Sometimes when you know a little bit about a subject, you might only know just enough to get yourself into trouble.
This is especially true when it comes to treating congestion. In the early stages of studying Ayurveda we learn that congestion is a Kapha imbalance and that we need to use hot spices to burn through and melt down the mucus. So when someone has congestion, their first thought is to make ginger tea with pepper and other warming spices to open up the airways. We drink tea with honey in it because of all the sweeteners honey is heating and can burn up the mucus.
All the other sugars and sweets tastes make more Kapha, making more congestion, since Kapha is sweet. In fact, even sweet fruits should be avoided during times of congestion when we have upper respiratory infections and colds and flus.
Having said all that, there is another side we need to look at and address. Many people have congestion due to a buildup of either heat or dryness in the physical channels.
Let’s back up for a minute and learn a little more about these physical channels. Keep in mind here that we are talking about physical channels that you can actually dissect and see and not the vibrational channels which carry prana to all the organs and glands. These vibrational channels or nadir are discussed in some of my other videos, but today we are going to talk about the physical channels.
The ancient texts were written a few thousand years ago, and at that time they hadn’t given the scientific names that we use nowadays when we refer to these channels. There are channels that carry blood, such as arteries, veins and other vessels. There are also channels that carry lymphatic fluids, tears, sweat, and urine. There are tiny channels in the eyes and ears. All these channels bring nourishment into the area and toxins out of the area.
But several things could happen to these channels: they could shrink up, harden, get clogged, inflamed or even rupture. One of the first things we teach our patients is how to keep their physical channels open by avoiding the foods that could shrink, harden, clog or inflame the channels.
Now, and this is important: the lungs and sinuses are channels — air goes in and out of these channels, so like all the other channels, it is important that they remain open.
If any channel becomes dried or burnt, the body will immediately, in a split second, lubricate the channels. Just think what happens when you go outside on a cold day in January when the air is dry and cold. Within seconds your eyes tear up and your nose begins to run. This is an example of the body’s intelligence taking over and protecting the nostrils and eye channels from drying out from the cold weather.
The same thing can happen if a channel gets burnt.
So, the point I’m getting to here is that there are many many times in a lifetime when our channels can dry out. This can happen if Vata, the element of dryness, goes high from stress, staying up late, too much rushing, low-fat diet, etc.
And also in our lifetimes our Pitta can go high. A good example is when our bile doesn’t flow out of our gall bladder and we don’t get the alkalinizing effects on our digestive juices, causing them to remain acidic as they go through the digestive tract.
And if our digestive juices are acidic then our blood automatically becomes acidic. Then our tissues can become inflamed as this hot blood circulates through these delicate mucus membranes. We might also develop acid reflux and hiatal hernias, both of which allow the acids to flow up into the esophagus, burning the delicate channels of the lungs and sinuses, as well as the esophagus itself
The body will not allow the delicate mucus membranes of the sinuses, nostrils and lungs to burn because these are the Kapha areas of the body, which means that they must maintain their cooling lubrication throughout our lives. And when the body senses these areas are hot and burning, they create mucus as a protective mechanism. This is the body’s intelligence at work, always monitoring the pH, heat and dryness in the tissues.
So, if you are congested because your body’s delicate mucus membranes are hot or dry, then you definitely don’t want to use hot therapies to burn up the mucus — it will only make matters worse. It might sound counterintuitive, but in these cases we need to cool down the tissues and fix the reasons why the channels are hot and burning and then add therapies which are cooling and lubricating.
In fact, in more than half of the sinus and lung congestion issues that I treat in my patients, we have to shift gears away from the heating therapies and cool down and lubricate the tissues so that the body can finally stop creating the mucus in its attempt to keep these tissues moist and cool.
I hope this video is a good example of why many times in life you may need the help of a good experienced Ayurvedic Practitioner to treat your issues in a more targeted and effective way. Sometimes we get into trouble when we learn the words Vata, Pitta and Kapha and assume the problem is a problem with Kapha and instead of burning out the cold Kapha we realize in fact that it is actually a problem with Pitta or Vata and needs more cooling or lubricating therapies to reverse the situation.
So you can see that on the surface congestion might seem like a Kapha problem, but more often than not the opposite is true, and this might be why your congestion has become chronic despite all your attempts to drink ginger and pepper tea and take all your cold and flu remedies to burn out the mucus.
I hope this video helps you to think outside the box when it comes to diagnosing and treating your health problems, and seek out the help of a practitioner who has experience in treating illnesses in the correct way tailoring specific therapies for your unique types of imbalances.
Thank you,