Many people know about most of the common herbs that we use in Ayurveda: herbs such as Brahmi which help all brain functions, Tulsi which is amazing for immunity to colds and flus, Ashwagandha, used to help you deal with stress. And of course we have all heard of Triphala, the three berries which are used to promote bowel movements by promoting the flow of bile out of the gall bladder.
I learned about the clinical use of these remedies and many others under an extended apprenticeship with Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra, an award-winning herbal formulator who was sent to America to develop formulas for one of our first Ayurvedic companies. He was kind enough to share his family lineage of Ayurveda with me over the course of the 20 years that he trained me. During that time he taught me how to use over 500 formulations he made for all the health problems we were seeing together.
But during those years he also brought me herbs that are not so commonly mentioned here in America, where Ayurveda isn’t as well established as in India.
So from time to time I’d like to share with you some of these very powerful yet relatively unknown herbs, so you can see the wide array and depth of the pharmacopeia that we have to share with our patients.
Many times I hear patients complaining about specific health problems and they feel hopeless since modern medicine has no answers for them. And I realize that they have no idea how Ayurveda can help them, because they are completely unaware of the vast array of herbs and treatments we have at our fingertips.
So I’d like to begin unveiling to you some of India’s best kept secrets, some herbs which you may have never heard of. And I’d like to begin that discussion with a remedy known as Abhrak Bhasma.
Abhrak Bhasma is considered a Maha Rasayana, which means it is a supremely rejuvenating substance which takes years to make through a controlled process of repeated incinerations or burning of mica — a shiny mineral of silica. Vaidya Mishra used a special mica — a black mica called “krishnabhr,” and he scoured all over India to find a lab which had burnt it 1000 times, which is known as Sahara Puti, which takes about four years to process. Frequently the mica is burnt 300 times and is widely used in India, but it is much harder to find the mica which has been burnt 1,000 times.
But as usual, he went the extra mile so that our patients could have access to the best. You see, each time the mica is burnt the molecule becomes smaller and smaller until it becomes a nanoparticle, a very small particle, capable of penetrating deeply into the cells for maximum health benefit.
But it can also be burnt and processed with different rejuvenating herbs, interacting with them and becoming a powerful catalytic agent to carry the intelligence of the herbs to the deepest level of the cells. The Abhrak Bhasma Sahara Puti is the fastest and most efficient carrier, or yogavahi, which delivers the properties of the herbs it is associated with to help them reach their destination faster and penetrate deeper.
Once he located this 1,000 burnt Abhrak Bhasma, he carefully prepared it to make formulas for the more difficult problems we were treating, knowing that combining the Abhrak Bhasma would give the herb it was attached to a much stronger effect in combatting the disease. So here is what he combined it with so we could treat these difficult problems much easier:
One of the first herbs he combined it with was Sensitive Plant, an herb which heals the nerve tissue. He did this because he knew we had so many patients who were suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and how difficult it could be to treat. So he attached the Abhrak Bhasma to this herb so it could penetrate deep into this very hard to reach tissue, the nerve tissue.
He then proceeded to combine it with Sarpagandha, our famous herb to treat blood pressure, for those patients who weren’t responding enough to that herb.
He was also very excited to attach it to his favorite herb, Guduchi, which cleans the brain and nerve tissue, to help our patients suffering from toxins in the brain and nerve, such as those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other demyelinating nerve diseases. This formula was especially great for those who had lived on farms or in states where there was lots of farming and they had inhaled pesticides which penetrated deeply into their nerve tissue creating Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s and other serious nerve conditions.
Of course he also provided us with a formula where he attached it to Punarnava, the premiere Ayurvedic herb used widely to treat the kidneys. We have many patients with kidney disease who benefit from the use of this unique herbal combination.
And he was very happy to combine it with Mucuna, the dopamine-producing herb which is used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, also knowing that these patients would need to deliver the Mucuna deeply into the Substantia Nigra, that area of the brain where the dopamine is produced, but was damaged by checmicals, such as pesticides and air pollution, both of which can easily absorb deeply into the brain, disrupting its function.
I had told Vaidya that I would like to experiment and use it with Tulsi, our potent anti-viral herb, to be used in the treatment of Lyme Disease. With Lyme Disease the pathogenic organisms enter the cells and hide out on the inside of the cells where the immune system can’t find them. This is why antibiotic treatments may fail if the Lyme and other co-infections have had an opportunity to burrow into the inside of the cells. Here they can hide from both antibiotics, other medications and herbs which are looking for the infection which is usually attached to the outside of the cells.
And it worked! Our first patient had been on antibiotics for one year for Lyme Disease but his bloodwork continued to show activation of the Lyme organism still at a very high level of 800 inside his cells. After he took our Tulsi with Abhrak Bhasma for just 3 months, the level went down to 300! We were shocked and very grateful for Vaidya obtaining this very potent Bhasma.
So now I can use Abhrak Bhasma whenever I like, and I can combine it with anything I choose, whenever we’re not getting enough response from using the herb by itself.
So I hope you can see that we have a vast arsenal of very potent Ayurvedic herbs which you may have not heard of, available finally for our patients here in the States and anywhere in the world who are looking for more efficient ways to treat their health problems. I promise to share more of these Ayurvedic gems and family secrets with you in future videos.
Thank you,