What can the ancient Indian science of ayurveda tell us about being healthy today?
Rarely do we link who we are, the way we operate in life, to what we eat. We should, according to the ancient Indian health science of ayurveda. In this system (ayur means life in Sanskrit; veda means science or knowledge), different personalities and body types need different foods to thrive; it all comes down to something called your dosha type. If you’re like most of us, you don’t know a dosha from a donut. But as increasing numbers of 21st-century American munchers are finding, keeping your doshas in balance through your daily diet can be the key to controlling your weight, boosting your energy and mood, and preventing tons of common health problems. It’s tough to make the same claims for those donuts.
Doshas are metabolic currents that drive our bodies, called vata, pitta, and kapha. We inherit them in varying strengths from our parents, much like our DNA. Most of us are dominated by one dosha, and when it gets too strong, due to what we eat, our thoughts, and environmental factors, we feel bad, both mentally and physically. Too much vata, which is associated with wind, air and space, can make you sleepless and indecisive, for example. Knock that dosha back in balance by eating the right foods, the theory goes, and you’re making a command decision to sleep for eight hours straight.
As with its sister science, yoga, the ultimate goal of ayurveda is perfect bliss. To get there, hard-core ayurvedics follow complex diets, along with meditation, exercises, massages, and herbal therapies. That’s not for most of us. But you can still get surprising health benefits, ayurvedics maintain, just by following a diet that’s easy, accessible—no strange foods that are hard to prepare or available only in Indian specialty stores—and tasty to boot. “Even for someone who isn’t a committed ayurvedic this is a great way to eat,” says Jennifer Workman, a registered dietitian and exercise physiologist who runs The Balanced Approach nutrition and weight management program in Boulder, Colorado.
Fresh vegetables, grains, dairy, poultry, and fish (red meat is minimized, but there are no outright bans) are both food and medicine here. Even better, there’s no counting carbs, or tracking fats or proteins. It’s not a vegetarian, vegan, or raw-foods regime—in fact, ayurvedics discourage eating too many raw vegetables because they can be hard to digest. Instead, you just eat for your dosha, and let the calories be damned.
While there’s not much Western scientific evidence to prove that ayurveda prevents or cures illness, even some M.D.s use the diet. Nancy Lonsdorf got her medical degree at Johns Hopkins and has practiced ayurveda for 19 years. Most of the 8,000 patients she has treated live far from the organic fringe, but they still lost weight, gained stamina, and improved their moods within weeks, she says, even on a partial ayurvedic program. “I had one patient who didn’t change her exercise habits or do anything else, but still lost 25 pounds,” Dr. Lonsdorf says. “The diet is incredibly healthy, and my patients are often surprised at how good the food tastes.”
Though ayurvedic practioners like Lonsdorf can be tremendously helpful, you can also feel confident going down this road alone—after all, fresh vegetables don’t have toxic side effects. How to get started? Slowly. Thankfully, ayurveda doesn’t require you to immediately replace all the Pop-Tarts in your pantry with seaweed-flavored rice chips. There’s an ayurvedic saying that lifestyle changes should be made “one-fourth at a time,” meaning just substitute dosha-friendly foods for 25 percent of what you’re eating now. You might begin with something as simple as sipping cranberry juice and sparkling water instead of diet soda at first. Change more when you’re ready.
Regardless of your dosha, ayurveda offers some overall eating guidelines. Again, they’re more common-sense than deprivation. For example, drink room temperature, rather than cold, water with your meal—ice water inhibits proper digestion. It’s better to avoid canned food, junk food, red meat, white flour, and white sugar; nothing you didn’t know already. Make lunch your largest meal, and limit your coffee and tea intake, and minimize alcohol, sodas, and sports drinks
Once you know what dosha you are primarily influenced by, you can start to change your diet gradually to maintain balance. To do this, ayurvedics categorize food according to six different tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent—all of which either enhance or reduce the power of each dosha. (They also group food by other qualities, such as heavy or light and hot or cold, but we’re not going for the ayurvedic Ph.D. here, just the B.A.) As the accompanying chart shows, there are plenty of familiar choices and tasty ingredients you can mix and match in the course of a day’s eating. A fiery pitta personality could breakfast on oatmeal with dates and almonds tossed in. On the other hand, a vata-dominant person, whose dosha tends to be cold and dry, could begin their day with a warming goat cheese omelet, hot cereal, and maybe some ripe figs. Sour tastes, including fermented foods, also keep vatas running smoothly, so yogurt or strawberries would be a good option here, too. A cool kapha character would do better with spiced-up eggs, munching a breakfast burrito or huevos rancheros; the hot peppers (classified as pungent) will counter that dosha’s lethargic tendencies.
That’s for maintenance, your regular eating program. At times when you’re not feeling and looking your best, go a little deeper to correct what ayurvedics would call a dosha imbalance. How can you tell when you need some food-as-medicine? Check for these following symptoms, then up the “prescribed” balancing foods and make more of an effort to reduce the imbalancing foods that aggravate your particular type.
-Worry, anxiety, insomnia, constipation, and dry skin mean the vata dosha is too strong. This can be most easily balanced with warm, heavy foods, like stews or tapioca pudding, that include butter and healthy oils. Lay off the astringent foods like cauliflower, lentils, and raw veggies; pungent foods like jalapeno peppers, radish, and black pepper; and bitter foods like coffee and chocolate.
-Digestive problems, anger, and resentment signal that pitta is out of whack. Temper it with additional cooling foods, such as vegetable casseroles and grains, with little butter or fat. Minimize pungent foods (which tend to be hot and spicy), excess salt, and sour foods such as oranges and tomatoes.
-Weariness, oversleeping, sinus problems, and weight gain are signals that kapha is out of balance. More light, spicy foods are the antidote, such as grilled vegetables with a mild pepper sauce, or lentil or bean soup. Scale back on salty tastes; sour foods; and foods like red meat, dairy, and seafood, plus maple syrup, pastries, and the like.
Pay attention to your cravings; in ayurveda they are not seen as moral weaknesses, just the body’s way of telling you to tune up your doshas. “Since vata is the cold, dry dosha,” says Workman, “when stressed a vata person might want something sweet, or heavy and warm, like a Big Mac or chocolate cookies to nourish that imbalance. The craving’s not going to cause problems, it’s the way you satisfy it. A box of Krispy Kremes might momentarily balance your vata, but screw up your digestion, which then throws you out of balance.”
Rather than the donuts (sorry), better to eat enough proteins and fatty acids to keep your blood sugar balanced, and then add ayurvedic sweet foods, such as warm milk and honey, or mangos, that will satisfy your cravings. Once your doshas are balanced, proponents say, your strong food cravings will be weaker or cease altogether. “If you pay attention, eventually your body tells you what food is good for you,” says Pratima Raichur, an ayurvedic practitioner in New York City and the author of Absolute Beauty.
Of course, ayurveda wouldn’t qualify as an esoteric ancient science if it weren’t full of complications and exceptions. For instance, some people have two dominant doshas to deal with; they’re vata/pitta, for example. Some ayurvedics change how they eat according to the seasons, and not all the foods in the same taste group will affect the doshas in exactly the same ways. But remember: Easy does it. You don’t have to achieve perfect ayurvedic balance right now, then maintain it until you go to that Big Yoga Class in the Sky. “Just changing your diet, without all the other elements of ayurveda, will improve your health by at least 40 percent,” Raichur says. Stick with the food that’s good for your type, and soon you and your doshas will be good to go.
