Healing the gut with Ayurveda

Food intolerances, tummy bloating, skin eruptions, brain fog, allergies, auto immune disease, exhaustion; these are just some of the problems that can result from a damaged gut. There is a huge difference between how Ayurveda handles this disease to how your doctor is most likely to handle it. I thought I'd explain a little bit about the way that I would help a client who came to me with these problems.

So many factors are involved and the first thing that I do is to assess the balance of their doshas. Their current state is called vikriti and this allows me to understand what work needs to be done to bring back balance. Through diet and lifestyle we can reduce the aggravation of the doshas involved.

Focus on digestion is vital and so diet and lifestyle advice is given to work on this. Boosting teas and foods and changes to eating habits will strengthen the digestion. Sometimes these changes are quite a task for a person and I see why people often would prefer to go to the doctor for the quick fix, but this is just a sticking plaster and not true healing. Turmeric is a herb that I usually advise is taken and is very useful for healing a torn gut. This is very nice to take in warm milk as a soothing drink.

A few days of amapachana is advised. This is to help the detoxification process through the addition of special spiced teas using herbs such as ginger and fennel.

Microbiome is the name for the colonies of bacteria that live on and in us. They are vital for our health and well-being and you will have heard of the good bacteria and bad bacteria, often used to promote some of the supermarket yoghurt drinks. Apart from that you may have heard very little about bacteria, but it is a major cause of illness today. Change this and you can reverse most illness, even depression and ADHD! The good thing is that this can often be done purely through diet and lifestyle changes, without the need for medication. In actual fact it can be the medication which makes matters worse over time. So a diet that focuses on probiotics and prebiotics is essential, and sometimes this alone is enough to completely cure a person of their disease. Isn't that great news ? The thing that could cure your illness could be as simple as diet! It is highly likely that your body is calling out for medicine in the form of nutrition, not pharmaceutical drugs.

Another thing to take in to account is stress. What is going on in this person's life? Are they working too hard? Are they under exercising or over exercising? When did all of this start? Did they have antibiotics or start taking other medications that could have caused this gut problem and if they did, what was the reason for the medication? It is not enough for a person to make dietary changes and start exercising if the root cause is not tackled. Emotional toxins from unresolved issues can cause physical ailments throughout a person's life. Symptoms may lift for a while through changes and medications but they are more likely than not, to manifest elsewhere.

Can you relate to this? Do you have food intolerances that are bringing you down? Do you constantly feel tired and achy? Have you tried to cut out gluten, dairy or other foods that you think are making you poorly? Gluten is not the enemy. It is a harmless protein to a person with a healthy gut. So, if you have a damaged gut what other substances are being taken in to your body, far more harmful than gluten? If I do have a client that is gluten intolerant then of course, they need to continue to leave gluten out of their diet until their gut has been healed and strengthened. This reminds me of a client a couple of years ago that suffered each time she ate bread. Her stomach would bloat and she would have pain and often constipation or diarrhoea. I asked her to make changes to her diet and especially to the way that she ate and within a couple of weeks she was pain free. She messaged me to tell me that for the first time in a while she had been naughty and ate some white garlic bread and drank more wine than she perhaps should have done, but she had suffered no symptoms at all! This was great news for both of us and although I wouldn't advise anybody to eat white garlic bread and drink too much wine on a regular basis, the fact that she could do this was the proof that she had healed herself.

Ayurveda focuses always on gut health and regardless of what problem a client has come to me with, always their digestion is what we look at first. Your gut lining should be your protection, keeping things in to be excreted rather than leaking throughout your system. So keep it that way. Look after your gut and your whole health will shine.

If you do suffer with any of the things mentioned above, why not book a consultation with me, or get in touch and I can send you some information on how to heal yourself through diet and lifestyle changes.