12 Best Ayurvedic Tips To Remember On This Remarkable Day of the 21st Century

Ayurveda is an exemplary healing methodology that aims at granting complete health and harmony with nature. Every individual is considered as a unique part of nature and special care is taken before recommending natural remedies for treating any kind of illnesses. The best thing about this holistic science is that it focuses on prevention of diseases rather than just curing it after its occurrence. Purifying the human system by removing the toxic imbalances in the body and strengthening the immune system enables an individual to gain natural power for resisting harmful diseases and enjoy good health even after 50 years of age.

12-12-12 is a remarkable day in the 21st century and to come across such an excitement like this again, we have to wait for another hundred years when 12-12-2112 of the 22nd century would come to enthrall our forthcoming generation. Instead of building castles in the air, let’s empower ourselves with 12 simple and startling Ayurvedic tips on this worth remembering day in the history just to show that you are strong enough to fight more than 120 diseases.

12 Ayurvedic tips to remember:

1. Ayurvedic routine: The first thing that I would suggest is to take up an Ayurvedic routine also known as Dinacharya, which will bring in complete newness and revivify your lives. Everything in your day-to-day living will take up a firm change right from rising early till going to bed early.

2. Natural bowel movement: Drink a cup of warm water either with a teaspoon of raw honey or few drops of fresh lime juice as it fosters the natural bowel movement of your body, helping you to eliminate the toxins from your body.

3. Oral hygiene: Ayurvedic texts like Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita have talked about the importance of maintaining complete oral care. Dental health is known as Danta Swasthya in Sanskrit and it is said that the predominance of doshas and nature decides health care in Ayurveda and dental health also falls in this class. This natural science recommends the use of natural dental sticks especially from the Neem tree with astringent, acrid and bitter taste, supporting the health of the gums and preventing tooth problems. Brushing after every meal or at least twice daily a day is recommended.

Mentioned as Gandusha or Kavala in Charaka Samhita, oil pulling or swishing of vegetable oils like sesame oil, coconut oil or sunflower oil for about 20 minutes in the morning in empty stomach is said to treat about 30 systemic illnesses ranging from headache, migraine to asthma and diabetes. It is also proven to treat severe oral problems like plaque, gingivitis, toothache, oral cavities, halitosis, tooth decay etc, while effectively removing all the harmful toxins in the body. Ayurveda also suggests the scrapping or cleaning the tongue to remove the toxins or ama stored on it.

4. Yoga and physical exercises: Yoga is always a part of Ayurvedic healing and practicing simple physical exercises, breathing exercises like Pranayama and systematic Yoga is said to treat the imbalances in the body and help prevent harmful health disorders. Exercising and yoga practices on a regular basis for at least 15 minutes a day, especially in the early hours of the day relaxes the nerves, restores health, regenerates the body and rejuvenates your muscles.

5. Meditation: Meditation is an important part of Ayurveda as it helps to spend some quality time for self, supports self-realization, augments mental health and paves way for increased life span. Meditating regularly treats innumerable health disorders, gives a good start for the day and helps in calming the nerves and soothing the senses.

6. Prayer: Prayer is the best way to surrender yourselves to your Almighty, the Super Power above us. Spending few minutes in prayer before starting your day will grant you immense confidence and the real power to face your daily challenges. Ayurveda trusts that prayer strengthens your spiritual feelings and brings in real divinity.

7. Abhyanga or Ayurvedic oil massage: Ayurvedic texts suggest Ayurvedic oil massage for a supple, soft, strong and healthy body as it promotes blood circulation, fortifies the nervous system, relieves muscular pain, invigorates your mind, enhances the function of the lymphatic system and removes the toxins from the body. Ayurvedic essential oils like Lavender oil, Patchouli oil, Turmeric oil, Calamus oil, Tea tree oil, Ylang Ylang oil, Peppermint oil and many other essential oils have innumerable therapeutic properties to aid your well-being.

8. Regular eating habits: A regular eating habit in Ayurveda just indicates eating on time. Have a schedule for eating with a fixed time for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead of taking 2 or 3 full meals, you can take 4 or 5 small meals with regular gap in-between. By doing this you are reinforcing your digestive system and promoting easy digestion. Improper eating habits might end up in a dismantled metabolism, leading to health disorders like hypertension, ulcer, obesity, accumulation of fat etc.

9. Fresh fruits and vegetables: Fresh fruits along with green and leafy vegetables contain essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals. These natural items will improve your physical and psychological health by preventing your body from diseases occurring due to nutritional deficiencies.

10. Drinking hot water: Drinking hot water is indeed a classical recommendation of Ayurveda as it augments the digestive power, lessens the accumulation of metabolic waste, balances kapha and vata doshas and regulates your entire digestive system.

11. Detoxification: Detoxification or cleansing is a vital part of Ayurvedic Panchakarma treatment that aims at removing the toxins in your body and restores balance and youthfulness. Healthy Ayurvedic practices include gentle cleansing of the system mainly during the spring season and at the start of every season. This can be done efficaciously with the help of your Ayurvedic practitioner.

12. Soothing and peaceful sleep: Rest is essential to rise up with energy and buoyancy for a refreshing start of a new day. To stay active tomorrow, you need to sleep well today especially during the night time. Ayurvedic scripts suggest taking warm baths with few drops of Ayurvedic essential oils before going to bed, recollecting the pleasant things in your life, eating light and easy to digest food for dinner, listening to pleasing music, using aromatic Ayurvedic essential oils for regular massaging and in your bed room either as room diffuser or as air freshener etc.

Everything is doable and why can’t you give it a try? For the best things in life can come to you only out of practice and determination. For an inspirational living, think again!

Thought for the day:

Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God

-William Cowper

Suggested Reading:

  1. Ayurveda Wisdom: A Simple Wisdom Book By Cybéle Tomlinson, Cybele Tomlinson
  2. Freedom in Your Relationship with Food: An Everyday Guide By Myra Lewin
  3. Ayurveda: The Science of Self Healing – A Practical Guide By Vasant Lad

Reference Links:

  1. Tooth brushing, oil pulling and tissue regeneration: A review of holistic approaches to oral health by NCBI
  2. Overview of Meditation by National center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
  3. Ayurvedic Panchakarma Restores Your Youth by Wikinut

Health Benefits of Tobacco: The Most Impressive Crop

Please don’t look at me like that!!… I’m perfectly alright and I am writing this post with all my six senses working absolutely fine. Tobacco was originally celebrated as a sacred crop, which was a vital part of many religious ceremonies and other rituals. It was considered as a gift from the Creator by the Aboriginal people and was highly esteemed by the First Nations Culture.

A popular research says that tobacco was the most significant plant in the spiritual lives of the native North Americans till the advent of Europeans, after which the traditional crop turned hazardous with its increased non-traditional use. There are many evidences that prove the cultivation of tobacco for more than 8,000 years. I personally love calling tobacco as the most impressive crop as I love it from the bottom of my heart!!! (Smiling:)? Means you too love it? Nothing wrong…Come on let’s share our joy by reading its apparent health benefits).

According to the ancient healing systems like Ayurveda, tobacco was used to treat numerous health disorders and it has also been proven by certain modern research studies as well. The most significant health benefits of tobacco are:

  1. Future treatment for cancer: 3 Professors of the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) were awarded a patent for their fantabulous discovery of the anticancer prototype compounds present in the waxy material of the fresh tobacco leaves evidencing their capability to control prostate and breast cancers. Dr. Khalid El Sayed, the Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at ULM said, ‘The leaf and flower of Nicotiana tabacum, as tobacco is scientifically known, contain high amounts of the key flavor ingredient called cembranoids. Interestingly, cembranoid ingredients of tobacco show great promise as anticancer agents. The high incidence and death rate of breast and prostate cancer types emphasize the need for new strategies’. With its neuroprotective and tough tumor restraining properties cembranoids is trusted to be the future treatment for chronic cancers.
  2. Aid for tooth and ear problems: When you think of tobacco and its effects on mouth and teeth, you are often threatened with the thoughts of throat and oral cancer. Don’t get panic and here’s a good news that the powder extracted from the dried tobacco leaves when fried for 3 minutes along with the equal proportion of black pepper powder is trusted have greater benefits for teeth and gums in treating bleeding gums, toothache, cavities, halitosis, yellow stains on the teeth and few other. Few drops of fresh tobacco juice extracted from its leaves when dropped into the ear have been proven to aid hearing and few other ear disorders.
  3. Treats depression: The Duke scientists in 2006 came up with a tantalizing news that people with depression revealed a tremendous decrease in their depression after being treated with nicotine patches. Nicotine is a rich chemical compound present in tobacco and this research proved the direct link between nicotine and a subjective increase in the discharge of two essential neurotransmitters namely dopamine and serotonin, the lack of which is regarded as a major cause for depression.
  4. Skin infections: Tobacco contains the skin-friendly Vitamin C, which has been effective in treating various skin disorders like eczema, burns and other skin infections. It’s also been said that chewing tobacco keeps your skin healthy as it releases Vitamin C while chewing.
  5. Effective treatment for Alopecia and Dandruff: A herbal preparation made with virgin coconut oil and powdered tobacco along with the Ayurvedic combinations like Bhringraj and Triphala Churnam is said to have positive effects on dandruff and Alopecia areata means baldness or hair loss in round patches.
  6. Best first aid for venomous Snake bite: Fresh tobacco leaves was trusted as the best first aid for venomous snake bites. For this, 50 grams of tobacco leaves is made into a paste and is mixed with 1 liter of water. The water is then filtered and given to the affected person, after which he vomits the snake poison along with this medicated liquid. The remaining tobacco leaves paste is then applied on the affected area to reduce the intensity of poison.
  7. Few other health conditions: Tobacco leaves have incidental proofs in treating few other health conditions like rheumatism, knee pain, night-blindness, swollen throat, tuberculosis, asthma and many others by using it in various ways either as a poultice, herbal decoction or in medicated oils.

Chewing tobacco strengthens your facial muscles and is also a good exercise for your jaw. It makes you charged instantly than your cup of coffee or tea can do in energizing you. With all these health benefits, the use of tobacco, the very next time will have something to succor your heart and uplift your mind but still take heed that overuse has much more adverse effects than these health benefits listed above…. Happy Chewing:) (but with care and concern, after all your health is your real wealth).

Reference Link:

  1. Traditional and Non-Traditional Use of Tobacco by Astrogle
  2. Anticancer potential in the most unlikely sources – tobacco leaves by ULM professors by ULM
  3. How can nicotine be good for me? by Discovery Fit & Health
  4. Early uses of Indian tobacco in California by TOBACCO.org
  5. Nicotine by Wikipedia

Think Ayurveda To Think Better

Your thoughts decide your actions and your actions define ‘YOU’. There are myriad emotions that are exclusively indulged with humanity. Only you can smile, you can talk, you can discover and you can create. Thinking positive indicates that you are a proud owner of a healthy physique that keeps your thinking sound as well. Ayurveda talks about the constructive effects of positive thinking that helps you keep going on and on. Pessimism or negative thinking can even stop the functioning of your heart and collapse the brain’s functionality. Every human being has his own problems but just the severity of the problem differs. You can laugh at a person if he says he is free of troubles because in this materialistic world only a five-headed snake can be free of worries. It does not count whether you have problems or not but it matters how you deal with it and Ayurveda paves way for such an optimistic living.

Optimistic thinking: There’s a popular book named ‘You Can Win’ by Shiv Khera where the author beautifully lists the mentality of Pessimists’. 3 of my favorite lines in that excellent piece of writing are:

‘Pessimists don’t see the doughnut, only the hole,

Pessimists forget their blessings and count their troubles

Pessimists stop sleeping in bed when they hear that more people die in bed than anywhere else’

Yes my dear friends! This is the way that negative thinking affects your life and the best way to come out of this dark world is to think better with the natural and holistic healing of the ancient science named Ayurveda.

Ayurvedic treatment for optimism: According to Ayurveda, a healthy mind is the key to a healthy body and your attitude decides it. In this mechanical epoch that drains you, demands more than your potential with taut deadlines and cumbersome workload ends up in mental stress, difficulty in striking balance between your work and your family, anxiety, fear, fatigue and deep depression. When every single problem is placing you in the darker side of the world, let it know that you are strong with the real power granted by the natural Ayurvedic essential oils, meditation and yoga along with the robustness to turn the tide.

Ayurvedic essential oils for positive thinking: Essential oils of lavender, marjoram, grapefruit, thyme, sandalwood, jasmine, lemon, peppermint and ylang ylang possess an adorable fragrance in nature. These oils have soothing, calmative, stimulating, energizing and revitalizing properties that can enrich your spirits along with your mind and body. Using these essential oils either as a massage oil or to your bath tub or in your diffuser will calm your nerves, relax your muscles, alleviate stress, lighten your pressure, uplift your mood, kindle your thoughts, augment your mind power, improve your memory power, balance your emotions, fortify your immune system, strengthen your will power, encourage a peaceful sleep while invigorating your system for a replenished crack of dawn.

Meditation: Ayurvedic way of treating humanity can never be fulfilled without meditation. Spend some quality time for yourself and let that time of eminence be your meditating time especially in the early hours of the day when your environment is calm and composed. Meditation with deep breathing exercises can empower your mind while promoting positive feelings and preparing your body to adapt to new challenges and your mind to learn luminously, think undeniably, regulate stressful situations, recall your past and retain your balanced system for the days of harmony ahead you.

Being an optimist is the best way to setting your life as a role model for your younger ones to lead their life with great trust as real optimists always see an opportunity in every threat:)

Reference Links:

  1. You Can Win by Shiv Khera
  2. The healing force is within ourselves by Ayurveda France
  3. Attract more positive energy by Rejuvenation Lounge