Why Extreme Diets Are Destroying Your Gut Microbiome in Menopause (Ayurvedic Solutions)

I was talking with a fellow practitioner over the weekend and we were talking about, you know, a lot of women will have a bunch of things going on, like you said, memory, fatigue, you know, you know, joint pain, all this other stuff. And I said, but you know what's really interesting is almost always there is a secondary conversation about the other insidious things that happen in midlife, which is often weight gain around the middle and you know, sort of the middle aged SP spread, for lack of a better word. And the frustration of all the tools I used to use, which again like you said, is like, oh, I'm going to cut my carbs, I'm going to cut this, I'm going to cut that, I'm going to do all these things to sort of double down, I'm going to work out more. Doesn't really work. And when you look at Ayurveda and you look at the way the body is looked at by individual sort of how you're wired and then the seasons of life, we're literally doing all the.

Wrong things, everything wrong, everything.

And I want you to share that because you have a way of really bringing this home and you go through it heavily in your book, which is amazing, but I want you to talk specifically about that for sure.

So in my book the Inflammation Code, I talk about something called elemental design. And elemental design is this ancient Ayurvedic principle that we all have different constitutions. We're made up of primarily air, fire or water. And so those elements in Ayurveda are called vata, pitta and kapha. And so if you take my quiz on elemental design, it's on my website@drshivani.com, you'll come to know quickly what is your primary. And knowing your primary constitution from birth is really important because then you understand how to really customize your lifestyle practices to yourself. So I'm a lot of fire, I'm the middle one, bita. So I really have to manage slow sleeping well, how I eat, when I eat, cooling my jets. So I'm a nice, kind, balanced human being. And if you're more earth, if you're more kapha, then you need to manage your energy and exercise first thing in the morning and move your metabolism, move your energy, eating easy to digest food. So we have a lot of customization for all the different constitutions. What's interesting to me is that first one, vata, which is air and ethereum, that season called vata. And that tendency of elements called vata applies through perimenopause and menopause. And so it's so enlightening when you understand how to balance vata because then you understand how to balance yourself through 40 plus in terms of your age as well. And so a vata person is typically thin and wiry, typically taller or shorter than anyone in their demographic. But here's what it gets, where it gets interesting. This is someone who's always a busybody, always on the move, always, always in motion. They tend to run dry. So vata energy is air and ether. This is like a ceiling fan that never stops moving. It could be a beautiful breeze when it's balanced. Could also be a tornado. So think about. Air can move in a lot of ways. So it might be that you're in a season where you're not actually as in control because your air element within you of movement is kind of out of sync with where you need to be. And so an air person, which is an avata person, tends to have dryness, dry skin, dry hair, dry nails. So talk about vaginal dryness. And menopause makes total sense because it's that dryness of air. Then we talk about mind. They are a million miles a minute. Sometimes they can't stop. So it can lead to insomnia, it can lead to anxiety. And here in menopause, we talk so much about my sleep is disrupted. I have a baseline anxiety. I don't know where it came from. I have this overwhelm, overwhelm where I'm feeling a lack of resilience. So every time I hear a menopause symptom now, I think, okay, actually we're just vata deranged, as we call it, or vata imbalanced. And if we all worked towards balancing that vata element that exists in all of us, then all of a sudden we can be more grounded. And so the homework that I give to my vata clients is, is take the time to have three square meals a day with healthy fat. That's the first homework. And it's interesting because we're in a moment where we're talking about intermittent fasting and all the guys and biohackers are like one meal a day. And I'm like, no, no, you are defying every ancient principle. I hear you. That you guys function differently and your cycles are the same every single day. We're women, we're different. We can't self torture in the ways that modern wellness, modern longevity and modern biohacking are teaching. Ancient wisdom says, honor thyself, love thyself, the goal is body, mind and spirit in alignment. And so whenever you feel out of alignment, pause and think about what are you doing that's causing such disalignment within you? Is it that you're forcing a certain type of meal plan down your own throat that's too harsh. Is that you're not honoring sleep and circadian rhythm. We as women are cyclical beings. We're meant to live in cycle with the moon, with the sun, with Mother Earth. And a lot of what we're doing right now is breaking all those rules because we're trying to handle so much. And we're in a vata season of our life now. And the body's like, I'm sorry, I can't let you do 200 miles an hour with HIIT training with one meal a day and not leave you anxious, stressed out and depleted. And so that's my message for everyone, is let's unpack vata as an understanding of a season of life and bring in such wholesome nourishment and grounding for ourselves. So that's how we show up.