Keeping in Touch Newsletter
Spring 2008
Contents
Spring into Health: What You Need to Know About This Season
Book Review: Survival of the Sickest
Spring into Health: What You Need to Know About This Season
Spring is just a few weeks away, bringing with it a highly changeable environment. Weather can range from cold to warm, windy to balmy, and dry to rainy. Many types of pollen are released into the air, and in late spring, lawns are mowed, adding particulate grasses to the mix.
I work with Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in my practice, and both have something useful to say about this time of year.
Ayurveda says that early spring is still Kapha season; late spring may be closer to Pitta season, depending on where you live. But everyone's Vata dosha may be provoked by the sudden changes of weather from day to day in addition to the wind. Change and wind increase Vata, and those with other dominant doshas can still be affected by it.
One of the most helpful things you can do to keep Vata calm is to keep a regular schedule of eating, sleeping and working. Take time to do restorative yoga, even if you just lay down for 15 minutes. Continue to eat healthy foods with spices that support digestion according to your individual physical constitution.
Allergies
Many people are affected by allergies this time of year. The best thing you can do overall is to keep your primary dosha balanced, and especially avoid diary foods because they stimulate mucus production. Get plenty of rest, which will help support the best functioning of your immune system. Also, it can feel just wonderful to sit out in the spring sunlight after being cooped up all winter. Ideally, the hours of 10 - 12 and 3 -5 are best to avoid overexposure to UV rays. (More about a surprising role of sunlight in the book review!)
In TCM, spring is associated with the Wood Element, and especially the Liver, which is about creativity and birth. Liver, and its partner Gall Bladder, can get too much of a "push" from the spring weather, so if you are easily angered or frustrated (the emotions associated with these two meridians), take extra care to manage your stress. Most helpful is fairly strenuous exercise that gets your blood and chi moving. You release Excess Heat from the Liver by doing so (as long as you're not being overly competitive), and of course, in accordance with the advice from your healthcare professional.
Some Useful Herbs for Spring:
Milk thistle is considered to be a gentle, safe herb to support Liver function.
Equal parts nettles and oatstraw made into tea give excellent support to the nervous system, which is calming to Vata and to Pitta also.
To calm Vata and buffer against respiratory allergic reaction, you can try combining (powder the herbs and encapsulate them): marshmallow root, ginger, ashwaganda, hingvashtak, and cinnamon. Triphala is useful to support colon tone and health.
Pittas need to take care to avoid overly competitive activities and give their perfectionist tendencies a rest. This can provoke Liver heat. Cooling sedative nervine herbs, such as skullcap and passionflower can reduce aggravated Pitta. Leafy green salads are excellent for Pitta because they're cooling. (Not so great for Vata this time of year, though, unless a warming beverage or soup is included.)
Kaphas just need to avoid the cold and damp; staying warm, dry and physically active will benefit them the most. Herbs that are drying, pungent and astringent will benefit them, such as elecampane, Siberian ginseng, dandelion, horehound (for mucus), thyme, garlic and fennel.
BOOK REVIEW: (I link to Amazon so you can read other book reviews and conveniently purchase the book, new or used, if you want to)
SURVIVAL OF THE SICKEST: a Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease,
by Dr. Sharon Moalem.
This book is one of the best nonfiction reads I've had in a long time. Dr. Moalem has a Ph.D. in human physiology and in the new fields of neurogenetics and evolutionary medicine. (His research discovered a genetic association with Alzheimer's Disease.)
I invite you to open the book and open your mind to the ideas presented in this thoughtful book which thinks very much outside of the usual "box" when it comes to illness. Instead of looking at illness as a disaster or enemy (like Western medicine), or purely an opportunity for spiritual growth and/or a message from our bodies (a la New Age and alternative systems), he puts a whole new spin on the question: why do we get sick?
It should be noted that these are new, cutting edge theories, based on research and extrapolating from that research. For some, it might not be scientific or "proven" enough. However, I love playing with new ideas and ways of looking at old problems. This was fun and provided many "aha!" moments.
He proposes that many ailments of today, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, food allergies, viral and bacterial infections, and others began as a tool for our survival as a species.
Here are two brief (and fascinating) examples:
What we now call Type II diabetes may have been an evolutionary advantage way back in the days of the ice age. When you think about symptoms of diabetes, such as high blood sugar levels and needing to urinate frequently, and put them against the backdrop of the freezing cold ice age, it begins to make sense. Food (and especially carbs) was scarce then; it would be an advantage to be able to make the best use of glucose and get it into the bloodstream. Releasing a lot of the body's water with frequent urination might have prevented some damage to tissues from freezing.
He talks about research being done about why wood frogs are able to completely freeze solid during the winter and then wake up with warmer weather with no harm done. These frogs collect a lot of glucose and move it close to their vital organs as the freezing takes place. Hmm... and now that we have a lot more access to carbohydrates and sugars, this isn't working so well for the descendents of the ones who survived the ice age.
You might also be interested to know that cholesterol helps our bodies to manufacture vitamin D. Another way this happens is through exposure to sunlight. Dr. Moalem cites research that shows overall higher cholesterol readings in the winter months (with other contributing factors taken into account) which then decrease in the spring. Perhaps our bodies are trying to help us with vitamin D manufacturing when there's a scarcity of sunlight. It's also true that we stay indoors a lot more now than we used to.
He also goes into a lot of detail about how genes, DNA, and RNA all work. I believe the deeper science gets into biology and physics, the more obvious it may become that some sort of intelligent design is involved. His descriptions and detail about how the building blocks of life work allow us to see how intelligent, intricate and adaptable we are, even at the sub cellular level.
I began reading this book out of professional curiosity and by the time I finished, I was in awe of the workings of our bodies, from the so-called "gross" physical/obvious aspect, to the genes and bits of genes themselves. You'll learn things, possibly think about illness and health differently, and certainly come away with an increased understanding of the miracle of life.
Wishing you health and happiness,
Jan Fiore
