We can now construct the “pillars of ayu,” the basic principles upon which health, happiness and harmony with natural law rest. These three pillars are referred to as ahara, vihara and aushadhi.
The first two of these supports, ahara and vihara, are concerned with diet and lifestyle and are fundamentally preventative in nature. When their principles are followed, the seeds of disease never get sown. They serve to educate us how to live life in harmony with natural law. The practical, easy to follow guidelines which ahara and vihara provide, assist us in bringing out the fullness of our life. When our prakruti is obscured by our vikruti, these dietary and behavioral recommendations will go a long way to bring balance back to our lives.
The imbalances that cannot be handled by these two pillars are managed by aushadhi, whose concern is treatment of disease. This third support of health translates literally as “medicine” and implies the various treatments that Ayurveda prescribes to bring us back to health.
AHARA: LIFE-SUPPORTING DIET
Ahara, the first pillar, means “intake” and refers to the knowledge of proper diet. It provides the first approach we can take to create and maintain ideal health and to alleviate the symptoms of illness. While diet will not cure well-established diseases, sixty percent of illnesses can be controlled solely by adjustments in diet and eating habits. Since diet is such a significant aspect of maintaining good health, we should be aware of what, when and how we are eating. If our eating habits are not conducive to health, we must be willing to make the changes necessary to stop the formation of new ama.
These changes entail eating to counteract our vikruti, or doshic imbalance. The last chapter gave an extensive list of foods that are dosha-specific, to help you determine a diet that is most appropriate for your particular constitutional type. In this article, we provide knowledge of the deleterious effects of certain foods as well as some general dietary guidelines which reduce the burden on the digestive fire, increase sattva in the mind and help alleviate symptoms of digestive dysfunction. These guidelines are valuable for everyone, regardless of their vikruti.
Ayurvedic Nutrition
The Ayurvedic understanding of nutrition is quite different from that of the West. The primary focus of Western nutrition is on the physical attributes of food: the amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Ahara, on the other hand, is concerned with the effects of various types of food on the quality of the mind, the digestion and the balance of the doshas. As discussed earlier, Ayurveda asserts that almost all diseases arise on a physical level from improper metabolism, and generally attributes this to weak digestive agni and imbalanced doshic functioning. Ayurveda also recognizes the crucial role proper nutrition plays in maintaining mental sattva — the key to keeping the parts of life fully connected to their underlying source in wholeness.
Role of Taste in Nutrition
Earlier, we alluded to the role that taste plays in both prapaka and vipaka digestion, the metabolic processes that create and maintain the dhatus. Complete nutrition requires that all six tastes be available in our daily diet, indicating that all five bhutas are present in the necessary proportions in our food. Because jala and prithvi bhutas are found in the greatest proportion in the body, the sweet taste associated with them is required in greater amounts for its strengthening and nourishing qualities.
To understand how food affects us, we must recognize that all five elements are present in the foods we eat and in the body’s organs and tissues. Governed by the doshas, digestion transforms food into substances suitable to the unique elemental composition of the various tissues and organs of the body. Like increases like. Food that is high in one bhuta increases the dosha which represents that bhuta in the body. For example, if we eat food dominated by prithvi and jala, it increases kapha and decreases akash and vayu, or vata dosha. Food high in agni increases pitta and decreases kapha.
Ayurveda uses taste to determine which elements are high in each food. The six basic tastes arise out of the various combinations and permutations of the five elements. As a result, certain tastes increase the influence of one dosha and decrease the effects of the other two. Since the elemental make-up of food can aggravate or excite a dosha, foods are categorized according to the tastes which pacify or decrease a doshas aggravation.
When we know the effect of tastes on the doshas, we can select foods which keep the doshas balanced and create optimum digestion. All three doshas must be nourished and this is accomplished by taking in all six tastes in the appropriate proportions on a daily basis. A diet habitually unbalanced in taste creates doshic disorders and ama. For instance, if we eat only sweet, sour and salty foods, vata gets nourished but pitta and kapha do not. This throws off the natural equilibrium that exists among the three of them.
The proper balance of tastes is slightly different for every individual. An appropriate diet takes both prakruti and vikruti into account. Such a diet can correct current imbalances by pacifying the excessive doshas and strengthening the weak ones. In this way it can bring us back into harmony with our true “nature.”
Let’s now look at the ways in which different foods affect both the quality of the mind and the body’s ability to convert them into substances capable of nourishing the dhatus. We start with an analysis of modern methods of food production and their consequences.
Microwaving & Genetic Engineering
Ayurveda states that humankind is part of nature. Therefore, any time nature is altered, the effects of that alteration will express itself directly in humanity. In modern man’s attempt to create convenience (microwave), produce food which is not vulnerable to the elements or insects, and has a longer shelf life, etc., (genetic engineering), there will be serious repercussions which, over time, the body may express through sluggish metabolism.
The Effects of Processed Foods
This century has transformed the ways in which food is prepared and presented to the consumer. Because of the rapid pace of life and the trend towards urbanization, we have less access to fresh food and less time to prepare it. As a result, we have become more and more dependent on packaged, processed food. Though this has added convenience to life, it has had a deleterious effect on physical and mental health.
Due to the high incidence of arterial and coronary diseases in the West, laws have been passed making it mandatory for manufacturers to list the contents of processed foods, particularly the amount of fat, sodium and carbohydrates. However, these labels do not inform us of the negative impact from the methods used to produce, process and preserve the food. From the Ayurvedic perspective, these considerations are extremely important in determining whether food is healthy or not. Let’s look at the consequences of various aspects of modern food production for the mind, digestion and doshic balance.
Chemicals in Food Production
Most of today’s food, whether it is meat or vegetables, is grown with artificial fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, herbicides and pesticides. Because of the synthetic or inorganic nature of these substances, the body has great difficulty metabolizing them and, as a result, they produce a toxic residue which blocks the shrotas. This prevents nutritive substances from reaching the dhatus; in addition, these poisonous substances damage the dhatus themselves.
Foods derived from the killing of animals may give physical energy and strength, but they have a harmful side effect. At the time of death, the animal experiences both fear and anger — the same emotions we would experience if our lives were threatened. Science is now starting to discover that every emotion has a corresponding biochemical within the body which translates that emotional reaction into a physical response. The chemicals in the meat that are associated with fear and anger trigger the “fight or flight” response in our system, which stimulates the production of adrenaline and other stress hormones. This response strains the system, and when activated often enough, creates wear and tear on the body and eventually decreases the immune system’s ability to perform its job.
The anger-producing influence of meat also aggravates pitta, because anger is a hot emotion. Since meat is such a heavy substance to digest, it also greatly taxes agni’s capacity to metabolize it. The effects of eating red meat are borne out in the latest research which shows that meat-eaters are more prone to heart disease, various degenerative diseases and cancer. Finally, from the perspective of mental health, the anger and fear in meat create rajas and tamas in the mind, overshadowing sattva and clouding our experience of “knowingness.”
Freezing
Time is at a premium in Western countries, creating a habit of cooking one large meal and freezing the leftovers. When the food is defrosted, a new meal is available without much additional trouble. Though the defrosted food looks and tastes pretty much the same, and has the same components of fat, carbohydrates and protein, it has a very different influence on the body and mind than fresh food. Refrigerated or frozen food can no longer enliven the sattvic quality in the mind nor truly nourish the body. It has lost its essential vitality.
Ayurveda calls any food which has been left overnight, paryushit, or “lifeless food.” To illustrate this point, notice what happens when you defrost food and set it beside the same food in fresh form. The defrosted food decomposes much more quickly, taking on a dried, colorless look, and starts to give off a putrid odor after a short time, indicating vata dominance.
When we eat fresh food, we take in and assimilate its orderly structure. This nourishes us and increases orderliness in our own structure. When we eat old or defrosted food, we consume substances that have already been subjected to the disorganizing effects of entropy. We essentially ingest disorder and, as the saying goes: “We are what we eat.” When we take in disorder, it generates a disorganizing influence in the body. Rather than promote proper tissue formation through the production of refined end-products, it accelerates dhatu degeneration by creating unmetabo-lized precursors of disease.
In addition, food that has been subjected to cold develops a heavy, kaphic quality which puts a strain on our digestive fire, thus further impeding the ability of the metabolic processes to assimilate any remaining orderliness or nutritive value that may be left in the food. Agni always prefers to work on food substances that are at body temperature or slightly warmer.
What we are discussing here are the basic laws of thermodynamics as they manifest in the body. The third law of thermodynamics states that a system can maintain its orderly structure and prevent the disintegrating effects of entropy — described by the second law — only if order is constantly introduced.
Ayurveda is not against the principle of refrigeration, which helps to preserve food. It does caution against eating cold foods or drinks or leftover cooked foods. Applying agni to any food accelerates the transformation process, speeding up the movement of the food towards disintegration. If we do not eat food soon after cooking, it loses its dhatu-healing ability because it goes quickly into the third, or vata, stage of transient metabolism. If the food that we eat is already in the pungent phase, it can only have a degenerative effect on the body. Refrigeration cannot impede this process in already cooked food.
A final but very important point in this regard is that the quality of tamas dominates old or lifeless food. Tamas creates a thick veil of dullness and inertia over the mind, intellect and senses, which obscures our ability to see and choose what is good for us, impairing the functions of dhi, dhriti, and smriti.
Chemical Preservation
Food which is preserved chemically has essentially the same effect as food preserved by freezing. However, it has the added harmful influence of the synthetic chemicals used to retard spoilage.
Raw Foods
The emphasis on fresh food inevitably brings up the question of eating raw as opposed to cooked food. Some people in the West believe that it is much healthier to have a diet composed mainly of salads and uncooked vegetables. The argument in favor of eating raw foods states that the process of cooking destroys food’s natural enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Ayurveda, on the other hand, asserts that the potential of these nutrients is not actually available to the body until agni is applied in the form of heat. The conversion process that takes place during cooking saves the agni in the pitta zone of the body from having to work so hard to make .the nutritive components in the vegetables available to the dhatus.
Earlier we discussed the physiological roles of agni and pitta. Agni has a general conversion function, whereas pitta has a more specific role. It supplies the necessary digestive secretions to metabolize food. When agni is weak, pittas digestive ability decreases. With raw foods, we also have to expend more energy in mastication in order to supply increased kapha secretions to ingest the dry, raw foods. This increases vata by exhausting the kapha function. Consequently, in the end, raw foods offer relatively less energy and nutritive substance for the body’s post-absorptive metabolic processes than cooked foods.
The Three Pillars of Ayu
In addition, the hard, rough and cold qualities of raw foods increase vata. People whose diet consists primarily of raw foods show a higher incidence of vata aggravation, evidenced by dry, rough skin, some slight emaciation, often scattered, unfocused mental capacity or weakened digestive capacity. These symptoms are more pronounced in people who already have vata vikruti.
This does not mean that raw foods should be eliminated from our diet, but in general, they should not compose more than a quarter of our food intake. Obesity or excess kapha, however, constitute an exception to this rule. In these situations, the separating or wasting influence in raw foods makes them beneficial.
FermentationFermentation provides a popular way of flavoring food. Our everyday diet includes many fermented foods, such as vinegar, alcohol, soy sauce, yogurt, cheese, yeasted breads and crackers, pickles and ketchup. The dictionary defines fermentation as a chemical transformation with effervescence, or the transformation of an organic substance by agitation or intense activity. Both these definitions indicate that vata, or motion, has a more pronounced influence in fermented substances.
Earlier we explained that vata’s disintegrating force dominates the third stage of prapaka digestion, where bubbles are created as water separates from solid substance. In fermented foods, the disintegration process has started even before we eat them. When we ingest this type of food, it disturbs the sweet and sour phases of prapaka digestion, and aggravates the pungent phase as well. As was mentioned above, vata has a separating influence which both prevents proper tissue formation and produces tissue degeneration. This knowledge shows why tissue degeneration or emaciation is one of the most pronounced effects of alcohol abuse.
Fermented foods are also considered paryushit — “lifeless food,” and as a result, create tamas or dullness in the mind. Again, alcohol offers a good example of the effects of fermented substances on the quality of the mind. Alcohol produces weak, faulty cognition, dulls the senses, slows down physical responses and impairs coordination.
In a number of research studies in India, laboratory animals were fed sattvic, rajasic and tamasic foods. When they were given fresh, mostly vegetarian food, they became calm, alert and lively. However, when they ate leftover foods, frozen foods and non-vegetarian foods, they became restless and violent. Cbaraka wrote thousands of years ago that too much rajas and tamas weakens digestion and creates illness. We can verify for ourselves the influence of various kinds of food in our lives. When we avoid old, fermented, excessively pungent foods, we will see how digestion improves, the mind and senses become clear, and peace and calmness settle into our lives.
Refined Foods
Manufacturers alter the nature of the food and improve its appearance, flavor or texture through yet another method — refinement. In this process, the fibrous covering is separated from the food. We see this most often in the refinement of wheat, rice and sugar. Removing the roughage diminishes food’s holistic benefits. The fiber surrounding the nutritive component is essential for peristalsis in the colon. Constipation is one of the most common outcomes of eating refined foods.
The refining process yields end-products which are small and highly potent, and which accelerate, the movement of vata. As a result, agni does not have time to metabolize them before they are assimilated. Rather than nourish the dhatus, these substances promote disintegration.
Refined sugar illustrates this well. Unlike unprocessed sugarcane juice, which contains many minerals and nutrients, refined sugar quickly passes undigested through rasa and rakta metabolism, immediately overloading the liver, pancreas and other organs of the pitta zone. Its light, refined quality increases pungency which generates fermentation. This then increases acidity and quickly consumes the body’s minerals and other nutrients.
Children who eat too much refined sugar (candies, chocolate, cookies, etc.) become hyperactive for some time after eating these foods, showing the influence of excessive vata. Studies also indicate that over-consumption of sweets and chocolate produce a long-term depletion of calcium in the bones, one of vata’s seats. Teeth provide an obvious manifestation of bone formation, and high levels of sugar consumption have been directly correlated with tooth decay.
Fried Foods
Frying is another popular way to prepare food. Though this process enhances taste, the oil in the food makes it heavy and difficult to digest because it taxes agni’s ability to metabolize it. Fried food produces an acidic residue in the stomach which creates hyperacidity. The resulting increase in heat also generates a rajasic influence in the mind, as do any hot, spicy substances. In addition, deep-fried foods promote tamas in the mind due to the heaviness arising from the large amount of oil used in cooking.
Additives, Colorings and Flavorings
Unfortunately, food manufacturers commonly enhance the taste and appearance of food through the use of artificial flavors and colors. These substances are as indigestible as all the other synthetic chemicals used in food production and preservation. They deplete agni and poison the body.
Sugar and Salt
Much of the processed food we eat is heavily salted or sweetened. Sugar and salt not only improve the flavor but act to preserve the food; bacteria cannot live in high concentrations of either sugar or salt. A little bit of sugar or salt improves rasa metabolism and pacifies vata. However, when taken in excess, they have a toxic effect on the system. Too much sugar aggravates kapha and increases rajas and over time, creates mental tamas. Too much salt aggravates pitta and produces rajas.
Hot, Spicy Food
Spices play an important role in food preparation. They augment pitta secretions in the body’s mid-zone, helping pitta to metabolize food efficiently. However, in the modern diet, many foods have such a high concentration of spices that they produce the opposite influence on digestion. The amount of heat in foods like pizza? Mexican food, barbecue sauces, pickles, mustard, etc., generates*pitta imbalances, which create indigestion. These spicy foods also significantly increase mental rajas, which makes us feel restless and agitated.
Carbonation
A significant number of people in Western societies take a large percentage of their fluids in the form of carbonated beverages. The carbonation process injects carbon dioxide into flavored, sweetened water. This gives the drink a refreshing quality and enhances its taste, but the effervescence generates intense activity, which vitiates vata and produces hyperactivity in the G-I tract. This impedes absorption and assimilation and creates rajas in the mind as well.
Food Allergies
Many people are now starting to develop allergies to specific foods, particularly wheat and dairy. However, from the Ayurvedic point of view, the foods are not the culprits. The source of the problem lies in the way they are processed, preserved and presented. Let’s take milk as an example. When milk is homogenized, it is subjected to a process that augments vata. In addition, preserving it through refrigeration and serving it cold greatly increases milk’s already kaphic influence. This heaviness creates a burden on the digestive fire, which ultimately weakens its ability to digest the milk. Food allergies are symptoms caused by the body’s inability to digest those particular foods. Sinus and respiratory problems, as well as skin conditions, comprise some of the many manifestations of food allergies.
Fresh, Whole Foods
When we eat fresh foods which are naturally sweet, while blending all six tastes, our bodies get deeply nourished, our intellects grow sharper and our memories improve. Natural foods, prepared from fresh ingredients, are easy to digest and amplify the sattvic quality of the mind. When sattva dominates, it’s simple to live in a way that supports health.