Fasting is good for health

Abstimous eating and good health have a positive relationship ever since the dawn of life on earth. May be this is why Ayurveda accord prime importance to fasting. As a matter of fact, fast observed on festivities and auspicious occasions, is primaily aimed at promoting good health. Says Dr. Swaminathan Misra, a teacher at ‘Yoga and Nature Care Centre’ : Navratras festival is veritable baseline of human health. This 9 days’ fasting carnival aims at arousing 9 different kinds of spiritual powers by way of meditation. Hence people forgo food as ritual.
Otherwise too, fasting during Navratras is significant because in spring season digestive system swings low as Kapha tends to go wayward. This leads to digestive problems for which fasting acts as an effective antidote.
It goes without saying that fasting helps alleviate material pressure on digestive organs. Entrails already having onous talks of digesting and eleminating errant Kapha would doubtless be overworked if regular intake of food is not interrupted. But for fasting, digestive organs would go bust leading to ailments of various kinds. Thanks to the ritual of skipping meals, digestive organs get enough space and time to spruce up and clean the body of myriad wastes and faecal material. Thus body gets its bearings, and numerous disease like colds, fevers, headache, and blemishes of blood And skin etc are waved off in time.
Total fasting, idealy, involves intake of water alone. But those who find it hard to subsist of water for a stretch of nine days may take recourse to fruit juice, coconut water, beaten rice, cuisine of kachnar flower etc, albeit only once in a day. It is best if fried foods and sweatmeats are avoided during this phase of food restriction.
Equally important is sacrosanct living while you abnegate routine feasting. Do your daily prayers (havana) and breathing exercise (pranayama) daily in morning, and put on clean cloths after envigorating hot water bath. Meditation too is important. Taking yellow flowers home and putting on yellow coloured attires are deemed blissful as these vibe with joi-de-vivre of the festivity.
A lean frame levers your pesonality
Women folk today are more conscious about their looks and appearance than ever before. Indeed beauty matters, and for an attractive figure, it is necessary to be slim and trim. And that, contrary to popular feminine perspective, doesn’t mean being thin and lean. Most women venture into dieting hoping to dash down on body weight. And that for from making them good looking, makes them appear sick and ill at ease.
Such misadventures tell on health. Skin becomes lacklustre and eyes acquire dark patches on lower margins. Hence, first of all, one must get rid of widespread notion that being thin and lean necessarily means being healthy and looking good.
An attractive body frame is essentially one devoid of surplus fat deposits. When traces of obesity are missing, you look lean and win admiration. Ergo, don’t try to get rickety on delibuate dieting. For a debonair body following tips can help:
❑ First meal of the day, breakfast, is key to go cracking whole day long. So, never skip your breakfast. It will give you life energy that you would need for rest of the day. Fruits, skimmed milk, porridge, juices and sprouted grains make ideal breakfast.
❑ Don’t venture out on so-called dieting. Take a balanced and nutritious diet which provides your body all the necessary elements for a healthy and disease free existence. Self monitored dieting may leave you malnourished and deficient in vitamins, calcium, iron and minerals.
❑ Avoid fat rich foods as these provide colories which are much more than what body actually requires. This doesn’t augur well from nutritional point of view. Even deep fried cuisines should be avoided. Instead, roasted and grilled food should be choosen.
Gout is manageable with prudent food regime
As compared to men, women are three times more likely to suffer from gout. All the more so when they are in the age group 35 to 50 years.
The most common type of gout seen around in one related to bones (Osteoarthritis), especially in people past their prime. When the natural cushion over bone ends aligning in a joint is injured, and remain unhealed, bones batter against eacth other. That creates friction in joint, and consequential pain. And why not, as major brunt of body mass and movements is borne by the bones of hip joint, knee joint and the arm elbows.
Ergo, when an obese contract gout, joints are all the more encumberd with pressure and pain. Eating habits have a significant bearing on this whole issue. Eat well, and gout is low down. Eat foul, and gout gets difficult to live with.
A vitamin enriched nutirtious diet can slow down march of arthritis in the skeletal system. Ditto for a diet rich in antioxidants.
Gout, incidently, may happen even as an after effect of food allergy, and in that case it is treated differently from mainstream arthritis. Fortifying your meal with select vitamins and food factors, studies have revealed, can check bone arthritis significantly. Patient who live on foods rich in antioxidants are more likely to overcome gout in a short span of time.
Those who take high doses of vitamin E, C and Beta carotene, benefit immensely. Statistically speaking, chances of gout aggravation go down by 75% when patients are put on a diet flush with Vitamin D.
Some experiments have proved that changing the type of fat used in cooking, body immune system can be strengthned. Being low on alcohol and high on purine lowers blood uric acid level and reduces clot formation in blood. Wide ranging investigations have proved that the ace allergy producing food items are : maize, wheat, orange, grapes, milk, oats, egg, beef, coffee, cheese, pea, tomato, sugercane, butter, lemon, soya etc.
Patients of arthritis are advised to take vegetarian diet to the extent of 80% of their total intake. Vegetables, cereals, pod vegies, seeds and fruits are recommended. Switching from non-vegetarian to a vegetarian diet has resulted in firming up of joint capsules, and marked reduction in pain, swelling and morning time joint-jamming in arthritis patients. So the technical advice, eat less of meat. Better still, give up meat eating altogether. Infact fat content of flesh diet promote demineralisation of bones, a process that aids gout formation.
That apart, cured meat products like backon, ham, hot dog and cold cuts carry chemical preservatives which speed up onset of arthritis. As a matter of fact animal flesh in itself is a big trigger of bone disorders. Yet if your weakness for non-veg is unsurmountable, it is better that you stick to fish and marine products.
Notably, codliver oil available from fish ups body’s defence mechanism very significantly, and waves cytokine coupling to the extent of 40-45% . Researchers aver that a consistent fish diet will always keep you safe from gout. Inclusion of ginger in your daily diet is also helpful. Ditto for turmeric, harar, and clove oil.
Fried food doesn’t augur well for arthritic patients. So also refined oil, coconut oil, palm oil, corn oil and margrine. Avoid using synthetic aroma and chemical preservatives in food items as these cause allergy which adds to chances of gout formation. Plenty of water and liquid drinks are recommended to gout patients, so that body system is flushed clean of harmful elements and gets fine tuned. Take a glassful of water before your meal. A mixed juice of cucumber, carrot and parsley is beneficial for painful joints.
But milk and milk products are best avoided. So also vegetabeles like tomato, potato, brinjal etc. Apart from these, even white sugar, wheat flour, dried fruits, alcohol, tobacco, coffee and other intoxicants too are harmful for arthritis patients.
Whether a food item is promoting gout or not is best judged by abstaining from it for a two week stretch. And then switching on to it and see whether symptoms of arthritis lie low or flare up. Albeit inclusion or exclusion of a food substance in routine diet ought to be done with physician’s advice. And all along take care to keep your body supple with regular exercise.

What to eat, and how?
It goes without saying that whatsoever we eat or drink, impacts our health substantially. Bad food makes us ill. Veracity of eating habits is all the more crucial in present day environ of pace and excitement. Breaking on issue, the chief instructor of the Institute for Positive Health Mr. Gyanchand makes clear finding of his research work thus— Present day circumstances of man are such that his mind and body are subject to enormous pressures. These in turn have messed with his digestive system, what with haste and anxiety giving little time to chewing and masticating your food. Ergo fluid and semi-solid food appears more apt and relevant. Other relevent suggestions are as follows:
❑ Pulses, dry fruits, roasted, souped, saused, sweetened or salted cereals are easy to digest. The above said institute has
25-30 recipes of such soups and sauces.
❑ Soups made out of select combination of vegetables and grains, and simply made sweetmeats are good for health. In sickness, mixed recipe of myriad vegetables, spices and cereal grains are helpful.
❑ Mint, green coriander, leaves of neem and grape, beetle leaf etc may be judiciously mixed in vegetables and other food items to make delicious and easy to digest combinations.
❑ Rice-vegetable, and bread-vegetable-pulses, may be grinded to a pulp in a mixer and savoured in spoonfuls. This would be easy on digestion as well as save time.
❑ Some select salad vegetables make excellent recipe when whirred in a mixer with yoghurt (curd). Even such vegies as one conventionally cooked, go well with curd when churned even in raw state. For example pumpkin, gourd, capsicum, carrot, bathua, choulai and mustard leaves.
❑ Mesh dry fruits in good curd and pepper it with dry powdered ginger and black salt, and what you have is a powerful antidote to many a diseases of the gastrointestinal track.
❑ It’s not advisable to take rice with pulses. Both being rich in starch, the combination falls heavy on digestive system. Rice should always be taken with vegetables or fruits or with vegie soups. Since rice has innate character of flaring up gas problem, it is best taken with mint, ginger, fenugreek and red chilly.
❑ Of the sprouted lentils, moong sabut or moth is best. Whole black masoor taken in sprouted form is best for many physical ailments.
❑ Banana is an excellent fruit cum vegetable. It is best taken with the skin infact, unpeeled that is. Fruit’s fibrous cover is excellent remedy for many a diseases.
❑ Kidney bean (Moong) husk is medicine in itself. It relieves constipation and indigestion. Used in myriad forms, it is capable of curing many disease condition. Even soup made of kidney bean cover, with or without other vegetables, is good for health.
❑ Porridge makes a perfect nutritive food when coupled with vegetables, dry fruits, and appropriate spices. In such combination it works well even in disease and sickness.
❑ Rock salt, mustard grains, carum, aniseed, bishop’s seed, fenugreek, black white pepper, dry coriander, and turmeric; all these not only add to taste of recipe, but also act as potent drugs in various combinations. These are part of widely used grandama remedies for stomach upset, pain and exhaustion.
❑ Use of Amla (whole or powdered) in food is beneficial in pain, gastrointestinal disorder and depression.
❑ An average healthy person should take a hearty breakfast. Even fried cuisines like parantha, puri and sweatmeats can be taken. The only rider being that you remain busy whole day long. Walking, talking and working in high spirits will digest even a heavy meal, releasing oodles of energy to keep you going. Albeit a heavy meal before retiring at night is harmful for health.
❑ Simple salubrious food is best at dinner. Fruit salad and half boiled vegetables are easily digestible, energising and blood cleansing recipes best slated for supper.
❑ For tiffin in office and work places, vegie stuffed chapatis, paranthas and leafy vegetables are apt. All the better if these are taken with soup or butter milk.
This, observes Gyanchand the ace dietician, is a mere outline of food reform regimen. As a matter of fact food is a deep and wide ranging subject—almost tailor made uniquely for every individual, Ergo, only an expert can make it clear and carriable.
A man is counselled on food related regime keeping in mind diverse factors like the person’s physical constitution and capacity, environment of work place as also of the native geographical area.

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