the seat. Like, everything is understood. Right. And our body really works like this big piece of machinery. Everything you do will affect all the other parts of your body. They will, like our thoughts will affect our gut and. And when working out, extra, will affect our nervous system and our gut and our sleep cycles, everything. So I think it becomes a holistic understanding of what's happening in your body ecosystem and its landscape, and then working accordingly with whatever you need to work to restore balance.

Yeah, I think that's right. We've basically sliced and diced the human up into all these different silos. And it's really a disservice to them, I think. So, yeah. It's nice that you keep all that integrated. So I imagine that the herbs that you're using, I mean, I don't know if they're like Chinese herbs exactly, but some of those things seem very esoteric. Are some of the things you're using very esoteric? Or would we recognize what they are? Or what kind of things are you using?

I think now the west is loving Ayurvedic herbs, whether it's prahmi, ashwagandha, Berberian, turmeric. So, you know, I think has idea defied some of these herbs. But I, as an Ayurvedic practitioner, Wouldn't ever used to, like, single herbs and put them on a capsule. Actually, it's so scientifically presented when we talk about herbs, we look at a whole profile of that herb and say, who can have it in what combination? What is the carrier? What is the time of the day? Is it with meals? Is it without meals? I mean, it's like such a scientific, detailed understanding of how this is done. For example, somebody. For somebody, Ashwagandha is beneficial in a jam form. It's not really like a jam jam, but it's just called jam because you have to lick it and it has to mix with your saliva for another person, it can be at bedtime. So it's like, what is the purpose that I'm trying to serve? And really, by doing, you know, by giving it that context and that protocol, you kind of give the herb the right address and the right action. So it goes to the right place with the right action. So, yeah, I. West is really, like, learning about these herbs and the clinical trials being done on a lot of these herbs, including saffron. But there's a lot more. There's like thousands and thousands of herbs. I may not have all of those in, you know, in my practice. I may use maybe 200 herbs in my practice.

Okay.

Or maybe 300 herbs in my practice. Yeah. But it's done very differently from what one would imagine in the west to be doing.

And so how do you source these herbs? Yeah, they're not in the grocery store or the pharmacy. Right. So do you get them out of India or there's special pharmacopoeias where you can get them or.

Yeah, there are actually some really, really good, you know, I mean, Banyan botanicals is one and everybody. Like, I use Banyan botanicals as an example because a lot of people know of Banyan Botanicals and they have some traditional Ayurvedic formulations, too. But there are a lot of other great online pharmacies for these herbs as well here, based out of the US Very well tested. A lot of them are USDA certified organic. I have met a lot of, you know, like, Kerala. I just. One of them that comes to my mind is Kerala Ayurveda. The names are a little traditional, and I wish they had, like, more easy to pronounce names and easy to understand.

If people go to the. People go to these websites. Sorry to interrupt you, but if people go to these websites and they're looking at an herb, will it tell them kind of what it's used for or who shouldn't take it or that kind of thing or. Because otherwise it can be quite amazed.

So yes, they will tell you what it's for, but I would still. And look, at the end of the day, anybody who's selling anything wants to do business. So I'll be honest, they give you a large amount of context. I feel like it's not as, it's not as clear as it should be. And it also can't be as clear because, you know, you want to work with the person and kind of really understand their body and type. And it's not possible for a self assessment based on information that somebody can put out there on a website. So I think it is very useful. There are certain things that almost anybody can take anybody in reasonable health. And that's one thing which is a combination of adaptogens. I mean, I'm calling them adaptogens because today, adaptogens. But back in the day, this early morning elixir jam, great for your mind, your nervous system, your immunity, for your digestion. I mean, what a great boost to the day. And anybody who has reasonable digestion and is not suffering from anything severely chronic can take it. So there are certain things like that. Right. And this is brush for anybody who's listening and wants to look at it. But otherwise I would say it's best to work with a practitioner and understand your body and what your climate is and how. And how you can support it.

Okay, great. And so how do people, how do people find you? How do they get a hold of you?

I. You can find me on my website, which is my first name, last name.com Nidhipandia.com I also post every day, you know, just little snippets on Instagram. And my Instagram is my Ayurvedic life but with underscores in between. So it's my underscore Ayurvedic underscore life. And yeah, and I have a book that's called your body already Knows. And that book is for people to reconnect back with their wisdom. Just how animals know what to eat, when to eat. The deer knows it's an herbivore. The tiger knows it's a carnivore. And nursing mammals pick Galactico. Plants and animals can recognize sulfur its soil in case they're wounded, to roll their bodies in. How did we forget? How did we forget our basic, you know, the basic nature of things around us. So the book is your guide back to that wisdom.

Got it. Okay, cool. And just for the spelling on your name It's N, I, D, H, I. And the last name is P, A, N, D, Y, A.

That is correct.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay, good. Well, beautiful. Well, it's interesting, the work that you're doing. Do you work with other practitioners or do you work just by yourself, or how does that go?

I do have a practitioner's part, actually, to have a coach and a practitioner as a part of my team. They just support us. And then sometimes people will refer their patients and clients out to me. That's how I work with a network. But I also, in my own team, I have a couple of people who can support with my clients.

Got it. Okay, beautiful. Well, great.

And I know we didn't get to it, Dr. Gladden, but I definitely want to say here to anybody who's listening, that Ayurveda is one of the first sciences to talk about longevity, and it has volumes and volumes of. Of literature on. On longevity and longevity, virility, fertility, which. It all connects very deeply. So it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, beautiful. All right, well, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Leyden.

Appreciate it.

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