Ayurveda Diet: Regaining Balance and Eliminating Toxins
 Since ayurveda is heavily based on the principles of Eastern medicine, it relies a great deal on the patient's ability to live a healthy lifestyle, including eating a nutritious diet. In fact, one of the main aspects of the practice of ayurveda , as well as one of the most common ayurveda treatments is implementing a traditional ayurveda diet.
Practitioners of ayurveda believe that toxins can build up in your body from the things that you eat, and these toxins can manifest into disease and illness. Toxicology is one of the eight disciplines in ayurveda, and according to followers of the practice the answer to eliminating these toxins is the ayurveda diet and use of herbs. The goal of the diet is to maintain a healthy balance in the body and eliminate and prevent these toxins, which are divided into three different types:
- Ama - This is the waste product that gets built up along the digestive tract and can become toxic if it is not cleared out. An ayurveda diet is made up of foods that are easy to digest, making for less ama buildup.
- Amavish - This type of toxin forms when ama mixes with other waste that builds up in the body, like urine. Since the diet reduces the amount of ama, it also reduces the chances that amavish can develop.
- Garavisha - This is a type of toxin that comes from environmental factors outside the body, such as arsenic, lead, asbestos, chemicals, pollutants, smoke, poison, alcohol, drugs, and many others. It is believed that the ayurveda diet can help your body better process these outside toxins when they do enter the body.
While easily digested and cleansing foods are usually on the ayurveda health menu, there is a lot more to an ayurveda diet than just simply choosing the right foods. Most foods are broken down into six tastes -- sour, sweet, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. It is believed that each of these tastes should be represented in ayurveda recipes, and not doing so can lead to an imbalance and toxins. Foods are also categorized into heavy/light, unctuous/liquid, and warm/cool. Each body type, or dosha, requires a different mixture of these foods to achieve proper balance. Because of this, it is recommended that you seek the guidance of an experienced ayurveda doctor when considering an ayurveda diet to ensure you get the right balance for your body type. |
