Heal Hormones Naturally, Actionable Ayurveda with Salila#3

Welcome to Actionable Ayurveda with Salila, your go-to podcast for diving deep into the timeless wisdom of Ayurveda. I am Salila Sukumaran, your host and guide on this transformative journey. With a lineage rooted in Ayurvedic practices, I am here to empower you to thrive and flourish through the ancient principles of Ayurveda. Good morning, everybody. Namaste. Good to see all of you. Thank you for joining me. Today we are going to talk about hormonal imbalance, and we're going to start with understanding what hormones are, then what is the Ayurvedic understanding of hormones, what does Ayurveda believe, where do hormonal imbalances start from. Almost every chronic disease that we have in the body has an origin in hormonal imbalance. And then we will go on to understanding what are some tips and strategies we can do, some Ayurvedic ways of healing that is going to help with relieving any kind of hormonal imbalance. And I'm going to share an Ayurvedic way of healing that will heal almost 80% of all hormonal imbalances, provided with something that you've had maybe for a year or so, and it's not so extensive. It's not affected multiple organs. So try this even if you're super healthy and here only because you are curious to know more about hormones or just starting to educate yourself about this. Try the tip that I ask you to do and see if it makes a huge difference to how healthy you feel. So we all could do With a little bit of a hormonal tune-up, and I'll take questions at the end. And buckle up, and we're going to have an interesting, wonderful session. So what are hormones? Hormones are chemical messengers. They're usually called as chemical messengers because they are what help our body function properly. Everything in this body, if there is an activity, there is a hormone that's involved in it. Without hormones, nothing would get happened. If when a child moves from puberty to adulthood, the body requires very little hormones to create that huge change, right? That change of transitioning from puberty to adulthood is one of the most transformational stages of the physical body. And if you look at how much hormones is required to do that change, And if we compare it to something, it's the size of a teaspoon of hormones in a swimming pool of bodily fluids. So that's the amount of hormones that is required that catalyzes this transformation of a young person from puberty to adulthood. And nowadays we've been living in such a stressed environment. We're living this modern lifestyle. 1 out of every 2 women has hormonal imbalance. So everybody, if you are women, half this room here right now has hormonal imbalance. That's how all pervasive it is. So let's talk about classifying hormones just for us to understand what are these hormones. So there are some hormones that function for our metabolic activities. Ghrelin, which is like all the things that maintain our temperature, that maintain our energy, that convert our food, that give us hunger. There's a hormone that's very important called ghrelin. So you can remember it by hunger, hunger, hungry, ghrelin. So ghrelin is responsible for creating hunger in the body. Leptin, lipids. So from the word lipids, you can understand that leptin is all about fat metabolism. Then the thyroid hormones, T3, T4, these are all for managing our energy, managing our metabolism. Then there's insulin, which is one of the most important hormones, which helps carry these energy currency, sugar molecules, from our diet, from our food, the first extract of our nutritive essence, either to store it in the liver or takes it to the cells, the muscles, to help our muscles function, help us get active, right? And then we have hundreds of hormones in our body, right? We can then classify them as sex hormones or stress hormones. Hormones like cortisol and, you know, the adrenaline hormone, which helps us to manage during stressful situations. Helps to bring more energy into the body, helps to reduce inflammation. So if there was one thing I would like to change, that's the way how we look at our stress hormones. We say we are stressed, therefore there's cortisol, and therefore there's adrenaline. Adrenaline is getting my heart pumping, and you know, it's getting me ready to run. Cortisol is managing my energy. It is create, you know, opening up my channels, healing my inflammation. Since I've been studying Ayurveda and I've been studying health, I have such a respect for these two hormones because usually these hormones get a bad rap. They're usually called the bad hormones, but these are really the most healing hormones. So I have this eye inflammation that flares up whenever I come back to America and I get exposed to some chemical. I don't know what it is. I have to do steroids. My Ayurvedic medicines do not work anymore. Because the ones that I have, they're not as effective because they've been sitting in the fridge for a year or two. So I have to use steroids. Steroid is what? It is a hormone. It is a chemical derivative of a hormone. And only when I use that does my eye get healed. But if I was in India, I was, I was in Kerala, I could totally use an Ayurvedic medicine and it would get better. But I don't keep a stash of Ayurvedic medicines at home constantly. And even if I do, they expire after a year, so they are of no use. So hormones, so the steroids, the stress hormones are actually healing hormones. They are the most healing hormones. So we think of like oxytocin and dopamine, good hormones, but bad hormones, corticosteroids, cortisol, adrenaline, these are all bad hormones. So whenever you are stressed, from now on, think that My body is trying to heal me from this stress. My body is giving— my body's stress response is a healing response. Just like we say, in this universe, everything is based on love. In our body too, everything is based on love. When we fall sick, it is actually an act of supreme love towards preserving the body. It is an act of maintaining the body. So next time you are sick and horizontal and flat on your bed, if we can all just take a moment and just say, "I love you, body. Thank you for saving me from myself. Thank you for putting me horizontal so that I could stop all my activities so that you could do the supreme work of preserving us so we could both live together." Thank you. Just that thank you would bring us back into a state of healing. It would take that mental stress and that energy we put on, like, oh gosh, why am I here when there is so much work to do? Why am I not up and doing all that work? Because the body had no other goal but to lay us flat on the bed, which is why that happened. And we're going to talk about this subject again because Studying the body, how a fever works, is how I have arrived at the conclusion of how to heal our hormones. So I'm excited to share that with you. Then there's the sex hormones, hormones like testosterone and progesterone and estrogen and luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, hormones which help mature our sexual organs, help them function normally, and then which helps with our daily cycles for men, testosterone peaking in the morning at 9, and for us women, our monthly cycles, and then moving into perimenopause and menopause. So these are the hormones, the chemical messengers that help keep our body healthy. There is not a single function that they do not perform. Hormones are all either made up of proteins, amino acids, or they're all made up of lipids. Some of them are made up of lipids. So we have to have good fats. We have to have good fats like ghee, sesame oil, or any fat, any oil that you have grown up, that is produced in your region, that is cold-pressed, that has all its enzymes, intact so that it's healthy and full of prana and vitality. We have to have at least 5 teaspoons of oils in a day. We have to have our proteins, at least 1 to 2 cups of lentils, um, legumes, seeds, nuts. We should have no more than a handful, but these are all good sources of protein. Protein is there in everything, Every living being has protein. Protein is there in rice, protein is there in green leaves, in vegetables. It's just that the quantity is slightly lower. The highest sources of protein are naturally animal fat, animal flesh, non-vegetarian food, eggs. However, lentils, legumes, tofu, beans, these are all excellent sources of protein as well. So when Ayurveda looks at hormonal imbalance, Ayurveda of course does not have a word called hormone, right? Because Ayurveda originated during prehistoric times, 5,000 years ago. Ayurveda itself says that it's from at least 3 million years ago, right? So we know that they did not have the vocabulary to understand these chemical changes in the body, which are on a very microscopic level. Remember the analogy of the swimming pool? And the teaspoon, right? How could they understand that these little messenger catalysts and enzymes, these are the ones that are doing all these activities in the body? However, they understood that chronic disease, which is all usually based because of hormonal imbalance, starts because of several factors, and we're going to touch upon a few of them today because I I cannot go through everything today in the, you know, 30-45 minutes that we are together because I need to also conserve time for question and answers. So one major reason is our diet, and diet is— some of the reasons they say are 'Aati Matra.' Aati Matra meaning having too much food. So think of how we graze throughout the day. Think of how we overeat because we have company. Or we overeat because we have been told by some fitness trainer that you need to have proteins. Your body has X amount of weight and a percentage of that is protein. So therefore you must have 75 grams of protein. So therefore eat these 3 cups of tofu today, right? And then many of you who do that come to me and say, I cannot eat it. I gag, I choke, I literally throw up afterwards. So forcing yourself to eat, overeat any food group, or even just any food because you're loving what you're eating, or because there's guests around, not a good idea. Grazing on food. Akhala. Akhala meaning eating food at the wrong time. So let's say we are not hungry. We are a Vata body type. Our hunger is variable. Sometimes we get hungry, sometimes we don't get hungry. Now, if I'm going to eat a meal irrespective and eat it just because it is time to eat my meal, then I am doing Akala Bhujana. I am up at night, I am bored, I can't sleep, I'm gonna go eat something. Akala Bhujana. There's only one time where Ayurveda approves of eating at night, that is after making love, because You have spent energy, we can have something light, we can have something like a milk or a fruit, we can replenish ourselves. Sheera, kheer, khichdi, this is all good, good stuff to have at night when, if you've made love. But other than that, better not to eat at times where it's not good. Eating when the sun isn't in the sky. Eating when we've stayed indoors and we have not exposed our body to the sun, we have not charged our little battery with the giant battery out there in the sky. When we charge our batteries, that's when ghrelin and leptin are working optimally, and we get hungry at the right time. So notice this, anytime you're not feeling hungry, just go out for a walk in the sun and come back. You'll start feeling hungry because the sun will help metabolize whatever that ama was in our capillaries that was holding our body from feeling hungry. It'll kickstart our metabolism. So when we are hungry, that's when we eat. And if we are living a proper life, we are waking up in Brahma muhurta, eating on time. We are going out in the sun on time, right in the morning or in the evening. Then our hunger will come at the right time as well, which will mean that our body is balanced. If we feel hungry at approximately the same time every day, we can trust that our body is in balance. Ahitha bhujana. Ahitha bhujana meaning aahitha. Aah meaning not, hitha meaning good. What is ahitha bhujana? Let's say you are a vata body type and you were eating foods which are cold, raw, dry, or stale. Remember the acronym we learned the first day we were together? CRDS. I love acronyms and mnemonics because it helps me remember, and I love to share them with you because it'll help you remember as well. So if you're a Vata body type, you're skinny, you do not gain weight, you are prone to anxiety, your bones have, you know, your bones kind of crack, you speak fast, your eyes blink too much, you think a lot, then you are pretty much a Vata body type. And if you're a Vata body type, you must stay away from cold foods. Cold foods would also be cold salads, foods that are not warmed up, raw foods, again salads, sushi, dry foods, popcorn, crackers, dry bread, stale food, food which has stayed on for a day or more. If we eat these kind of foods, naturally the Vata is going to increase. So that would be an Ahitha Bhujana for a Vata body type. A Pitta body type, Ahitha Bhujana would be something like a spicy, oily, sour, salty, and in that sour would be fermented as well. So SOS is the mnemonic for Pitta body types. Pitta body types have to reduce this in case they are imbalanced. Kapha body types, what is an ahitha bhujana? Dairy, nuts, sweet, dense foods. DNS. So dairy, nuts, and sweets are an ahitha bhujana for an imbalanced Kapha body type. Ati snigdha bhujana. Ati snigdha. Snigdha means Oily. Aati means too much. When we eat food that is deep fried or really rich in oils, like even sesame, if your Pitta is imbalanced and you eat a lot of sesame, I was eating a lot of sesame ladoos yesterday because I was craving for them. So if my Pitta was imbalanced and I was eating sesame ladoos, for sure I'm going to feel even more imbalanced and I'm going to have acid reflux. So the fault is not in the sesame, the fault is in my imbalance. Rittau Anaharam. Rittau Anaharam means foods that are eaten outside of the season where they're supposed to be eaten. So let's say I'm here in America and somebody flows down mangoes from Mexico or India during the wrong time of the year, and I'm like craving for mangoes and I have them. That is a rittau anaharam. We have to eat seasonally, we have to eat locally, which will maintain our health. Because any place we come and we stay, and a lot of us are expats here, so wherever we travel to, once we've acclimatized to that region, start incorporating regional foods, regional produce into our daily diet. Cook it the way you know, cook it with spices, cook it with your special masalas, and your body will digest them far better than something that has been flown down from another part of the world. Shroto dushti. This is one of the biggest reasons. Shroto dushti means our capillaries are dushti, dushta. They have been compromised. There's gunk in there, gunk in our trunk, right? So we are capillaries. How do they get shroto dushti? When we eat all kinds of food that we talked about, the ati madra, the akala, the ahita, the ati snigdha, the rita u anaharam, when we are having foods like this, there is incomplete digestion. We are not able to metabolize all that food and part particles of that food remain in our capillaries as plaque, as blockages, and this causes disruption. And when this disruption happens, we have hormonal imbalance. Then some of the other reasons are 'Ati Chinta,' meaning we worry too much. When we worry too much, then we will— we are definitely going to have hormonal imbalance. So these are stress relief, right? Modern science also talks about this. If you're stressed, naturally your body is going to get affected because you are producing too much of that cortisol, that adrenaline. And then our body is like, doesn't have any more reserves left and it's just running on empty. Vegar Nigraha, this is a big one for, especially for women, because a lot of our issues start with blocking our vayus, the energy of wind in our body. So we have this major vayu called as Apana Vayu. Apana Vayu is that which helps our peristalsis, our periods, our pee, our poop. So everything starts with a P, so you can remember this. Apana Vayu affects all these movements, the peristalsis, the peeing, the pooping, the periods. All this is affected by Apana Vayu. So if there is any irregularity of this, definitely Apana Vayu is affected. Whenever we have the urge to go to the bathroom, we should never stop ourselves. There are about 13 Vegas. Or 13 natural urges in the body, including release of semen, including sneezing, crying, hunger, thirst. There are about 13 urges like this. Of this, the urges that are related to our lower body, which is the period, which is the poop, which is the, the peeing and the peristalsis, the bowel movement. When we have that, when it comes up, We should not hold it back because when we hold it back, that energy gets weaker. There is stress on the body and holding our poop, prolonging our period, taking some pills or something to prolong our periods. These are all ways we create disease in our body. We are, we are messing up with that natural rhythm. When that rhythm arises, we are saying, no, no, no, I'm not ready. Go back, go back. And then stress in the body. That will also create hormonal imbalance. Viruksha annam. Viruksha annam is dry foods, any foods that will increase Vata. So because Vata is something, the energy that creates 80% of diseases in our body, when we have viruksha annam, Food which is ruksha, drying up, again Vata-provoking foods. So what was the mnemonic? C-R-D-S. Cold, raw, dry, stale. All these foods are also going to create hormonal imbalance. Especially think of a situation like a perimenopause, a menopause, where Vata is very high, where Pitta is very high. If we are doing, overdoing dry, cold, raw, and stale, and a lot of lovely women among us start to go on like raw diet, start to go on like kale salads during this time because we are trying to be healthy. We want to get more vegetables in, so let me go on a kale salad diet. It backfires. It accelerates aging. It accelerates the perimenopausal symptoms. Then some other reasons are Guru foods, which is guru meaning heavy, not the guru as in teacher, but guru meaning heavy. Sitta, meaning again cold. So again and again, there, there are some other reasons as well, but these are some of the major reasons where we start to develop hormonal imbalances. So what are some ways to heal our hormones? So now we know that our channels are blocked, We've been eating cold foods, we've been eating foods, too much food at the wrong time, and we are eating food that doesn't work for our body. We are eating too oily foods, cold foods, and we are worrying too much. So just by looking at the nidana, the root causes, we can already think of the healing processes. Like, how can I heal myself? First of all, let me regulate my diet, have something that is warm, that is cooked well, and then my body is going to heal. Right. Have some— find ways to reduce stress. Yoga, meditation, going for a walk, being in nature, going to the ocean side so that I'm getting all those negative ions which are going to help reduce the, you know, all the free radicals in my body are going to get worked off, are going to get released, are going to get healed. Right. How do we take care of something called as the shroto dushti? Shroto dushti was, what was that? That was the capillaries getting blocked. How do we get rid of that? For that, we drink something like the gaddbesti. We drink a hot liquid beverage, herbal tea. Gaddbesti is a good one because it's made with black cumin, aniseed, coriander, and a large pinch of karam. About half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of black cumin, coriander, aniseed, and a big pinch of karam popped in a saucepan. Just put it into a saucepan on a nice high flame. It'll start popping. As soon as it starts popping, add about a liter or two of water. Let it come to a good boil, about 3 to 5 minutes of boiling, and all the chlorine and stuff in your water will get evaporated, if at all your municipalities are doing anything funny with your water. Okay, 5 to 10 minutes of boiling will help release and sediment anything that might be dodgy in there. That, if you sip on that warm gut bestie throughout the day, whenever you are thirsty, then it is going to help open up those channels. Because why? Deepana, pachana qualities of the spices that we are having. What is deepana? It helps to rekindle the fire, the Agni in the body. What is pachana? Pachana is it helps to digest the food that is already present in the body. So it's opening up the channels, it is digesting the food. So there's some other good spices that are going to have this Deepana Vapachana quality. That is Trikatu. Trikatu is a mixture of dry ginger, pepper, and pippali. It's one of my favorites for helping the body open up the channels and digest. Cinnamon, turmeric, dry ginger in itself. So have these seeds in your spices, in your pantry cabinet, your pantry, your kitchen cabinet, your kitchen drawer. And in the morning when you wake up, just tune into your body and ask yourself, what is it that my body feels like having today? And your body will give you the right cue. Dill seeds is something that's amazing for our feminine health, our hormonal imbalance. So add all this to your diet on a daily basis. Swap out water with these healing spice herbal water tea. Um, try it out. And let me know. I think majority of you like my Gut Bestie, and all of you send me messages about how wonderful the Gut Bestie is. So try it out. Now, there is another specific way of healing hormones that I have figured out based on observing the body when the body goes through fever and observing my own body when, uh, while it's been going through perimenopause. So what happens when a body goes through fever according to Ayurveda? The digestive processes, the metabolism slows down. There is a lot of shroto dushti, all the capillaries start to get blocked, stuff starts to get accumulated in our capillaries. That's why we get that heavy feeling before we get a major fever, right? And then what happens? The body gets us so tired and fatigued, we have to rest in bed. And then the body starts to increase its temperature. Why is the body increasing the temperature? It's almost trying to incinerate those stuck things in the capillaries. It's trying to burn them out. Now, once these stuck ama is burnt in the body, what happens? The body will give a nice big flush of sweating. When this sweat comes out, after this sweating, if you remember any time when you had a fever, when you were maybe a child, After the sweating, we feel so good in the body. You feel so light in the body, right? All that heaviness from the fever immediately goes away. During perimenopause, we have similar things happening in the body because of massive hormonal imbalance. If we drew a graph for the way estrogen grows up and down during perimenopause, it's crazy. It's like amazingly huge spectacularly huge spikes and drops several times during the day. So because of that, what happens? Our Agni is manda, our metabolism slows down, we feel heavy, we feel fatigued, and then we suddenly have a hot flash because the body has to clear all this metabolic deposits that are sitting in our capillaries. And then we have a sweating, right? And so many of us go through this. Embarrassing situation. We are in a meeting and suddenly we have a hot flash and we are sweating like crazy. Or it's a night, we are having a hot flash and then we wake up covered in sweat. What is the body trying to do? The body is trying to heal, right? We talked about it, this in the beginning, that all of the body's responses are healing responses. So from this, I figured out that if we can sweat every day, We can create increased heat in the body through exercise, through vigorous exercise, and then go sweat, like sit in a sauna or buy a sauna blanket and just use that sauna blanket once every day, at least for 10 minutes, and do this after applying a nourishing oil on our body, like an oil Abhyangam. If we do this for 14 days, we don't even have to worry about going to a physician about our hormonal imbalance. If this was your hormonal imbalance, your whatever situation you were going on in your body was less than a year old, try this out for 14 days before you do anything else. Of course, I do not discourage anyone from going to a practitioner or a doctor, but we are all self-healers. We all like to do DIY. We all like to feel self-empowered. This is not going to hurt us while we are waiting for the appointments and the stuff like that. Try doing this and report back to me and let us know in the WhatsApp community chat how things are going for you, whether this was effective for you, whether this worked for you. So hopefully today we are going to come out of this session and have a better understanding of how How to heal our hormonal balance. We have to improve our Agni, we have to watch out for our diet, we have to clear our blocked channels, we have to eat freshly cooked food. Not to add any more stress to your plate than you already have, but try and do your best, whatever you can do within your situation. I know all of you come from different backgrounds, different situations in life. Some of you are moms, and if you have young kids, I completely understand. If you are retired and taking care of grandkids, I completely understand your situation. But if you have time on your hands, then the best gift you can give yourself is a freshly cooked meal every day. The new rich is not how many Lamborghinis you have in your garage. It's whether you have a freshly cooked, nourishing food full of the goodness of local produce sitting on your dinner table. Ducts, the new ridge. Sleep well, because if you're not going to give yourself that 6 to 8 hours of sleep, and if you're not going to be asleep between 10:30 to 3 in the morning when the liver is metabolizing, your hormones are definitely going to go out of balance, right? My hormones are going to go out of balance if I'm going to do that. And when we wake up and we have that extreme dryness, and you're like, ah, what did I do? Like, Why did I not drink enough water? And we wake up and our skin is dry, our face is dry, you know, our hair is looking all frazzled. What does that mean? Our liver was taxed, our kidneys were taxed. And we've got to add adequate movement during our day, especially during times when we are feeling sluggish and fatigued. That's the time when we need to do our vinyasas and our hot yoga and our running and, you know, going out and just doing some vigorous jumping jacks. I love jumping jacks and they take up no time. They take up no space. I can do them anywhere. I just go out in the sun and do like 100 jumping jacks and then I'm happy. And then I come back and I get back on my calls. So jumping jacks. All right, my dears, let's go to the chat. How would Ayurveda classify matcha? Would it be similar to coffee and tea? Acidic, high Pitta. So I do not think that coffee and tea are the devils they are portrayed to. A lot of Ayurveda practitioners begin with eliminating coffee, tea, matcha, any kind of caffeine, any kind of mild stimulant from our daily diet because these are slightly Vata provoking. The green tea is drying. Coffee can be drying. Coffee is Pitta provoking as well. These are mildly— chai is slightly Pitta provoking as well, but because we add sugar to it, because we add cream to it, we mitigate some of those Pitta provoking qualities. Unless you were having like a shot of pure, really heavy, I don't even know what to call it, like really like an espresso shot or something. I don't drink coffee. So I'm not familiar with the coffee lingo. Matcha is a mild green tea. Matcha is very healthy as long as you cook it in the traditional manner, which is you have it activated in boiling water. But if you have any arthritic issues, remember that matcha is green tea, so matcha is going to be far more drying than black tea. So if you have arthritic issues, you have joint pains, then matcha is not a good idea unless you mix it with something more unctuous like milk, cream, sugar. If you have arthritic issues, it's better to go easy on this and just figure out what happens in your body when you drink this. Black tea is a lot better for somebody who's arthritic. Is tofu natural to Indian diet? Tofu is not natural to Indian diet. However, if your body likes tofu because you grew up on tofu, because many of you are expats or second generation and your parents cook tofu for you, then tofu is fine. So we eat what works for our body. I grew up in the north of India eating northern foods. My body loves northern foods even though I am a southern person from India. When I am sick, I feel nostalgic for Northern foods. So my body has figured a way to be good with that. But when I go back to Kerala and I eat the kind of foods my grandparents eat, like there are very typical foods in Kerala which is made from tapioca, like we like mashes, we like root mashes. That kind of food I really love. My body just loves it. Congees, my body loves congees. So I do great on these kind of foods. Not so good on like the regular foods my parents ate, like puttu and appam and all that. Sometimes my body doesn't like them. So figure this out for yourself. You know, you lived several decades long by now. I hope none of you is under 13 years, but you know, you have a repository of data, from your own experience of the foods that work for you and do not work for you. Think of all the times where you ate a meal and you were like, "Mmm, I love this," and then your body was also feeling that way. There was no heaviness, there was no pain, there was no nausea. Next day, your poop was great. You went on time. It wasn't too sticky. It was banana-shaped. That's a great meal. Stick to those meals. I like to have tofu occasionally. But that's me. You have to figure out your frequency. I like to have it warmed up with spices. So I like to use my Korean spices, my Chinese spices, gochugaru, and, you know, sesame oil and soy and all that on that, and lots of herbs, green onions. I like it that way. Ginger, sometimes with Balinese spices, ginger, galangal, chilies, and garlic. It works for my body that way, but I can't have tofu all the time. I've got to have it once a week maybe. And while I speak this, there's a block of tofu in my fridge waiting for me because it's been so cold outside, I've not been feeling like it. So when, when it's warm outside, I like tofu better. So Niharika, figure that out for yourself please and share with us in the web— in our WhatsApp group how you like it, when you feel like eating it. Cervical and pre-cancer cells is understood as HPV virus. Can it be caused by imbalance of certain hormones or premenopausal change of hormones? Hmm, Shalini, I'm sorry, dear, I do not know the answer to this one. I am not a physician and I have not studied cancer or precancer cells. I work with cancer patients, but I have not studied this particular area, so I'm afraid I will not be able to speak on this in an intelligent manner, but we can all take a guess. If hormones are at the basis of all activity in the body and all activities gone wrong in the body and all the, all the blockages in the body, then definitely if I look at it from an Ayurvedic lens, the blockage which creates a proliferation of cells, definitely Vata, definitely there's a hand of hormonal imbalance because it's going from shroto, rota, shroto, dushti. Deepika is asking us, I am a pitta-vata body type and every time I eat anything I feel plaque on my teeth and white coating on tongue which say as kapha imbalance. How to correct it? So Deepika, if we are doing our diet wrong, various parts of the body will have a different reaction depending on how our body is. So maybe I ate a high Pitta diet, but there could be a Kapha imbalance in some part of my body. It's totally possible that I ate a high Pitta diet, I got acid reflux, and then my nose was completely blocked, and then I got a cold. So that's totally possible. I ate a high Kapha diet, oily, really oily, dense diet, lots of sweets. I went out and just went to town with it. And then the next day I woke up and I was so dry in my skin. Totally possible, Vata reaction to a Kapha food, right? Because my body was trying to flush all that down. I did not drink enough water. My body was trying to get all that sticky, oily, sugary foods. My liver was working overtime. And I woke up and my skin had a Vata reaction. So it's totally possible because even though we have a certain body type, the Vata, Pitta, Kapha energy of each part of our body can be at a different level. The food we eat may have the Vata, Pitta, Kapha energy at a different level. The environment we are in may have a Vata, Pitta, Kapha at a different level. Fall is a high Pitta season. Summer is a high Vata season. Spring right now here is a high Kapha season. So there's all these dials that kind of act into influence how our body shows up on a daily basis. So it's not easy. The basic Ayurveda to understand and to work with our bodies is easy, but to become a proficient practitioner and to think of all all this spectrum of factors that influence a body, that is an art. And we never stop being students. So the best way, Deepika, to answer your question is to make sure that you're not doing any of the things we talked about today, which is Atimatra, Akala, Ahitha, Atisniktha, Vritto Anaharam. All that is going to cause Shrota Dushti. Blockages in your capillaries. And that plaque is a deposition. It is a shrutu dushti. Neha Trivedi is saying green coriander or seeds. Coriander seeds is what we use. We use seeds for our herbal waters. Shalini is saying, can we drink it in hot weather? In hot weather, we switch it up. During transitions, we increase the amount of carom seeds, ajwain, and if it is hot, then we reduce the quantity of black cumin to maybe a pinch or maybe out of the recipe. Carom, we can reduce it further or take out of the recipe. And we can also move into something which we know is cooler, which is fennel, which is yasthi madhu, which is licorice, What is that root? Shringavera. No, not Shringavera. Sorry, I'm not able to quickly recall. Couscous. Couscous is a root. Vetiver. That's the one. We can have that in hot weather. That's excellent. You can add a pinch of camphor in your drinks. Edible camphor, not the camphor we use for prayers, which is chemical camphor. Edible proper camphor produced from a tree. Is there a written recipe for gut bestie? I'll share it in the webinar chat. Sorry, the WhatsApp chat. Shalini is saying, I don't have hot flashes, just slightly and very rare. What do you say on it? Well, every time, Shalini, the hot flash comes, there is Shirodhushthi. The capillaries are blocked, metabolism is low, there is fatigue, there is a higher kapha in the body. So the body is now trying to make you more active. So it has to use the hot flush to burn off all the ama stuck in your capillaries, and then it has to flush that away with sweat. So occasionally when you're having, that's good. That means regularly, majority of the time, you're managing yourself very well. So that's great. Bhavya is asking, is it advised to not have dinner post sunset then? No, there is no such rule in Ayurveda. Ayurveda says that after sunset, within the first prahara, at least an hour or two before sleeping, have your dinner. Ayurveda does not have these strict rules because probably the acharyas knew that the sunset in Delhi is not the sunset in Norway or in Sweden. Right? So either do not eat during the transition time of sunset, you can eat before, or you can eat in the next prahara, the 3-hour period after. And look at your downtime. When am I going to go to sleep? If you're going to go to sleep at 10:30, dinner should be done by 8:30 latest, depending on how sick you are. Sometimes I'm on calls and I'm not going— and I eat a late dinner because I just didn't have the time. So I make sure that I am up for an hour before I go to sleep, because that's the minimum I should do. And because I take care of my health in all the different ways, and I go to India every year and do my panchakarma, I am a little spoiled. But if you're not doing that on a daily basis and doing your yearly maintenance of health, then yes, you have to be stricter about that 2-hour window. Does that help? Niti is saying, I am a Vata prakriti. Is it safe to have raw vegetable juice like beetroot, carrot, and ABC juice? Have a little bit in a juice glass, not that giant big glasses, not directly from the mixer jar. Have a small glass with a meal so that it metabolizes because of the salt in the meal, the spices in the meal, and all that. Don't have it raw in the morning, first thing in the morning, or even if you make enough, just spread it throughout the day. So you're having a little bit of juice with your meals. What is the sequence of oil, exercise, sauna blanket, or exercise, oil, sauna blanket? The sequence always in Ayurveda is oiling, exercising, then sauna. Because when we oil our body, our body gets soft, our capillaries start to open up, our nerves start to relax. We exercise to strengthen all of it and loosen it up even further, and then we, um, do Shvedana to eliminate any of the blockages in our channels, to open up our body, to create hunger. Usually when we do this, we get really hungry afterwards, in about 15-20 minutes later. So have a good nice meal ready for yourself. Thank you so much, Aniruddhan. Yes, Tinker loves to be with me whenever I'm speaking to anybody here at my laptop. Neha is saying, I am 36 years female, suffering from hormonal acne and pigmentation, so usually around our chin here. I also got them when I was in India because I was traveling around like crazy and God knows what I ate. Before periods, my breast gets heavy and feels so gastric and acidity. Yes, so this is because of the hormones, you know, which, which are kind of acting— the luteinizing hormone, the follicle stimulating hormone. Um, the best thing you can do at this time is to do light exercise, do the Svedana. Svedana is the sweating session, and eat Sensibly, on time, light meals, soupy dinners, sleep on time, give your body lots of rest. 7 days before your period, start taking care of your body and you will have less and less of these episodes. Anuradha is saying, first grade fatty liver is due to hormones. I am perimenopausal, can you guide me for this? Absolutely, Anuradha, get on my calendar. I Encourage all of you to book a discovery session with me if you want to work with me. Aishwarya is asking, can we add jaggery to gut bestie? Aishwarya, it's, um, you can have jaggery to add it to gut bestie, not a problem, to cool it down. Yeah, I mean, there's no harm in doing that if you like doing that. I love it, gut bestie, just the way it is. I I love to enjoy the taste of spices. Hmm, Shalini is asking, why not during sunset? Why don't we eat during sunset? That is because the Acharyas say that we should not do anything like eating, studying, anything that will activate the metabolic process during transitional times. So sunrise, sunset, these are called Sandhya Kala. Sandy meaning transitions, when the day is moving from one state to another. In all of Vedic wisdom, transitional states are states of weakness. It is a time when the body is slightly weak. So during this time, during Sandhya Kala, we do Vandana, Vandana meaning prayers. We meditate, we pray, we go out for a gentle walk, we do not do anything important during these times to reduce the stress levels on the body. Vinita is asking, I'm menopausal with very low estrogen and experience a lot of body pain. Any guidance please? I am Kapha. So Vinita, everything that I have said today, try it out, and definitely I encourage you to book a discovery call with me. Um, there is no charge for a discovery call. However it's done, in the hopes that you and I will be working together where I can share with you what some strategies we can use to help you and how that'll look like, what kind of services will, uh, that I offer will work best for you. Nikita is saying, is it normal to have period clots during your period? I have a normal regular period lasting for 3 days of heavy flow and a total of 5 days, but wanted to know if getting period clots in day 1 to 3 is normal. Depends on the amount of clots, depends on how much pain you are in because of the clots. If it's like minor clots, it's okay. All of us have them. We get clotting, clotting, we get flow, we get separation of the, you know, the blood and the lymph. A little bit of all that happens, but it's the number, the pain, and the stress your body goes through to get it to eject those clots especially the nausea and the fatigue, that will say that, or the headaches, you know, that will tell us, give us a clue into whether that clot is good or bad. All right, dears, take good care. Namaste. Bye-bye.