Ayurveda Insights
I have finished my book on Ayurveda and I will say that some of it seems much too extreme to my Western mind. There's induced vomiting and enema's and use of laxatives to remove toxins from the body. Not sure I would do any of those things. But a good portion of what I have read is dealing with keeping the metabolism and digestion functioning properly. In that there are a couple things I found really interesting.
First, since digestion and metabolism are based off of heat, drinking cold drinks slows down the process; puts out the fire of digestion, if you will. It is recommended that you drink things that are room temperature or warm but not too hot. Food should also not be icy cold and vegetables digest better when cooked. Who doesn't like a big glass of ice water or tea when it's warm out? Fresh salad right from the fridge? But I do understand the concept. It is recommended that you drink warm water with lemon or lime juice in it each morning, to cleanse the kidneys and get the body ready for the digestive work it will do for the day. Today I tried it and first of all, yum, second of all I was perspiring while getting ready for work and the only major difference today was drinking that warm water with lemon. So I am going to try it again tomorrow and see if that was just a fluke or if it really does something. I have been noticing that I don't really sweat as much as I used to when I was younger (Ayurveda hints that this could be a sign of disease or disorder) so as funny as it seems to say, the sweat was welcome this morning.
The second thing that I have learned is that part of your body's natural hunger state is to prepare your metabolism to fire up so it can handle the food coming in. That means, if you eat when you're not really hungry, your metabolism isn't going to help burn the food off properly. I guess that should be common sense, but I never thought about it that way before. It makes sense that if you are not listening to your body it won't support what you do to it.
I still have a lot to learn, and I'm not sure how much of it I will adopt, but it is very interesting!
First, since digestion and metabolism are based off of heat, drinking cold drinks slows down the process; puts out the fire of digestion, if you will. It is recommended that you drink things that are room temperature or warm but not too hot. Food should also not be icy cold and vegetables digest better when cooked. Who doesn't like a big glass of ice water or tea when it's warm out? Fresh salad right from the fridge? But I do understand the concept. It is recommended that you drink warm water with lemon or lime juice in it each morning, to cleanse the kidneys and get the body ready for the digestive work it will do for the day. Today I tried it and first of all, yum, second of all I was perspiring while getting ready for work and the only major difference today was drinking that warm water with lemon. So I am going to try it again tomorrow and see if that was just a fluke or if it really does something. I have been noticing that I don't really sweat as much as I used to when I was younger (Ayurveda hints that this could be a sign of disease or disorder) so as funny as it seems to say, the sweat was welcome this morning.
The second thing that I have learned is that part of your body's natural hunger state is to prepare your metabolism to fire up so it can handle the food coming in. That means, if you eat when you're not really hungry, your metabolism isn't going to help burn the food off properly. I guess that should be common sense, but I never thought about it that way before. It makes sense that if you are not listening to your body it won't support what you do to it.
I still have a lot to learn, and I'm not sure how much of it I will adopt, but it is very interesting!
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