How to Stop the Disease Process in its Tracks~

Sometimes things happen suddenly or out of the blue: accidents, quantum leaps, seeing someone for the first time, and knowing your life will never be the same again.  But usually there's a trajectory to how events unfold.  Even a quantum leap arises because of all the momentum that's been gathered before that life-changing moment. 

According to Āyurveda, disease arises  in six distinct phases, and it's not until stage four that disease manifests. So if you've ever gone to the doctor "feeling off" only to be told to relax because your blood work is "normal," you understand that while your disease hasn't expressed in a way the doctors can see yet, the process is already underway.

Ayurveda has important teachings for us about how disease unfolds. It lays out  those prodromal signs and symptoms and offers wise instructions in  how to resolve them. That means often, in the early stages, we can turn the disease process around, and regain health before getting sick.  This complete medical system has laid out the early stages of imbalance and how to treat them so disease doesn't progress into a full blown illness.

The first two stages in the disease process occur in the digestive tract and include symptoms like: 

-Low to medium level indigestion: constipation, gas, bloating, acidity, nausea, loss of appetite.

These signs let you know that your body needs some support. At this stage, fasting on ginger or mint tea, avoiding eating until hunger returns, and then eating only easy to digest foods (the ones that work for well for you) is often all that's needed. (Like anything Ayurvedic, you can get more specific when you understand your unique constitution and digestive type). Early stages of the disease process include body cravings that will lead us back to balance, like not feeling like eating.

If we ignore the early symptoms, imbalance shifts to stage 3, leaving the GI tract and circulating through your blood stream, looking for a "defective space"(Your particular weak links based on your genetics and previous illness/injury). in your body-mind to manifest. 

Stage 3 symptoms may include

allergies

rashes

hot flashes 

headaches

muscle aches and joint pain (not due to exercise)

fever

anxiety 

loss of energy

loss of appetite and overall malaise

Your cravings at this point can get distorted, for the farther away from balance you are, the more the imbalance drives your cravings, so we can be in a pattern of craving the very things that are keeping us unwell.

If you ignore symptoms at stage 3,  or take a medicine to suppress them,  those symptoms will move deeper into the bodily tissues, weaken immunity, and eventually manifest an illness that has you down for the count.

This year, the world health organization reported that 7 of the top 10 diseases causing early death in our country could be pushed back or prevented by diet and lifestyle! And its not just what you eat but more importantly how you eat and when you eat that make a big difference. Which of these habits do you have dialed in?

• Eat sitting down, in a relaxed way, at regular times--this turns on your parasympathetic nervous system and allows you to digest your food.

• Eat your main meal during the day, when you are busiest and using your brain

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• Refrain from eating more until the previous meal has been digested. You'll know when that is because you'll be hungry again. Snacking causes indigestion and poor quality digestion.

• Eat a smaller, easy to digest dinner at night and then close the kitchen, supplement the mid day meal with a smaller supper, finished 3 hours or more before bedtime.

• Fast for 12 hours or more between supper and breakfast the next morning--this increases metabolic flexibility, shifting you from carb burning to fat burning, preventing metabolic syndrome and high insulin.

• Eat an abundance of cooked, seasonal plants (veggies, grains, beans) every day

• Eat plenty of high quality fats like avocado, olive oil, nuts and seeds, ghee

• Supplement plants with high quality, organic meat if you're a carnivore

• Enjoy a little organic A-2 dairy if you tolerate it.

• Sip hot water or tea throughout the day to stay hydrated.

This year's fall reset group (it's not too late to reset before the holidays) had familiar breakthroughs like

• resolution of pain and gas after eating by eliminating snacking, sipping hot water and spacing meals

• determination of the cause of a major food intolerance that had been causing coughing spells every night for years

• return of appetite for meals

• loss of over weight

  
  

My ayurveda clients learn about their body-types and digestive types, and have a way of understanding and decoding the early signs of digestive and other body imbalance, and how to treat themselves.

In fact last spring, two of the women who completed my 12 week program, reported they had no more digestive symptoms, though they had both been suffering from major issues when they began. They were both amazed and grateful at how relatively simple it's been  to actually treat their type of digestive imbalance with easy to follow daily practices and shifts in their diet. Neither is taking herbal medicines or pharmaceuticals,  though both were throwing lots of things at their symptoms, like enzymes and antacids before, but to no avail. 

My teacher, Dr. Vasant Lad, used to say in a moment like that, "All glory to Ayurveda!"  And I feel the same! 

Would you like to see some of these health breatkthroughs in your own life? Are you interested in refining the ways you understand and inhabit your body to feel better through every lifestage? Do you want to cut through your confusion and find a way of nourishing yourself on all levels, as part of how you live: day to day, month to month, season to season?

Living Āyurveda is my 12 week program to teach you and support you in implementing the diet and lifestyle practices that make all the difference to your good health. Women that do this work report feeling better than they have in years. Every time.

If you're serious about getting on a new trajectory with your health, this is where you can find both the basics and the refinements to meet you in any phase of your life, turn around symptoms, and reignite your energy and enthusiasm.

Love,

Shannon

#selfcare #Health #LivingVitalityandBalance #healthyeating #Yoga #feelbetter