Show transcript (unedited):
Andrea Nicholson
Welcome back to the Holistic Health Bites Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about a little bit different topic.
We’re going to talk a lot about Ayurveda and I am joined by Meghna who’s going to tell us all about this practice and how it’s different from some other modalities and a lot about also how we can use this for better skin.
Meghna Mistry
So welcome, Meghna. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.
Andrea Nicholson
Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about your story, your background, how you got into Ayurveda.
Meghna Mistry
Yeah, sure. So I actually started off my career as a pharmacist. So I’ve worked in a hospital pharmacy. So I’ve seen, you know, many different types of patients.
And after a while, I kind of got a bit stuck because I felt like we’re all about treating, you know, once a problem has arisen or once a diagnosis has been made, like we know how to treat.
But we don’t mean really know much about. So it really made me like seek further into like different alternative treatments.
And I had few people that I’ve heard of that had been treated, Ayurvedic Lee, like they had IBS and they were on medicines and they had, you know, Ayurvedic treatment and they were no longer on their medicines.
So for me, like with a kind of scientific background, I wanted to learn a bit more about that. was like, wow, how can this, you know, how can this Ayurvedic medicine work?
And it’s also like originated in the East and I’m Indian by background. So, you know, as a child, we might hear like, oh, take this turmeric or take something.
And again, I’ve always wanted to know like, okay, how does that work? we’re all taking medicine, but like, why does the other things work as well?
So yeah, then I came across Ayurveda and I wanted to learn about it. So I joined a course here in London.
And yeah, since then I’ve just never regretted it and I’ve seen it help so many people.
Andrea Nicholson
So it’s something that I’m really interested in. So fascinating. just love hearing how people stumble upon these different things and solve their problems.
think there’s a million different ways that we can get to the same goal as long as we’re doing it in an actual healthy way.
I think it’s amazing and I love that there’s so many different practices that people can find and I love how you found Ayurveda.
would love for you to just discuss maybe what’s different than other modalities, whether that be conventional pharmaceutical side of things.
Or just other even holistic practices. What makes Ayurveda different?
Meghna
Yeah, sure. in terms of comparing it to Western medicine, I’m not sure about a lot of other modalities, many just Ayurveda and Western medicine.
But in terms of Western medicine, I feel like Western medicine tends to look at each organ as an individual or like each body system as an individual.
It might look at the heart. If you’ve got anxiety or depression, you might go to like a cycle. Pyatriest, if you’ve got stomach problems, you might go to a gastroenterologist.
But it doesn’t really look at the body as a whole. It doesn’t understand the link between the constipation and the anxiety, for example.
Whereas Ayurveda looks at the body as a whole. And that’s because it looks at something that we call doshas.
it’s different energy types. So vata, pitta and kappa. So vata is kind of related to air. And ether, kappa is related to earth, so anything kind of grounding.
And pitta is related to fire. So we do have all of these within us. And that’s kind of how Ayurveda can link the two.
So you might have a pitta imbalance at one place in your body, but then also another place. And that’s how it knows that they’re both related to heat, rather than looking at just the heart, just the stomach.
If that makes sense.
Andrea Nicholson
Yeah, it’s so interesting. And so when it comes to. Who, once you’ve identified what that imbalance is, are most of the kind of treatments or recommendations then like herbal as well as, you know, know there’s a lot of lifestyle stuff as well, like you mentioned grounding and some of those things, is it kind of that herbal and like lifestyle stuff or you know, what might a treatment look like in Ayurveda?
Meghna Mistry
Yeah, so there’s like a range of things that does include herbal medication. So herbal medication, a few things like ashwagandha, which is a common Ayurvedic herb, trifilah, dharthri, they all work in different ways.
So herbal medication will be one kind of treatment part of it. Another part is like lifestyle factors as well because certain things can aggravate one of these doses.
So for example, stress or heavy exercise can aggravate the pitta and the fire dosha. So we would look at a person’s lifestyle and kind of,
See what the imbalance is and then find the solution to bring that balance down. So for example, someone with high fire or, you know, high pitter, if they’re exercising heavily, I might be like, okay, cut back on your heavy exercise and maybe do some lighter, you know, yoga or gentle walking or, you know, just something a bit more gentle.
And that should help bring the fire element down. And going back to the other question, I guess that’s another difference between this and Western medicine because it’s a bit more tailored to the individual.
it looks at what imbalances that individual has rather than, you know, the standard. This is what everyone should do.
You know, everyone should do 30 minutes of exercise. That’s vigorous. You know, it might, that might not be the advice for everyone.
So it kind of a bit more personalized and tailored to that individual.
Andrea Nicholson
Oh, that makes sense. And how is it that you figure out which of the Doshas is imbalance or where those imbalances are occurring?
Meghna Mistry
Yeah, so this is where usually can The diabetic specialist can help diagnose that, but there are certain things like we would look at your appetite.
So do you have a variable appetite? Do you have a strong appetite? Do you have like a weak appetite?
you’re not really hungry a lot of the time. So that helps us determine which one of the doses are out of balance.
Also like your emotions, are you someone that’s more angry or more like a bit more fearful, anxious. These ones like fearful, fear, fearful and anxiousness is a bit more of the vata imbalance, whereas someone that’s angry, jealous, aggressive, that’s more like the pitta, fire, emotions.
So literally everything in life tends to fall within the vata, pitta or kappa. So looking at the person’s whole lifestyle, even what job they do, time they sleep, all these factors can help determine what’s
It’s like trial and error as well. If you think the fire element is out of balance, you may be give something cooling or help reduce that fire.
But then you might notice one of the other doshas are out of balance. Then it’s about managing trial and error.
It can be quite complicated to figure out which doshas Yeah, it sounds like it could be.
Andrea Nicholson
could probably have even some conflicting things where it’s like, well, you need more of this that will make this one worse than you or that would get really complicated for sure.
Meghna Mistry
And also, a lot of people ask that, oh, what’s my dosha? But it’s not about knowing what your dosha is.
It’s about knowing what the imbalance is. Because the way I was taught is that it’s like you go to your doctor and say, what’s my healthy body?
But you only show them what’s unhealthy once they take away the unhealthiness. Then you can get It’s true healthy person.
Andrea Nicholson
Wow, that’s so interesting. And you also apply a lot of this practice to skin health, like acne and those kinds of things.
Meghna Mistry
How does that work when it comes to outward things like skin? Yeah, so I actually had acne in around, I would say, 2020, maybe around 2019, 2020.
And so I use Ayurvedic principles myself and I feel like that really helped. But in terms of how it’s, Kind of manifests in the body.
A lot of it is stress related and the pitter again being too high. But really, it all boils down to digestion.
So sometimes some people say we are what we eat. But Ayurveda says we are what we digest because we could be eating the healthiest foods or, you know, what we think is healthy.
But if our body’s not digesting it, then rather than producing like good nutrition, our body’s going to produce toxins.
And those toxins circulate throughout your body. And… And in Ayurveda there’s something called darthus which kind of translates to tissues.
So there’s seven different tissues in the body or like kind of organs or systems. So the first one is actually skin which is in Ayurveda called rasa.
Rasa and rasa. second one is rasa which is like blood. And those are the first two. So once you eat your food, either you produce nutrition or you produce toxins, whichever one you produce, that circulates throughout the seven tissues.
And the first two are related to skin. So that’s why when you eat something unhealthy or you’ve had alcohol or something, you might see like spots or at least ones but on your face soon after.
And that’s because it’s got straight to that first level of your skin. If you don’t treat it at that stage or if you just treat it topically or just without treating the root cause, the toxins could go deeper down.
the third level is like your bones. So it could start affecting your joints and you could get arthritis or joint pain or something.
That’s another way that I’ve added links, one condition to another, it looks at how deep into your tissues it’s affected.
Andrea Nicholson
Oh, so interesting. And that makes a lot of sense because yeah, the skin is often one of the first signs that you have some kind of imbalance or some kind of toxicity or infection or something going on.
And I 100% agree with you on and the whole practice of Ayurveda that you are what you digest. If you can’t properly digest it, you can’t get the nutrients out of that food.
And so yeah, doesn’t matter how clean your diet is, if you’re not properly breaking it down and absorbing those nutrients, they’re not serving you any good.
And yeah, they will just turn into toxins and pro inflammatory compounds and things. So that makes a lot of sense.
And just a slight correction.
Meghna Mistry
said bones is the third one, but it’s actually rasa, which is plasma, raka blood, mansa, which is muscle, medha.
This is Fat, Usby is your bone, Mudja, which is your bone, Mabro, and then Shukra is your reproductive organs.
That’s the order it goes in.
Andrea Nicholson
Interesting. yeah, it really just goes deeper and deeper throughout the body. That makes perfect sense. So tell me some of the things that you’ve seen in just people in general or people you’ve worked with that are like common mistakes people are making that are taking either their doshas out of, know, out of alignment, or that are just contributing to some of these systems getting out of whack.
Meghna Mistry
What are some of those things that people can maybe look at their own lives and go, oh, yeah, I should probably stop that.
Yeah, oh wow, I love this question. Okay, so one of the things is not listening to your own body.
So like, you know, we, so by that I mean like when you’re thirsty, we should be drinking. you’re hungry, you should be eating and when you’re tired, you should be resting.
And sometimes we might over. So, over drinking, we might think, oh my god, I need two to three liters of water a day, so we might just be drinking all the time.
But that actually dampens our digestive fire. like, I either believe that your gut is like your digestive system and it’s like fire, digestive fire.
So, if you’re drinking when you’re not thirsty or when you’re hungry but you’re having a coffee because you don’t have time to eat so you just want to drink a coffee, these kind of things are dampening your digestive fire, especially water.
Like, drinking those water when you’re hungry is dampening your appetite. So, really, when we’re hungry, we should be eating because our body needs food at that point.
So, we shouldn’t really ignore our hunger. And I guess the opposite of that is we shouldn’t eat when we’re not hungry, like if we’re just emotionally eating or like, you know, we’re just stressed so we’re eating.
We should try and just tune into our body and see, like, okay, am I actually hungry or am eating some board?
So, that’ll be one of the things. So, So, that’ll all Thank Another thing is there’s been a lot about eating raw foods.
I’ve heard a lot about that in the past, but sometimes these things just become trends, but they’re not actually healthy for us.
So that would be one example where, again, because our fire, our digestive system is like a fire. Ideally we should be eating cooked foods because it’s less work for our body to digest as easy to digest because it’s already cooked.
Whereas if we’re eating raw foods, it requires our We’re not going foods, but we’re going foods. So sometimes that’s why we could get bloating after eating things like raw food.
And especially people certain types of people that have a vast imbalance, they should avoid raw foods more so than the others.
people with pitter imbalance might have a stronger digestion. So that’s important. Also living in alignment with nature. So… What I mean by that is like we should be following kind of the sun.
So when the sun rises, that’s when we ideally should be waking up. If we wake up too late, like after 10pm or something, I’m sorry, 10am, we might feel bit throughout the day.
So if you notice when you wake up around 6am, sun rises at different places at different times, but you know roughly around 6am.
You kind of feel more awake throughout the day, even though you’ve woken up earlier. And I guess in line with that, when the sun rises, when it’s the highest in the sky at 12 noon, our appetites and our digestify it is usually the strongest at that point.
So that’s when we should try and eat a heavy meal at lunchtime. And then when it comes to dinner time, maybe have something a bit lighter, but also avoid eating too close to bedtime.
So ideally before around 7pm, at least like three hours before. We should be going to sleep around 10pm is usually a good time to sleep.
And there’s a whole like kind of Ayurvedic clock, Ayurvedic body clock. And in different times of the day there’s different doshas that are most like active, although energy of that dosha is the highest.
So from the morning between two am and six am is Vata time. So that’s when the air element is high.
Peter time is between 10 and two. And that’s like overnight and lunchtime. And then carpet time is between six and ten.
So again at these different times of day we should be doing different things. Like I said we should have our heaviest meal at pitter time because that’s when our digestive fire is the strongest.
And I guess a few other examples is like Vata time is when our creativity is high. So if we want to do some creative tasks or you know even if it’s planning or something like creative tasks.
the creative is good to do it. I guess it all makes sense when you think of that. If you go to sleep past 10 o’clock, I don’t know about everyone else, but sometimes I might get really hungry around 11, 12 o’clock.
I’m thinking like, am I hungry? It’s a bedtime, but it’s because you’re in the pitter stage again. Although it’s the nighttime pitter stage, you’re still in the pitter stage.
And in this pitter stage, we tend to, we don’t just digest food, but we’re digesting our emotions, our thoughts from the day.
So also, you might notice that if you sleep after 10 o’clock, your mind might be wondering a lot more when you’re trying to get to sleep, especially like 11, 12 is your mind is like on overdrive mode, because that’s when your body is digesting all your thoughts from the day.
So yeah, that’s quite a big topic in itself, but I guess living in alignment with the iDVidic Body Clock is important because it helps regulate things like your bowel movements, your emotions.
So it kind of keeps you a bit more balanced generally.
Andrea Nicholson
That’s so interesting. I’ve never heard it quite referred to that way that you’re digesting your thoughts, but that makes perfect sense because yeah, most of the people I work with that really struggle to get to bed at a reasonable time say that their mind is racing and they’re snacking and they’re drinking more and they’re doing all these things that they don’t want to be doing, but they feel like they can’t go to bed yet because they’re wide awake and or they’re working or they’re doing some of these other things that really aren’t in line with our circadian rhythms or the Ayurvedic body clock at all.
And yeah, you’re kind of starting your cycles at all the wrong times then and stimulating the wrong things so that makes perfect sense.
And I know that’s also a lot of times if we look at even like gut microbes, you know, we have really good gut microbes, but a lot of us also have some not so ideal microbes in bacteria and parasites and stuff.
And they also become much more active at night. A lot of them. They’re more nocturnal and that contributes to this whole situation.
We need to be sleeping so that the body can detoxify and repair and do all those things when night time comes around.
So that is how we’re designed. So really interesting.
Meghna Mistry
Yeah.
Andrea Nicholson
Are there other practices that people maybe believe that they’re doing correctly? Like they’re doing the right thing, like mentioned exercise earlier and over exercising or doing too much for the wrong kinds or too intense?
There are other things kind of like that. people are doing because they believe they’re really healthy and ideal. Maybe you’re not actually in line with, you know, a good Ayurvedic practice.
Meghna Mistry
Yeah. So a few things that come to my head when you say that is eating porridge in the morning.
So we often think porridge is healthy and it can be for some, but it can also be quite drying on the body.
So for people with a vata imbalance, so the air element, that could aggravate their condition. It can cause more bloating or constipation.
So porridge is one that comes to my head and also salad. So salad is also like kind of classed as raw foods because it’s not cooked.
Um, but someone with The Vata imbalance might get bloating from salads. So, again, someone with a pitting balance might be better at digesting salads, so for them it might be okay.
And also, this time of year that you’re eating it, so in summer it’s more okay because, you know, it’s more heat up there, so generally the pitter is a bit higher.
So I would say salads is another thing, especially in winter. I had another thought that just left my head.
yes, so that’s not, I won’t say bad, but like incompatible foods. So eating things together that should be avoided.
And commonly things are like fruit. So fruit is best eaten alone, so not with other foods. And that’s because fruit digests a lot quicker than other foods do.
So say you’ve just had a heavy meal and you’re having a bit of fruit after your dinner. That’s a common
A not recommended practice in Ayurveda because your body is still digesting the heavy meal that you just had. The fruits are sitting on top of your stomach waiting to be digested.
But because your main meal is taking a while, that fruit starts fermenting in your body and it basically just causes toxins.
So it’s better to eat on an empty eat fruit on an empty stomach or at least around two hours after a meal so that at least some good meal has digested and maybe all of it had digested and then it’s good.
So eat fruit then. So that’s one thing. And also mixing fruit in with actual fruits like yoghurt or something like that, it’s not recommended, it’s best to eat it on its own.
And I guess in line with that, things like there’s a few combinations that should be avoided. So dairy and like avocado.
So even when we have avocado and eggs, for example, that’s not a good combination. And meghna. She should also not be eaten with fruits.
I’m trying to think of some more. feel like there’s a few beans and cheese. I’ve also recently heard isn’t a good combination, which I actually didn’t realise myself about that one.
But that’s quite common in Mexican food, which I love. So it’s a bit of a hard one to avoid.
And even having like, I don’t know if like, know, sometimes might put fruit in your salads, like grapes or strawberries in a salad.
So that’s also not really recommended because again, fruit should be kept from So And another thing that comes to mind is smoothies.
So I used to in the past, before I studied Ayurveda, used to have loads of smoothies and I thought they were really healthy.
But it’s actually a lot for our body to digest. So if we are mixing lots of different fruits and sometimes we even put things like spinach or some more vegetable-y type foods in a smoothie and blend it all together, sometimes we might even mix more.
So, you know, imagine like the whole cocktail of things you’re putting in that smoothie. And then if you think like you were going to eat all those fruits or vegetables, not like mixed up in a smoothie, if you were just going to eat them, that would probably be a bad combination or you’ll be a lot of your stomach to handle.
So I know we are crushing it. I mean, not crushing it. Sorry, I know we’re blending it. But it still sometimes can be too much for the body to digest.
So it’s Again, those kind of things can cause bloating. I think those are probably the most common kind of food habits I’ve seen or I’ve learned about that.
used to think we’re healthy, but only after studying Ayubeda, like they’re not always recommended.
Andrea Nicholson
Yeah, and I think that goes back to the, you know, individuality of things because someone who also has like diabetes is going to have a huge blood sugar spike if they were to have fruit all by itself.
So they actually probably would do better without the fruit. At all. And to your point on the smoothies, yeah, it can be really hard on the digestive system, and it can also go through your system really quickly and be a big bomb all at once.
Instead of, you know, if you had to actually break down the whole foods that you ate, it would take a lot longer.
you’ve kind of pre-digested some of it by blending it. And it reacts in your body completely differently than it would if you ate the individual components in their whole form.
So there’s so many components that And into this with other chronic conditions like diabetes or whatever other conditions you might have.
But also what your goals are. What are you trying to accomplish with this? you trying to reverse disease? Are you trying to maximize some other benefit that you’re getting from your food or your practices?
There’s so many factors that we need to take into account to decide what the best things are. But I think the whole food combination thing is a big topic of conversation for a lot of different reasons.
And… It really is something that we should be paying attention to and making sure that the foods we’re combining really work well together and are in line with our goals and aren’t actually sabotaging us secretly.
So I think that’s a really important topic.
Meghna Mistry
Yeah, definitely. And it’s important to just keep an eye on how you’re feeling. If you’ve had something, just notice your body.
Do you get bloating? you feel anxious after you’ve eaten something and just really tune into yourself? And then you probably can start picking out things that might not suit you.
Like it might suit your friend or someone else, but everyone’s individual, so it’s good to try and notice what doesn’t work well for you.
Andrea Nicholson
Yeah, I think that’s a big key that so much of this really comes back to is we’ve lost sight of what our bodies are telling us.
We’re not in tune with what real hunger feels like. We emotionally eat, but we’re not necessarily physically truly hungry.
Or like said, drink water because we’ve been told we should drink all this water all day long or You know, we have all these practices that we just sort of do either out of habit or because we’ve been told, but they might not actually be in line with your body or your goals or, you know, what you’re working on.
And so I think the more we can get back into connection to those real signals and what your body is really telling you it needs, the better off will be and much healthier for it as well.
I love that. So if people are interested in learning more about what you do, how to work with you, all the things, where can they find you and learn more about you?
Meghna Mistry
Yeah, so I’m on Instagram under Bliss by Balance. So that’s Bliss.By.Balance. I don’t yet have a website, but I’m hoping to soon and I will post that on my Instagram page as soon as I do.
I am also on Facebook under Bliss by Balance as well, or you can search for my name Meghna Mistry and I posted some things on there as well.
So yeah, either one of them.
Andrea Nicholson
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing and of course we will link up all of your information in the description of this episode so that people can very easily find you and reach out to you.
Thank you so much for sharing all of your Ayurvedic pearls of wisdom with us today and telling us a little bit about what that practice is and who it’s for and how it’s different than other modalities.
I think this information is really helpful for a lot of other people to see that there’s lots of different ways to accomplish the same goals and Ayurveda might just be the way for individuals.
So I think that’s fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing and any final words before we wrap up the episode.
Meghna Mistry
No, just thank you so much for having me and yeah like Ayurveda is great and I’m sure there’s loads of other great stuff out there so yeah just keep looking out for yourselves and yeah stay happy.
Andrea Nicholson
Yeah I love that. I think there’s another way for everyone out there so if you keep looking keep trying keep finding out what works for you.
Thank you so much and we’ll catch you again on future episodes.
Meghna Mistry
Thank you, bye.
To connect with Meghna:
Schedule a free call with Andrea:
