Radical Health Rebel
Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast, where Leigh, a renowned Functional Medicine Practitioner, CHEK Practitioner, CHEK Faculty Instructor, Active Release Techniques® Therapist, Emotion Code Practitioner, author, and podcast host, takes you on a journey to achieve optimal health, wellness, and happiness. With his extensive training and years of clinical experience, Leigh provides a truly holistic approach to health that has proven effective even when other methods have failed.
Join us every week for insightful discussions and expert interviews focusing on chronic pain, gut health, and skin health. Leigh's diverse background and passion for holistic healing brings you valuable knowledge and practical tips from leading experts in the field. Whether you're struggling with persistent health issues or simply looking to enhance your well-being, the Radical Health Rebel Podcast is your go-to resource for achieving a vibrant and healthy life. Tune in and start your journey to radical health today!
Radical Health Rebel
118 - Ayurvedic Healing: Gut Health and Pain Relief with Dr. Shivani Gupta
In this episode of The Radical Health Rebel Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Shivani Gupta, an Ayurvedic practitioner with expertise in blending Eastern and Western practices to help the body achieve equilibrium. Dr. Gupta holds a Master’s in Ayurvedic Sciences and a PhD focused on Turmeric. We dive into the ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine, exploring its profound insights and how it can be applied to support gut health and alleviate chronic pain conditions. Tune in to discover practical, holistic approaches that can enhance your well-being through the synergy of traditional and modern practices.
We discussed:
0:00
Ayurvedic Medicine and Turmeric's Healing Power
6:09
Ancient Wisdom vs Modern Medicine
14:00
The Healing Power of Turmeric
21:53
Understanding Ayurvedic Doshas and Personalized Health
29:46
Understanding Metabolic Typing and Inflammation
36:53
Understanding Inflammation and Chronic Disease
44:13
Skin Health and Gut Health Connection
56:16
Healing Chronic Pain and Inflammation
1:10:02
Establishing Healthy Boundaries for Gut Health
You can find Dr Shivani @:
www.ShivaniGupta.com
www.FusionaryFormulas.com Discount Code: RADICAL15
https://www.facebook.com/TheShivaniGupta
https://www.instagram.com/dr.shivanigupta/
https://www.youtube.com/@dr.shivanigupta
https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.shivanigupt
Don't forget to leave a Rating for the podcast!
You can find Leigh @:
Leigh website - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/
Leigh's books - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/books/
Eliminate Adult Acne Programme - https://eliminateadultacne.com/
Radical Health Rebel YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@radicalhealthrebelpodcast
In our young years we can do whatever we want and we have so much resiliency in the body, Our gut microbiome. You damage it, it'll just repair itself and you keep going. But once you're in your 20s, all of a sudden a lot of us going to college we'll drink too much, over-abuse, alcohol, sleepless nights, we're going to eat really poorly and at that time we kick on these light switches of inflammation in the body.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast. I'm your host, lee Brandom. This work started for me several decades ago when I started to see the impact I could make on people, helping them to identify the root cause of their health problems that no doctor could figure out, including serious back, knee, shoulder and neck injuries, acne and eczema issues, severe gut health problems, even helping couples get pregnant after several IVF treatments had failed. And it really moves me to be able to help people in this way, and that is why I do what I do and why we have this show.
Speaker 2:In this episode, I sit down with Dr Shivani Gupta, an Ayurvedic practitioner with expertise in blending Eastern and Western practices to help the body achieve equilibrium. Dr Gupta holds a master's in Ayurvedic sciences and a PhD focused on turmeric. We dive into the ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine, exploring its profound insights and how it can be applied to support gut health and alleviate chronic pain conditions. Stay tuned to discover practical, holistic approaches that can enhance your well-being through the synergy of traditional and modern practices. Shivani Gupta, welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great to have you on. I'm really looking forward to this conversation with you. So, Shivani, to kick things off, could you share a little bit about your own perhaps your own health history? What inspired you to become interested in Ayurveda, and could you tell us a little bit about your PhD studies as well?
Speaker 1:Sure. So I grew up in an Indian American family in Houston, texas, and my parents had just immigrated to the US. And every time I got sick which was very often I would tend to get car sick, air sick, sea sick. And every time we went to India or in the US I would catch these colds and I was always sick. I was like the sickly weaker kid and I could never understand why. Why these colds? And I was always sick. I was like the sickly weaker kid and I could never understand why.
Speaker 1:Why is it that I catch every cold? I suffer with everything. But everyone in my family had a pretty robust composition and so fast forward into my teens, I was chronically catching colds. And in the United States when I got sick, my pediatrician would just give me a prescription for antibiotics and by high school we were using stronger antibiotics for my cold and things like that. And when I'd go to India, my grandma would reach into the spice cabinet and she'd give me turmeric and different herbs and spices and she'd fix me that way and I always grew up thinking which is right, which is better?
Speaker 1:I live in two worlds this is so weird and so fast forward from there. By the time I got to college, I was so disastrously sick. This one time in India. My parents were like, are we going to have to hospitalize this girl? What do we do with her? And the doctor wrote me out this prescription and he's like okay, we're going to give her this antibiotic, we're going to give her these meds, she'll be better. And for the first time, this voice rose up inside me and said no, we're not doing this. And so I asked the doctor. I said what is it you're giving me? He's like well, that's the antibiotic and these are for symptoms. I said well, I'm not taking those. They have side effects. Can you dumb down the antibiotic a couple notches? Don't explode my gut, like you guys have been doing every time. And you never recommended a probiotic. And so I went on this journey and I asked my parents. I said we're in the land of yoga and Ayurveda, like we're in this world that has this ancient system. I want to go try it.
Speaker 1:I want to go see if this thing will help me. And what I learned when I traveled through India to all these big detox centers of Ayurveda was Ayurveda teaches you how to heal the gut, honor the gut and revere the gut, and by doing the Ayurvedic lifestyle practice we can all of a sudden shift and build vibrant health. And so, post-college, I had made my decision I'm going to teach Ayurveda, I'm going to build a social entrepreneurship venture out of Ayurveda where I get to impact the world. And so I've been an entrepreneur on this journey since, like the early 2000s. And then I finally decided you know what? I want to write books on Ayurveda. So I did my master's in Ayurvedic sciences. In that process I learned about turmeric and realized you know what Turmeric does so much.
Speaker 1:I want to study this more in depth. So I did my PhD dissertation on turmeric the spice, which was so powerful. I learned so much and from there I got really interested in turmeric and its applications across all fields of medicine and how we can further the science, further the applications of turmeric.
Speaker 1:I think it has such far-reaching effects as do so many of the super spices that exist out there that are really the new super foods that can help us on our journeys, with our gut health, with all health that can help us on our journeys with our gut health, with all health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite interesting. In some way. I've got a similar story in that I actually took antibiotics for 18 years, so I suffered from acne. So after the initial topicals didn't work, maybe six to eight weeks in, my doctor decided the the only, the only way that he knew how to deal with it was to give me antibiotics which worked for about six weeks, and then it came back, and then it came back with a vengeance, and then each time I went back, the only option he knew of was oh, you need a different antibiotic, right, and you know, I mean they say you shouldn't, shouldn't, take antibiotics for more than you know a couple of rounds. But I was doing several rounds every single year, you know.
Speaker 1:So you know, when I was in college, they offered me antibiotics for my skin as well, and I thought to myself. I was like for how long would you guys like me to take an antibiotic for my skin and they're like well. The only other great option is birth control.
Speaker 1:Just get on birth control. It'll fix your skin, and for both of them I was like guys, this is not. This is not right for me, my body, I apparently don't do well taking medications, so that's that's crazy that they give you antibiotics for that long. That's going to create antibiotic resistance like that's.
Speaker 2:That's a lot for the body absolutely yeah, and it's not just antibiotic resistance, although that's that's bad enough in its own right, but it's also a destruction of the microbiome, right, right, because because it's not. You know, it doesn't doesn't pick on a particular bacteria here or there, but obviously, I mean, I've been on my own journey for the last 24 years, so I learned what caused acne myself and I learned how to deal with it myself, and now I help others do the same. And you know, looking back, yes, you know, doctors are just doing what they're trained to do. But looking back, yes, doctors are just doing what they're trained to do. But looking back, first of all, I feel like why wasn't I a little bit more astute and why didn't I kind of question it? Because I think my only thoughts were well, if I stopped doing what the doctor's told me to do, it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 1:But in fact, once I stopped doing what the doctor's told me to do, it's only going to get worse, right?
Speaker 2:But in fact, once I stopped using what the doctor told me to do and change my diet, it cleared up very, very quickly, right, you know. So, before we get into a bit more detail, I think what will be quite good is if you can describe to the audience what Ayurveda is and how can it help us on the path to improving our health and longevity.
Speaker 1:Sure. So Ayurveda is an entire system of health, healing and medicine from India that's over 5,000 years old and within this system the ancient texts show that there was so much written about surgery and the different subspecialties that exist. But what I love about Ayurveda is the whole goal is to bring body, mind and spirit into alignment, and Ayurveda taught thousands of years ago that gut health is the center of all health. So it's really cool to see how modern-day science and modern Western medicine is proving what Ayurveda always said that circadian rhythm is valid and we have to honor sleep. That the gut microbiome and the gut health that we have is the central piece to our mental health, our wellbeing, our mood, our immune system. That having a diet that's nutrient dense and has nutrient diversity is important. And Ayurveda teaches a lot about how to eat, when to eat. Then I teach about doshas, our individual mind-body constitution. So Ayurveda teaches us we are each bio-individual.
Speaker 1:We have our own traits and tendencies, and so managing your life from that perspective of knowing your elements that predominate in your life can be a very powerful tool to help you adjust your diet, your sleep, your schedule, your circadian rhythm, your self-care, and really customize your lifestyle to yourself. And then we also teach a lot about self-care, because having a self-care practice that detoxes you daily and supports great gut health is a great way to rebuild the health that we all have the right to have, but maybe we just haven't been taught that. And then, finally, the super spices Ayurveda reaches a lot into the herbs and plants to heal our bodies, because there's so much power there. With turmeric, ginger, cumin, ashwagandha, a lot of these different adaptogens and herbs have so much power for our health, and so Ayurveda is really a system of health and healing. It's a practice, it's a lifestyle, and what I love is it's a preventative lifestyle. So by studying it and understanding it, we can create these profound shifts in our health.
Speaker 1:Because, like you said, when you went to the doctor you were told what to do, but that didn't work for you, and I find that that's happening for a lot of us. I learned that in my early 20s in college that the current system isn't the right system for my body and what I need. I need other natural, integrative approaches. And so in the realm of complementary and alternative medicine, a lot of people reach into homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathic, and they don't hear of Ayurveda until it's quite late in the game. And so my job is just to bring that awareness of we can actually shift our whole lifestyle and then reverse a lot of this chronic metabolic disease, chronic inflammation that's wreaking havoc on our bodies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's quite interesting for me is that you've got all this ancient wisdom from India, from China, probably from other places as well, that I'm not even aware of. That you know. For instance, you know you were saying about, you know, ayurveda is 5,000 years old and it was really talking about how the gut is really central to health, how the gut is is really central to health. And then in you know, in the last sort of 20 years, modern modern science right in inverted commas, modern science is now kind of catching up and it's 5 000 years behind and we had a similar thing with, you know, with chinese medicine and the meridians and how you know they mapped those out I don't know how many thousands of years ago. And then it's only been again the last 30 or 40 years that modern science has caught up and actually said, actually, yes, actually they were right, they are there, and also the chakra systems as well. Right again, they, they were, um, you know, realized thousands and thousands of years ago and it's only now, in recent years, that modern medicine has started to catch up with that.
Speaker 2:And I know I believe it was Candice Pert in her book Monocles of Emotion and she was talking about how, when you look at where the seven main chakras are, if you put the nerve plexi of the body over the top, they're in exactly the same places. So exactly where the chakras are, there are major plexuses or plexi in the human body as well. So it's really amazing that there's so much ancient wisdom out there, and it's probably quite sad that most of it has kind of got lost yeah and I feel that you know, in the last 100 years, whilst it seems like, we've progressed with technology?
Speaker 2:we seem to. Are you familiar with the flexner report? No so flexner, um, basically, to cut a long story short, he was, he was paid by I think it was the rockefellas, okay and he basically did this report that shunned anything that wasn't supportive of petrochemical solutions, ie pharmaceuticals. So things like osteopathy, homeopathy, all those things got yeah, chiropractic, they all got shunned and the kind of mainstream became what we now know as the medical system today.
Speaker 1:Correct and they funded medical schools. They didn't fund any other type of school and all those died off. And then they've also made naturopathic medicine illegal in a lot of states. There's an agenda there.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. That's crazy, but I guess there's not billions of dollars to be made from a spice, right, exactly, or or a carrot, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean they are. I mean, obviously the same, the same group of people are trying to control the food supply, but for different, different reasons. Um so so in your, in your PhD, you studied turmeric. What is it you would most like to share with the world about turmeric? What? What do people need to know about it?
Speaker 1:You know I love turmeric because it's so multifaceted. It's so multi-dimensional, it supports our body on so many different levels. I think that's why it has kind of shocked and astounded the current scientific community, Because if you look in PubMed, the level of science being studied around curcumin, the clinical trials and the papers, it's growing exponentially. So back when I did my PhD it actually 10 000 papers. Now we're closer to 17 000 papers just a couple years later. And it's very much because of the anti-inflammatory capabilities of turmeric. We know that inflammation is such a big problem. Chronic, low-grade, persistent inflammation is one of the big issues we're dealing with as a society and curcumin is so well received. It uses all the same pathways and others actually, and all the pathways that it connects to helps to reduce all the inflammation and signaling pathways in the body around inflammation NF-kappa B, TNF-alpha, interleukin-3, 6, 9, like. There's so many different of the pathways that are impacted by curcumin. What I love about turmeric is it's anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-obesity, anti-aging. It has so many different supports in the body. As we're aging there's zombie cells that get formed, that run around, run into everything and damage our cells in our body and turmeric is there like the ultimate janitor cleans house, gets rid of things that don't belong. So turmeric knows how in its own intelligence.
Speaker 1:What I have seen is when people have big issues like chronic joint pain, it goes after that, Then it goes after smaller issues like gingivitis, and then it goes after litt. Then it goes after smaller issues like gingivitis and then it goes after littler things allergies and things like that that bother people. So it's been fascinating over the last 10 years to see the anecdotal evidence of what tumor can do. But what most people don't realize is, out of the entire tumor plant, only 3% of it is the curcuminoids. And we know as of current science that the curcuminoids are the most effective way to reduce inflammation and that the one curcumin is the most effective. So taking the right proportion, taking the right potency of just that three percent extract is the key way to significantly reduce inflammation in the body. And we know that when we're struggling with obesity and weight gain which naturally happens as we age and so many of us are visceral fat and these things increase if we're inflamed we're not going to lose weight. And when we're having a hard time losing weight, we have excess fat on the body, we're going to stay inflamed.
Speaker 1:So we end up in these catch-22 circles with our health, and that's where I think turmeric can be such a powerful solution Like take your turmeric every day, take it as your insurance policy. It's going to clean house, it's going to support brain health, it's going to support all of the body systems. And I've been working with different universities and institutions because I want to publish a lot of science on this one spice to further show the Western medical community that they can use this as an additional solution when they say that to the patient hey, you're inflamed. Let's use natural solutions that don't have the same level of side effect but that can support those of us who can't always take NSAIDs and those kinds of things for our daily use yeah, and I and I guess as well they don't have the side effects as well, that you know if you're taking a normal pharmaceutical would have right right um you.
Speaker 2:You mentioned curcumin For the audience. Can you explain what curcumin is?
Speaker 1:Sure. So when we look at the plant name, curcuma longa, turmeric, that's the whole plant. So a lot of people take that raw plant and they'll dry it into the Well. Actually, a lot of people take raw turmeric and they juice it, which is fine. But in ancient India we didn't really use raw turmeric. We always dried it into the spice. When you buy a bag or bottle of turmeric, the spice and use it in your food, that's great. But always add black pepper or a healthy fat to increase the absorption of that turmeric.
Speaker 1:I worked in the lab under the scientists who discovered that it's black pepper that increases the absorption of turmeric by 2000%. So that's why, if you're using regular turmeric or taking a turmeric supplement that doesn't have black pepper or a healthy fat in there, you're not going to get the result that you want. Then we talk about the extract. So out of all of turmeric, the 3% is the curcuminoids, and curcumin, of the three curcuminoids, is the most effective at reducing inflammation. So that's where we start talking about a curcumin supplement, and I'm a big believer in taking a curcumin supplement that's been formulated for the right potency and the right dose.
Speaker 1:The problem with the supplement world right now is everyone's in it to make a buck and so they don't formulate usually for that very high potency and efficacy. But there is a whole class of supplements that exists in the functional medicine world that's really pushing hard for the result above making a profit, above numbers. And so when you invest in botanicals for potency and you study them, third-party test them botanicals for potency and you study them, third-party test them we're able to reach pretty amazing results. Now with these different extracts, including curcumin, ashwagandha and different solutions to drive a pretty profound result in the body so just to just to clarify, curcumin is part of turmeric.
Speaker 2:Yes, correct. Yeah, yeah, some something. Actually I was going to ask you earlier and I'm kind of gone off track a little bit, but I want to come back to something I was going to ask you before. So when we were talking about ayurveda, you mentioned the doshas. Yes, can you, can you explain what? What the doshas are?
Speaker 2:Julie, a 47 year old who works in computer sales, came to see me complaining of lifelong irritable bowel syndrome, which included severe abdominal pain and bloating, loose and very frequent stalls, along with hot flushes, menstrual brain fog and low energy which affected her work performance. After taking comprehensive history, plus running some labs, I discovered that Julie had a parasite infection which may have been causing the loose stools, a methane producing bacterial overgrowth that was almost certainly causing the abdominal bloating and pain, a leaky gut, low levels of digestive enzymes, as well as eating too many high oxalate foods on her vegetarian diet. So Julie reduced the high oxalate foods on her vegetarian diet. So Julie reduced the high oxalate foods from her diet. Plus, she took a broad spectrum antimicrobial supplement to help with the parasites and the bacteria in her gut, probiotics to increase her good bacteria and help repair her gut lining. She also took prebiotics to help feed the commensal bacteria. She also took prebiotics to help feed the commensal bacteria, digestive enzymes to improve her digestion and herbs to help clear the toxic lipopolysaccharides from her system produced by the overgrowth of gram-negative bacteria.
Speaker 2:At the end of the program, julie reported that her health had never been better. In her own words, the improvement is staggering. The abdominal pain and bloating was gone, her stools were back to normal, her energy was up, she no longer had brain fog or hot flashes and her immune system had improved, as she no longer suffered from frequent bugs and colds. If you're suffering like Julie was and you want to get to the root cause of your problem, you can arrange a consultation with me at bodycheckcouk. That's B-O-D-Y-C-H-E-K, and if we're a good fit, I could help you achieve the same kind of results as Julie. Now back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes. So in Ayurveda we talk a lot about nature and how we are part of nature, nature's part of us. Ayurveda came up with the concept of circadian rhythm and the circadian clock, and from Ayurveda we talk about the five elements and how those elemental forces are the driving forces behind us, our bodies, our tendencies, everything. And so we're all born with a dosha, and in our lifetimes, due to different traumas or events or activities or life changes, we can become very imbalanced in our dosha. That's our mind-body constitution, and that imbalance causes a lot of friction in our lives. And so in Ayurveda we talk about the three types of predominant doshas. You can have a primary and a secondary, or you can be balanced in all three, three doshas, which is a little rare but it happens. And so the first dosha is called vata, and here in the West we pronounce it vata. And so a vata person is air and ether. This is someone who has the tendencies of air and ether. They're taller or shorter than the majority of their demographic. They're thin and wiry. They have a tendency to eat like a bird. They don't have to eat a real meal of the day. They're like I have juice, I had chips, I was fine, they forget to eat. A vata person is very creative, very energetic. They're like the busy bodies. They talk fast, they move fast, they're always in motion like the wind and they have certain tendencies of imbalances as well. They can have disrupted sleep, disrupted gut, tendency towards anxiety and these things. So we have a whole protocol for balancing vata energy and bringing them back to being more grounded and centered. Then we have the pitta dosha, a pitta person. Here in the West we pronounce it pitta, but pitta person is going to be very fire with some water. So this person's more medium-bodied. They tend to have a very sharp, fiery mind. It's always going, always churning and burning and creating and moving. We tend to be I'm a pitta person we tend to be very ambitious and like, want to do great things. A pitta person has also, in the negative sense, all the tendencies of a volcano. A pitta person gets burnt out, they melt down, they get hangry. They have a strong appetite, so if they don't eat they get really angry, really frustrated. So managing a pitta personality and dosha comes to cooling techniques, hydration, really timing your day and eating properly so you're supported for that fiery energy and fire power that you have going on.
Speaker 1:And then finally you have kapha. We pronounce that kapha here in the West. So kapha is someone who's earth and water. This is someone who's bigger, boned, stronger. They have round features, round face, round eyes, curly, oily hair. They're very one thing at a time. This is your grounded person. They're a caretaker, that mother earth energy. They're fiercely loyal to the people around them. They have very sound sleep, like they can just sleep 10 hours easily and then they have a slower start to their day. So kapha usually struggles with congestion, things with water and heaviness. They struggle with a slower metabolism as well, and so the job of an Ayurvedic practitioner is to work with a kapha person and say let's have a productive day before you sit on the couch and you can't get up, and let's get that metabolism supported for your health as well.
Speaker 2:So do you know? Is it the difference between the doshas? Is it like a genetic thing? Is it an energetic thing? What creates the difference in people?
Speaker 1:It's interesting your dosha is decided at birth, so it's the combination of your parents. If you're born of two pittas, you're likely going to be pitta. Their predominant and second most dominant doshas will decide yours and time and place of birth and the energies around the life that you were meant to come in with. But a lot of it has to do with your parents and that environment that you're born into.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, interesting. Yeah, I just just I was writing down all the characteristics as you, as you were speaking then, and I I'm definitely closer to pitta than the others, but I said I certainly see some kaffir in me as well, sure, but more pitta, I would say, is, is there? Can some people be a combination, or is just one or the other?
Speaker 1:yes, when it comes to doshas, everyone has some sort of combination, even I myself. I I'm a very strong pitta, Maybe I'm 80, 90% pitta, but I can have a secondary. And what's interesting is my secondary is vata, but post-children, because having children is such a huge life event to the body and the whole spirit. Really I became very gaffa for a few years there and I couldn't understand, like why can't I get everything moving? Why can't I get my fire's churning and burning? And so balancing out of these other doshas into your primary dosha is a key, and I have a dosha quiz on my website so people can just go to drshivanicom and take the quiz and then you know automatically what your primary dosha is. And people email me all the time and they're like how did you know all those things?
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm like this is ancient wisdom. It's just it's always true. It's it's been true for millennia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I think I first came across Ayurveda about 20 years ago in William Walcott's book um the metabolic typing Diet. I don't know if you're familiar with William Walcott, but it's a very similar kind of philosophy in that and he will say that he's standing on the shoulder of giants, like, if I go back in time, william Kelly before him, george Watson, weston, a Price Francis, merrin, pottinger, all those kind of people that over the years were building. What he kind of finally developed is that we're all biochemically individual and in Bill Walcott's system there are six main types and it's predominantly based on genetics but but is also influenced by your environment. So so, as an example, you know, I mean you live in florida, so most of the year it's hot, right, right, and, and when it's really hot you tend to want to go for more light kind of foods, right, and you want to eat salads and things like that.
Speaker 2:Now, if you live to where I live, where it's cold for six months of the year, you know when it gets really cold, when there's snow on the ground, you know you want soups and you want stews and you want broths and things like that, stodgy things, right, warm. So that's just a very simple example of how your environment actually changes your nutritional requirements. And if you look at it from a female perspective, in the menstrual cycle, as you go through the menstrual cycle, your dietary requirements change throughout the month. I mean, most women know when they're premenstrual they tend to crave sugary things or carbs. Right, correct, you know. So it's really interesting just comparing the two, because you know I've been doing this, what typing, for say, 20 years. Um, and they kind of run on similar philosophies, but just different. Sure, does that make sense?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it sounds like that system pulled in ancient wisdom and understanding that we are biochemically different. We are individual, we're bio-individual, we have different characteristics and traits and so it's so interesting because you could easily take the primary doshas and then people's typical secondary doshas behind that and help them understand how to customize their diet and life. I find for myself I'm a vipa. I've got an appetite. When people talk about calorie deficit, I'm like I'll kill somebody. You think I can survive on less calories. That's not the right way. What I can actually do is shift what I eat. I can support eating the right foods seasonally, which is a big part of Ayurveda. I can support having a lot more fiber. I can move more, I can sweat more. But we have to really understand what we're doing to people when we tell them to go on these one-type diets when we are so bio-individual and different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting you saying that, because if we were having a conversation about metabolic typing, I would have said you just described what we call a fast oxidizer, someone that turns food into energy very quickly. Yeah, so you wake up in the morning? You're hungry, right? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:And then people talk about intermittent fasting and I'm like you think I can eat in a six-hour window.
Speaker 2:That'll be interesting you know, you know what is interesting. So I, so I'm. I'm a fast oxidizer, right and again, when you're reading out the doshas, I was kind of thinking, yeah, I'm definitely more pitta than than the others. I've managed to. So I probably have breakfast between 8 and 9 am and I probably have my last meal at 4.30. Now, I'm a fast oxidizer, now I'm able to do that now, but it took quite a while to be able to do that um and I feel like.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have shifted a little bit so you're saying it's possible, you just have to figure it out for yourself possibly the other thing is your metabolic type can change, right, because it's not just reliant on your genetics your genetics is is a large part of but also if your environment changes, your metabolic type also changes. So it might just be I'm getting older, maybe. Maybe, as I'm getting older, I'm able to do that. I'm probably not as active as when I was in my 20s and 30s, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's an argument for a concept we have in Ayurveda called the digestive fire. So we teach that agni the word agni means fire, but that gut digestive fire is to be revered and honored, and even as a pitta, of course. My fire was way stronger in my 20s and 30s. Now I'm in my mid 40s and I'm like, oh, I can't eat all the same things. I have to really pay attention, and as we age we know so many processes slow down in the body. Even Agni can do so. So our job is really to honor all these things even more and pay attention to them even more.
Speaker 1:So that makes sense that what you're saying is I can hold a bigger intermittent fast now. Well, maybe the same system that was churning and burning and processing food for energy so fast has slowed down just a touch, but that allows you to hold that fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that could well, that could well be correct. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, again, when I was in my twenties now, I, I, I hadn't discovered metabolic typing in my twenties. Now, I hadn't discovered metabolic typing in my 20s. So I was probably eating somewhere I can't tell you exactly but somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 calories a day. Now, what would I have weighed then in pounds? Maybe 170 pounds? Yes, right, I'm five foot ten, or I was five foot ten before I had several disc bulges in my spine. But, um, so I've never been a big, big person. But in my 20s I, I would, you know, I mean, it's probably the same.
Speaker 2:In my teens actually my teens, my 20s I had a huge amount of food, huge, um. But then when I that's important, wow, that's awesome. But when I, when I changed, when I discovered metabolic typing, the amount of food I ate was very different, because the makeup of what I was eating was very different. Um, I imagine I was just managing my blood sugar much better. That's probably, that's probably what it was. But what I was going to say was that in my 20s I couldn't have even left the house without eating. So in my 20s I was living in London. I would wake up in the morning, I'd have my breakfast, I'd jump on the train, commute into central London. Now, if I left the house before eating breakfast, I felt like I probably would have passed out on the train.
Speaker 1:There's low blood sugar. Isn't that interesting.
Speaker 2:But now. So now I wake up, I go to the gym at eight. Well, it depends what day. So if I'm lifting weights I'll go at eight o'clock. Some days I'll do a spin class because I just enjoy it. I just enjoy that and that's much earlier, so that will probably. That starts around 6, 45 or 7 o'clock and it's intense, right. So I'll get up. I'll all I'll have before that is a cup of tea. So I have tea with some partially hydrolyzed guar gum, so some fiber, and I'll exercise and I'll come back and then I'll have my breakfast. Now, if I tried to do that in my 20s, I know I definitely would have had hypoglycemia and I would have passed out. Working out, without a doubt. That would have happened. Yeah, out, without a doubt. That would have happened. Yeah. So it's. It's interesting now that, uh, I'm able to do that and also able to eat within a relatively small window of time, and I'm absolutely fine with it now. But it took.
Speaker 1:It took time to get there, though it wasn't didn't happen overnight, sure yeah, it makes sense, though, because I do think we slow down and our systems slow down as we age and so paying attention to that is so important, because that same voraciousness and hunger and metabolism that you had in your twenties that allowed for that and caused that, is tempered down a bit, but still honoring it and understanding it is very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So here's a question for you based on based on what we've said so far. Can you, can you give an explanation of what inflammation actually is and what's the difference between acute and chronic inflammation?
Speaker 1:Sure. So inflammation is when the body is responding to an assault, an injury, something that happens. That's a change to the body, or make this area swell up as a response and see, do we need to patch that skin? What happened? That's acute inflammation. That's the body's response to an outside factor that caused trouble.
Speaker 1:Now what happens is nowadays there's so many different things Oops, sorry for the noise there's so many different things that are causing inflammation. There's like a million factors, but a couple of the key ones are the cleaning products around us, so chemicals that come out of our body that our body says that's not good for me. I don't know what to do with that. Cigarette smoke. Industrial chemicals and pollutants around us, viruses and bacteria can kick off inflammation Again, because the body's sending a response to what is that thing? I need to defend myself. Then there's all sorts of things with food grilling food, frying food. A lot of the things we do to food nowadays thinking it's just yummier and fine actually put the food into our body in a way that causes an inflammatory response. And then there's a number of other factors. There's stress. There's key inflammatory foods that our body doesn't perceive as food because they're modern day foods. They're modern day creations, created with pesticides and herbicides, and the body's like I just don't know what that is, that's not food.
Speaker 1:And so we're doing, we're basically creating a system where there's so many assaults at once and so the body has this thing now where, yeah, maybe you hurt your elbow and this happens to me even now. I hurt my hip in the gym and I've got this pain, and sometimes, as we're aging, the pain doesn't magically go away. We have to treat it, we have to deal with it. We have to either go see chiro PT massage, stretch something to heal it. When something's holding on and lingering, that's a sign that now you're creating chronic, low-grade, persistent inflammation. The body's going to keep sending a response, keep trying to deal with it, and so the modern-day issue that we're dealing with a lot now is we're dealing with so much inflammation and chronic, low-grade, persistent inflammation. The body is confused, the body thinks it's under attack, it's attacking things that it shouldn't. So that's called autoimmune, when the body's attacking ourselves from the inside, not knowing that what is in us is actually what belongs in here. And so chronic, low-grade, persistent inflammation is really the creator of so much chronic disease that we see right now Anything that ends in itis means inflammation.
Speaker 1:So if you go to the doctor and they say you have arthritis, bursitis, gastritis, whatever itis, that's inflammation. And we know that inflammation is wreaking havoc on heart health, brain health, liver, all the different systems. So our job is to understand what inflammation is it's a problem and then start removing all the factors that are causing that inflammation. Reduce those foods that are inflammatory, reduce stress Reduce I mean not that you can reduce viruses and bacteria, but reduce those chemical pollutants in your life. Maybe it's your skincare, maybe it's your cleaning products, maybe it's the air quality, water quality, food quality, but each shift that you make is a shift where you're lightening the burden on the body so your body can be its healthiest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's a couple of other key things that I know that can cause inflammation as well, that I know you're going to agree with. You probably just didn't remember at the time but alcohol.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Inflammatory food, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seed oils. Seed oils is a big one these days, obviously, in the US you've got glyphosate as well. Anyone that's got leaky gut syndrome is going to have things leaking into the bloodstream that shouldn't be there. So there's so many things that we we have today. Yes, and I guess from a very simple, simplistic point of view, whenever you've got inflammation, it normally comes with redness and quite often it comes with pain and swelling right exactly but I guess the issue with internal inflammation is you might not even know.
Speaker 2:It's there necessarily, right? Right, so then that's when you've got hidden things going on behind the scene and you know because you don't know, it's there, it's bubbling up under the surface and if you don't deal with it it could be getting worse, right?
Speaker 1:It's true. One of my mentors taught me when I was doing my PhD he was one of my mentors taught me when I was doing my PhD. He was one of my mentors and he said listen, the problem is in our young years we can do whatever we want and we have so much resiliency in the body, our gut microbiome. You damage it, it'll just repair itself and you keep going. But once you're in your 20s, all of a sudden a lot of us going to college will drink too much, over, abuse, alcohol, sleepless nights, we're going to eat really poorly and at that time we kick on these light switches of inflammation in the body and we don't think about it. We just have created an inflammatory state. And we move forward.
Speaker 1:Going through our twenties we have different stresses new job, new life, all those things. Thirties maybe it's marriage, kids, even more serious commitments in our lives. 40s now you've got your aging parents, your career and finances, all these serious things we manage and deal with our kids growing up as well. Never did we pause and turn off those light switches of inflammation. They've just been on.
Speaker 1:So it's like this silent forest fire that's burning through us, causing damage, wreaking havoc, but we have no idea it's there until it's like a blazing fire that you can see from the sky. And then we're like, oh okay, let me deal with this. But when you run to the doctor you're told oh, that's arthritis, that's just. You know, take this, take that, it'll help. We're masking symptoms instead of taking the time to really pause and educate all of us as a population and say actually, you need to detox, you need to cleanse, you need to shift your diet, you need to shift your lifestyle, you need to move your body more, you need to lose weight. You need to do all these things because otherwise you're going to stay inflamed. You need to lose weight.
Speaker 1:You need to do all these things because otherwise you're going to stay inflamed. And right now we're so entrenched in the modern day lifestyle Even I myself sit too much. My whole job is sitting. And so if you're not walking in the morning, walking in the evening, planning your food, investing in cooking more fresh meals and these kinds of things that we talk about, that chronic inflammatory state, that forest fire is silently burning and you're going to get the price. You're going to pay that price in your later life. And so the whole conversation now is how can we reduce the things you just mentioned the pesticides in our food, alcohol and all the inflammatory foods? How can we shift seed oils and get these things out of our life? That are the foundational, maybe sometimes easier things, so that we don't pay the price in the long run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, one of the things that's really common nowadays is dementia and Alzheimer's right, which have an inflammatory component, and there's almost no warning right. All of a sudden, someone's memory just starts declining and there's no warning sign. And what's quite interesting is one of my messages I want to get across about people that have acne. Obviously, I've experienced it myself, and to me, acne is your warning light. It's your warning system saying look, there's an imbalance in your system that your skin is making you aware of. Now you can do something about it.
Speaker 2:Now, some people who aren't necessarily prone to acne. They might not have any symptoms and then they get to 40 and all of a sudden they're diagnosed with a cancer or something like that, right? So you know acne is an inflammatory condition, right? What did I mention about inflammation? It's swelling, it's redness, it's pain, right? So sometimes when you've got an inflammatory condition at a young age, it's actually a blessing because it's given you the opportunity to look into, okay. So what's actually causing that? What is it in my lifestyle that's causing me to have those symptoms, and then you can do something about it. So I think it's really important that people see things like that as a blessing, because it does give you that opportunity to to take a different course.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that's quite interesting, the kind of modern paradigm again just using acne as an example is that, well, it's a teenage thing, right. And and if you ask the medical community, they say, well, because you know puberty, you get changes in the hormonal system and it's the increase in you know, certainly in boys, in testosterone that's the cause of acne. It's just a teenage thing, right, right. So the question is so, why? Why don't hunter-gatherer teenagers get acne? Good question, right.
Speaker 2:But so what it's telling us is there's something in the modern western lifestyle that's triggering that, alongside the increase in testosterone yes, I'm not saying that's not involved, but there's something as well because, you know, if you, if you, if you go and study hunter gatherers, they go through, they go through puberty as well, but they don't get acne, right, well, well, but but their living conditions, their diet, is very, very different. They don't have seed oils, right? They don't. They don't drink pasteurized dairy, sure, right. They don't drink hybridized wheat products, yeah, right. So I just thought that was that's quite interesting, just just to throw in there in the discussion of inflammation.
Speaker 1:You know. It's a very good point because you're right Skin care, the condition of our skin can be that canary in the coal mine. It indicates to you hey, something's abreast, something's happening here. And what's also interesting is we live in a society where vanity is pretty important. Vanity is a piece of a lot of people's lives, especially because we're on social media, like in my case, I'm on camera three days a week. This is my job is to teach Ayurveda online. So I do think about my hair, I do think about my skin.
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time doing my hair today.
Speaker 1:And the thing is like when it comes to our skin health, as a teen I had acne and no one back then talked about gut health or any of that. They were like here's some proactive skincare. Keep trying skincare solutions. And by college they were like just take an antibiotic. And I was like you guys are crazy. You can't destroy my gut over my skin. But it's not like. I didn't think about it for a second. I was like will it work? Birth control I was like you're going to screw up my entire hormone health over my face. That doesn't make sense either. Okay, and so the solutions we're given are not good enough, I find. But you're right, if we just took that as the wisdom of our body saying focus differently on this issue, we could have a completely different trajectory to our lives. And it's interesting you said 40.
Speaker 1:When the pandemic happened 2020, I turned 40. And all of a sudden, I developed acne, rosacea. I was like what is this? I thought I had won at skin health. How can I have to deal with skin health again?
Speaker 1:I've dealt with this multiple sectors and times in my life, and so I went to dermatology and they're like oh, it's this fungus. It forms on the face. You have no control, it's just common. We have topicals and we have lasers and I was like, oh okay, tried some topicals, Didn't like any of it, of course, and it didn't work.
Speaker 1:And so I actually went on a journey. I got these facials microdermabrasion, microneedling a lot of things you shouldn't actually do for acne rosacea, I learned later trying different Ayurvedic skincare tools. Of course, addressed inflammation and gut health, but gut health has been, unfortunately, my lifelong journey. So it's like a forever job, an annual job, a seasonal job. It's like a forever job, an annual job, a seasonal job, and so fast forward. I finally went to a dermatologist who said you know what You're on, like your third topical it's not working, but you teach Ayurveda. You must know gut health has a role in skin health. And I just looked at her like, thank you God, I already know that, but thank you that you know that and that you would even mention that.
Speaker 1:But thank you that you know that and that you would even mention that.
Speaker 1:So I hope that all of dermatology will have that insight, to just mention it to the patient that gut health is skin health, because then we can have this profound revolution, because that will be the first line of where people go to address usually their skincare or acne and things like that. But it's something that I'm constantly working on and I can tell if I eat chocolate or I have wine on a Friday night or certain things. The next day it will be more pronounced, and so I plan for video. Days is what I call them, my certain days where I'm on camera and building content for YouTube. I eat clean on all those days before because I can't have that showing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, I eat clean on all those days before because I can't have that showing up. So, yeah, yeah, I mean you know what you've described there is. Do you want to treat the symptom or do you want to deal with the root cause of the problem? Correct, right One is a never-ending job and it's going to come with side effects and will probably end up with another condition for you to deal with. Right or the other one is you treat it at the root cause. It's probably going to be take more time, probably take more, more money initially, right, but now you've learned how to deal with it yourself. Now you're empowered. Now you're not reliant on someone with a white coat and a stethoscope to tell you what to do.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. One way you're investing in yourself. The other way you're probably investing in a pharmaceutical company, Right? So who do you want to invest in?
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, as we're talking about the gut at the moment, what health practices from Ayurveda, or what are some of the practices in Ayurveda that people can practice on a daily basis to help with their gut health?
Speaker 1:So Ayurveda teaches us that gut health, like I said, is the center of all health. And if you think of it like a gut digestive fire, think of it also like a campfire. So if you went camping, you would build a campfire so you can stay warm, so you can have a place to cook your food, and that campfire is to be maintained and tended to. And you build that campfire very intentionally small twigs, medium twigs, large twigs, diversity in how you build it, just like we have diversity of the gut microbiome. And so building your gut is the first step, which is great probiotics, great fiber, really addressing any gut health issues. I'm a big fan of people doing stool tests and seeing what's wrong with their gut. I do those every two, three years and then I see, oh, you caused a new problem, let's address it and get that fixed again. So I'm constantly aware of my gut health and making sure there's no parasites, no dysbiosis, no big issues where there's imbalances in the microbiome itself. So that's part one building that great fire. Now, once you've built it, once you have it, you still have to maintain it. It's easy to put a fire out. Any type of surgery, trauma, big life events, huge life stressors can put out the fire and then all of a sudden you need to rebuild and build up that microbiome and that health again. So daily practices from Ayurveda are actually the best way to help tend to the fire, support the fire and maintain the fire throughout the day.
Speaker 1:And so one of those that we teach is called using a tongue scraper. A copper tongue scraper from Ayurveda is a simple tool. It's pretty much free. You buy this thing once for 10 bucks and then it lasts your whole life. But you gently scrape the tongue seven to 14 times every morning and what that does is on the tongue all the organs of the body are reflected, just like in reflexology, all the organs of the body are reflected on the bottom of the foot. So in Ayurveda we look at your tongue. We want to know are there any red patches, serrations, is there a white coating? That white coating indicates ama or toxins and toxin residues that have accumulated in our body over time. And so your job is gently scrape the tongue every day to ignite the digestive fire, clear that white coating, detox all the organs of the body and support yourself to be healthier.
Speaker 1:Another great tool we have is either hydrating with room temperature water that sat in a copper cup overnight, or if you're high copper or worried about heavy metals, having something like ginger lemon tea first thing in the morning. Ginger is a very powerful spice for digestive health. We know that because if you're nauseous or unwell you reach for ginger. But in the same way it's a warming spice and so it's very good in the morning to ignite that fire, just get it going. So I have ginger lemon tea in the morning, especially if I went out on Friday night maybe I had wine or anything inflammatory my system's mad. I will have ginger lemon tea on purpose the next day, just to reset the system, and the lemon will alkalize the system as well. So it's really going to support your body.
Speaker 2:Do you use like fresh ginger and lemon, or do you use like a teabag?
Speaker 1:So in Ayurveda we prefer everything fresh, everything from mother nature, organic, clean, the best you can source it. But I am completely understanding that we live in modern day times, so a lot of times I carry solutions in teabag forms. I'll travel with ginger tea as a teabag. I'll travel with peppermint tea. I'll travel with all these things because we need to keep things easy and doable as well. I prefer that people do things over trying to have perfection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So in what instances might someone suffering with chronic pain benefit from ayurvedic medicine? As a semi-professional rugby player, billy had suffered from recurring injuries for the previous three years. Before coming to see me, he'd been suffering from a sharp pain, swelling and tightness in the top of his right leg. It was especially bad when drop kicking and punting. He tried sports massage and stretching, which had brought about some short-term relief. However, when playing rugby, the pain always returned. He also suffered from sharp pain in both groins which restricted his movements. The pain was worsened by kicking and changing direction at speed and as a fly half.
Speaker 2:Kicking and changing direction was an essential part of Billy's game. Acupuncture and sports massage had some benefit, but still felt tight afterwards. All the above injuries meant that he could only play three matches in a row before he had to take three to four weeks out to recover. This was very frustrating for Billy. Billy came to see me to help condition him during the off-season so he would be ready for the upcoming season, even though he wasn't very confident that anyone could help him get rid of these injuries.
Speaker 2:I had a very limited time to help Billy, but over the eight-week off-season, after thorough assessments, I gave Billy a corrective exercise program for the first four weeks and a strength and power program for the second four weeks prior to his pre-season training. Over halfway through the season, billy reported that he is yet to get injured. In fact, he was kicking better and further than ever, he was running quicker, cutting off one foot better and bursting through tackles, and that he'd never felt so sharp, quick and strong. If you're in pain and it's preventing you from doing what you love to do and you'd like to achieve great results, like Billy, just go to wwwbodycheckcouk that's B-O-D-Y-C-H-E-Kcouk to request your consultation. Now back to the podcast to request your consultation.
Speaker 1:Now back to the podcast. Sure, so chronic pain means chronic inflammation and that chronic, low-grade, persistent inflammation is a sign of either gut dysbiosis, gut health being off, leaky gut or just the body being under assault from too many external factors. We're throwing problems in and we're never giving the body the moment to rest and really reset itself. So I would say the number one tip we have from Ayurveda is sleep. We talk about circadian rhythm, circadian clock and sleep, because sleep is when you're going to rejuvenate and heal and clear your inflammation, and so we teach that 10 to 2 on that clock the top of the clock is the pitta time of day. So during the day it's the best time to have your biggest meal to absorb the best nutrition. So let's say you're not a big salad eater and these kinds of things. Microgreens put that into lunch because the digestive fire is strongest to process and absorb the nutrition from that. Maybe more fiber at lunch is when you get your fiber in for the day, and then in the evening, 10 to 2, is when we're supposed to sleep to clear and clean everything up. If we're sacrificing sleep for different reasons maybe to rest or have fun or stay up late or watch TV, you're actually sacrificing the clearing of your inflammation, and so that's something I really like to highlight.
Speaker 1:When it comes to chronic pain, chronic joint pain, when I have different issues in my body, I'm like just sleep. You know that sleep is the key. Don't sacrifice the sleep piece of this and then also invest in quality sleep. So having sleep hygiene ritual. I love having like a deep sleep tea before bed, taking sleep gummies, whatever I need to guarantee that I'm going to get perfect sleep, because then I'm supported to focus, think better. Of course, I'll clear my inflammation, I'll support my lymphatic system. All the things that the janitor needs to come through and clear out that happens in that window of 10 to 2 when we have our deep sleep.
Speaker 1:So that's a very key piece for chronic pain that we don't talk about. Typically, we think of chronic pain and we're like cut your inflammatory foods, take your supplements, like turmeric supplements and different extracts to help you with inflammation, but sleep is actually, I think, the most important piece. And then we go into what is your diet? Are you eating inflammatory foods? Can you cut those? The top five inflammatory foods that I teach about are gluten, dairy sugar, alcohol and red meat. For some, depending on your diet and your body, maybe there's a moment where it's too hard to digest. You need to take a break and then come back in for it. So really understanding your diet is important. And there's still others. There's like soy peanuts. There's a lot of foods that can have a tendency towards inflaming.
Speaker 1:And it's important to customize that for yourself. I believe in doing an elimination diet and seeing am I totally fine with that food or does it cause me trouble? Like I myself cannot eat gluten, it throws everything off in my system. And then I believe in taking great super spices because they are the plant kingdom's best gift for us to reduce that inflammation while we're doing the work. And it makes it easier to do all the good work to reduce inflammation and then we can continue on.
Speaker 2:Do you find some people don't do so well on spices?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's actually funny Because I've been working with turmeric for the last 10 years and I created my own turmeric and I have thousands of people who have taken it. I find it fascinating. I'd say 99% of people do great on it. But of course, like any food on earth, you're going to have some people who are like uh, I can't handle spices, because here in the West oftentimes we don't eat foods with a lot of spices. But I'm Indian, like the whole basis of my food is we put cumin seeds in first, we put our turmeric, our cardamom, our coriander, our red chili powder, then you finish it with garam masala and lemon and these different things. So to me it's a little foreign to not use spices. But I have seen that sometimes people need a minute to adjust to spice levels going into the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite interesting. I know some people they're not very keen on food sensitivity testing. I think there are some tests that are not that great. I think there are others that are better, tests that are, you know, not not that great. I think there are, there are those that are better and occasionally um I mean you mentioned black pepper earlier I've seen that come up as positive quite often in people actually and occasionally turmeric really so you kind of think it's an anti-inflammatory food but according to this test, it's actually in that person it's causing inflammation.
Speaker 2:And again, it could be biochemical individuality, it might be it's just something in their environment at that time that's potentially causing that. But I guess it just shows you how, how different we all are. But but I just want to share something with you as well about chronic pain, and I'm going to apologize to my audience because they've heard me say this a million times, but five years ago I moved to where I live now. So I moved out of London five years ago and just after I moved out I started getting pain in my left knee and it didn't affect me. In the gym it wasn't a problem.
Speaker 2:But when I was playing tennis it was really affecting me and sometimes I actually couldn't run at all and for about five days after playing tennis I was in pain, I couldn't bend the knee. You know I only had about 90 degrees of flexion in the knee, where normally, you know, 135 degrees is normal and I've normally got full range and I couldn't quite work out what it was. And and I couldn't quite work out what it was, and you know, and you know in the work that I do. I was kind of self-diagnosing, thinking, oh, it's probably medial meniscus or it might be my medial collateral ligament.
Speaker 2:And I was away teaching a course and I was with a colleague of mine who's an osteopath and, uh, he ran some diagnostic tests on my knee and he was like no, it's not your medial collateral ligament, no, it's not your medial meniscus, oh, you've got osteoarthritis, right. So I thought that's really interesting and I thought, right, okay, well, I should know how to deal with this myself. And after a while, I remember when I moved here, I thought, for whatever reason I won't go into the details but I changed my breakfast and I started having porridge oats with a protein shake.
Speaker 1:Right, Glyphosate in the oats.
Speaker 2:Not in the UK, no, no, we don't have glyphosate here, thank God, but anyway. So there were gluten-free oats as well, okay, and just thought do you know what? Let me just cut them out and let's just see what happens. And within three weeks all the pain had gone and I had full range of motion in my knee. Wow, right, so obviously it was doing something to my gut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they say gluten-free oats are not really gluten-free.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, I'm aware of that, but also even without the gluten they're kind of the same family anyway. So yeah, I probably wasn't reacting too well, but I say I just wanted to say that because it's just a good example of how the gut can cause chronic pain and inflammation in the body.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think we underestimate it so much here in the West we truly believe oh, you have osteoarthritis. Too bad, that's your life sentence, that's going to suck for you. And I always think, when someone tells me a diagnosis, I'm like thank you so much for that information. That's informative. I am not letting that label attach to me Like I was diagnosed with leaky gut in 2020. And I was like, oh, isn't that interesting. Thank you for clarifying why my whole life has sucked around this topic. Thank you. Now I have a plan. I am going to heal that gut. I'm going to love that gut. I'm going to heal that gut. I'm going to love that gut. I'm going to seal everything up.
Speaker 1:In Ayurveda, we use ghee as a powerful superfood which has this oiliation ability in the body, and I addressed it from that direction. But we forget that it's sometimes one food that is triggering everything. I had a client who had done a bikini competition. She was so fit, phenomenal, and afterwards she started having this debilitating joint pain, couldn't function, couldn't lift, couldn't understand it. And I asked her what are you eating? She's like well, you know, because of my bikini competition days, bodybuilder competition days, I have a very rigid diet. I'm very disciplined, I just eat. And she said I eat a rice cake every morning with peanut butter. And I said whatever you are eating and doing, my invitation is change it. But it's hard for her because she was in such a rigid mentality around food and calories. Turns out it was the peanut butter, because we know peanuts can have a tendency towards having certain molds and toxins and it just was setting off her system. She took out peanut butter and she was fine.
Speaker 1:For me it's gluten and it's interesting. I went to Italy this summer and I had this theory of if I lived in Italy for a few weeks, the land of not using glyphosate and all these different pesticides, would my entire microbiome change? Can I eat the pasta and be happy and be fine? And the theory was good. But it didn't work out that way. My system was like pasta is pasta, wheat is wheat. Yes, it's cleaner and better here. But all of a sudden, within a week I looked pregnant and I was like, oh that's a gluten belly.
Speaker 1:We need to change the behavior a little bit, and so I think it's just important that we pay attention to what's that one food that could be poisoning us and triggering such an inflammatory response within the body and we're paying such a significant price. And then we believe that that's now how we have to live and that, I think, is the most important message. You do not have to live with whatever it is that's plaguing you. You have the opportunity to take that car, put it in reverse and completely change your trajectory completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just on a point there about going on vacation, and what I've experienced with clients many times over the years is, let's say, one example I can remember I was working with someone at lower back pain and they went I can't even someone at lower back pain and they went. I can't even remember where they went now. They went on vacation somewhere and they said as soon as they landed their back pain was gone right. And they said, in fact they were surfing every day, all day. When they got seated on the plane to come back, the pain returned Right.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Now my only explanation my logical brain can come up with is that we know that stress causes leaky gut Right, correct. And the other thing they often say is not only has their symptoms gone away, but they can eat things like gluten and dairy and it doesn't affect them. And yet when they come back to the UK, they eat those things and it immediately affects them, and I think a lot of it is due to stress.
Speaker 1:I think so too. It's interesting. I, over the last decade, have worked on the same thing. I have worked to build turmeric to change the world, and it's a very clear message. But in the last two years, I had these amazing mentors who came on board, who built incredible supplement companies that have impacted millions of lives, and they helped me figure out how to ramp up what I do.
Speaker 1:But with success came a physical price that I wasn't expecting, and so I went to my functional medicine doctor and I was like something is up, something is off. Let's do a stool test, let's check what's going on. She goes you are causing, you have caused dysbiosis due to stress. I'm seeing what you're doing online. I get it, I understand. You're being invited to all the national medical conferences to speak and you're doing trade shows and you're going to conferences and you're doing everything. I can see it in your gut. So you have two choices Either you address the stress and slow down, or you're going to cause further dysbiosis. And I looked at her and I was like I don't want to slow down. She goes I understand, you're a pitta, I get it. You don't want to slow down.
Speaker 1:But intellectually, you are a practitioner of Ayurveda and you know what damaging the gut means in the long haul, and so it was such an interesting moment of like. How do you grow things, grow businesses and entities in your dreams? And I want to be an author who changes the world while loving your gut, so that your gut doesn't have the impact of stress. And so I think a lot about that. I think about stress resilience, and for me, stress resilience is invest in great sleep, invest in your self-care, invest in your gut, eat a beautiful, clean diet, and I reach a lot into the adaptogens of Ayurveda to build stress resilience into life, because I know life is going to have stresses, it's going to create stressors. Unfortunately, I have young kids and I'm an entrepreneur. There's a lot going on, but if I've got my ashwagandha on board, my different supplements and tools and I got great sleep, then at least I've got the foundation to manage all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting when you mentioned, you know, being busy as a, you know stressful as an effect on the gut. There's another theory. I mean it's not. It's not a different theory, it's the same theory, but it's just worded in a different way in that. You know what? What is your gut? Your gut is a boundary between the outside world and the inside of your body. So if you're not setting boundaries in your life, then that can affect the boundary on the inside of your body, which is quite a nice little way of looking at it is quite a nice little way of looking at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so then the question is, how can you energetically set great boundaries in your life to impact your gut? And that definitely came up for me. I have very key practitioners. I work with so many doctors, hundreds of doctors. I have what I call a dream team. So whenever I have an issue, I just go to the dream team and I'm like, hey, I formed a fibroid, how do we deal with this? What's the plan? Or different issues that have come up in my health and my life and boundaries come up a lot. And so thank you for that beautiful reminder, because sometimes, in the name of business or impact or the work we want to do, we want like, we open ourselves wide, like I do that sometimes. I energetically open myself wide for, like, please, universe, I'm ready to receive, I'm ready to create, like, support me, magnetize to me everything that I wish for. But simultaneously, where are all the ways we need to create really healthy boundaries so that we're supported and not having that interaction at a level that may not be healthy?
Speaker 2:yeah, another. Another term you can use instead of boundaries is core values as well. So they're they're the same. I see them as the same things and in in the, in the main system that I use with my clients, so I I I studied with the check institute and in the check system there are four main doctors. So you've got Dr Happiness, dr Quiet, dr Diet and Dr Movement, and so what I encourage all my clients to do is to set core values around each of the four doctors.
Speaker 2:So you know, get really clear, first of all, what makes you happy in life and make sure you're taking time out to do those things that make you happy. Taking time out to do those things that make you happy. Have clear core values around the food that you eat and how you hydrate yourself. Get very clear on how much movement you need and what kind of movement you need, and and also paying attention to how much intensity your body can handle on a particular day, but then also getting very clear on how much sleep, how much rest your body needs and what kind of rest does your body need. Once you've got those core values in place, actually doing the things you need to do to get the result you want becomes so much more easy because you've just got you've already written the guideline to achieving it, and I find that process is just so so helpful to clients to do that. But, as we were saying, another term for that is just setting boundaries as well.
Speaker 1:Right, and some people have an aversion to the word boundaries, like I. Myself am one of those people. I'm a bit of a people pleaser. I like everyone being happy. I want my kids, my husband, my family, my in-laws, my community, my, every customer of my company. I like everyone being happy. I want my kids, my husband, my family, my in-laws, my community, my, every customer of my company. I want everyone happy. So the word boundaries is actually nonsensical in my world sometimes because I'm like boundaries that's mean, boundaries is rude, boundaries is setting, you know, these lines between yourself and the people around you. That's not nice. One experiences a boundary nicely. But if you turn that around and call it your values, that's clear, like your core values around your diet, your movement, your happiness, your life and the way you explained it is like, oh well, I'm living by my values and I want to help everyone around me, but my values are my values, so I really like that, thank you.
Speaker 2:Actually, it goes a little bit further as well. So you start with your I core values, so they're core values that apply to you. Now, once you've set your I core values, then you can set what's called a we core values, which are the core values between you and one other person. So it might be you set core values with you and your husband, and it might be you know how much time do you get together on your own, or you know how many holidays you take a year, or whatever it might be, how many times you go out to dinner every week, or you know whatever it is you like doing together, and then, once you've got your we core values, you can set all core values for the family. But until you set your I core values, you can't set your we core values. And until you set your we core values, you can't set your all core values. So it's just a really good way of actually leading the life you want to lead, rather than a life that someone else thinks you should lead. Correct, I love that. So one more main question for you what would be your top three Ayurvedic tips for reducing inflammation and maintaining good gut health and pain-free joints.
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Speaker 1:Easy, fun, actually I love that question, my number, my top three ways to help with gut health. The first one is sleep. A sleep hygiene practice is the key to building great sleep. So many of us just run through our day, use our technology, work late in the night, don't cut off food and work in time. So, cutting off dinner by seven if your bedtime is 10 o'clock, cutting off your work by even earlier, but by eight latest, and by nine o'clock, switching into a self-care routine around bedtime, maybe it's hot shower, hot bath, dry brushing, a Pyong massage? We teach in IRV that we have a lot of things around sleep, but putting yourself to bed on time with intention is the greatest gift you can give yourself for clearing that inflammation overnight, supporting the body and rejuvenating the body wants to be healthy. It is we who are getting in the way.
Speaker 1:My number two tip tongue scraper. A copper tongue scraper is the key to gut digestive fire and clearing ama. Don't underestimate the problems that that toxin residue and toxic sludge in our body is causing. And so by using a tongue scraper, by doing seasonal detoxing as well, we can help reduce and unwind and remove that toxin burden that's in our body that's causing inflammation. I think about that a lot with food. If I'm buying food with lots of gums and extracts and different things in there chemicals where's my body body storing it? What if my body can't process it out? It's just storing it and my love handles are in different places looking for a place until it can clear it. That's going to cause.
Speaker 2:Is there? Is there sorry? Is there a good time to do tongue scraping? Is there a particular time that's best?
Speaker 1:first thing in the morning is the best time to use your tongue scraper Absolutely, and it's a good, easy morning habit. You brush your teeth right after you use your tongue scraper done and once you start using your tongue scraper, many people it's helped with their constipation. Many people tell me they have a different mouth, feel like their mouth feels cleaner, and so they miss it if they don't do it and I've noticed that too, I'll feel different if I missed it and I'll go back and do it. And then the final best way to reduce inflammation, in my opinion, is utilize turmeric. Taking potent turmeric extracts can help us significantly reduce inflammation, and we know that that inflammation is causing havoc. So to take it in a natural form can really help us win at inflammation and then we can start working on all the other big aspects the movement and the food and all the other things. But for me I like to get people out of pain first, so it's easier to do all the other good habits after that.
Speaker 2:I guess the other thing that'd be quite useful, so your number one was sleep. I completely agree with that. And again, getting to bed early also taps into the time when your growth hormone is potentially at its highest level, which means you can recover much better as well. But the other thing to reduce inflammation while you're asleep is if you use an earthing sheet as well. That would definitely help reduce inflammation as well. Awesome. So what's next for you, Shivani?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I am writing a book right now for Hay House, which is my whole life dream to write a book with a publishing house and so the book is complete. My editor is doing the final touches on it this month and then it goes to Hay House. I hope they love it, and the publishing date of it is January 2026. So that's what I've been working on. It feels like I birthed a baby and it's going to go out in the world and and I can't wait to see what it looks like when people start to step into their power and their health using Ayurveda for inflammation.
Speaker 2:We'll make sure, when it comes out, get back in touch and we can have a chat about the book when it comes out. Awesome, awesome, great stuff. Well, I certainly know. I've published five books, so I know what that process is like. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work first of all to write it, but then you realize you've actually got to promote it as well, which is just as much work. So you're welcome to come back on to help promote it in 18 months time or whenever it comes out.
Speaker 1:And where can people find you online? Sure. So my website is drshivanicom S-H-I-V-A-N-I, and on my site I have the Dosha quiz, my seven-day inflammation challenge, an anti-inflammatory cookbook, my Fusionary Health podcast A lot of things are there and then also a link to my supplement company, fusionary Formulas F-U-S-I-O-N-A-R-Y Formulas, where I have turmeric supplements, anti-inflammatory supplements, sleep solutions all those things. And I made a special code for your audience Radical15 will give them 15% off at Cutionary.
Speaker 2:Awesome, that's great, shivani. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure the audience are going to get a lot from it too as well.
Speaker 1:Me too. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It's been a pleasure. So that's all from Shivani and me for this week, but don't forget to join me same time, same place next week on the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for tuning in, remember to give the show a rating and a review, and I'll see you next time.
