I listen to as many podcasts as I can and study modern nutritional research as much as my limited time allows. I like to keep up with the field of nutrition to make sure I stay up to date with the many advances made in this ever-changing discipline.
Fortunately, though, as I study what the leading nutritional experts have to say, I always have my Ayurvedic training as a backdrop so I can fill in any gaps in the knowledge that might be out there.
For example, I always feel a bit of a disconnect when it comes to the remedies which are recommended for healing the body. Many functional medicine practitioners, naturopaths and holistic doctors who use nutrition in their practices recommend numerous types of synthetic vitamins to their patients.
While these may have some benefit, there is really quite a difference between using food, herbs and spices which are grown in nature and vitamins which are synthetically made in a lab.
So let’s examine how these may be different.
Behind the scenes in managing our health, Ayurveda concerns itself with unseen energies which are found outside of the body as well as inside our bodies and our cells, and even in the gaps between our cells. And if we want to heal ourselves in the deepest way possible we need to harness nature’s healing energy.
The ancient rishis of India who cognized Ayurveda said that life as we know it began with the aditatwa, or the vibrational power of nature within the origin of the universe, which is eternal. This aditatwa then manifests to a vibration of “Ah” which transforms to the Om vibration. Om then creates three tatwas, known as Soma, Agni and Marut.
Soma is the lunar vibration from the moon, which is nurturing and cooling; Agni is the fiery energy of the sun which gives heat and produces transformation in the body; Marut supports the flow of Soma and Agni and determines how much Soma should be transformed into Ojas and Kapha.
The space element is the first element formed, the first material vibration of Aditatwa; then the air element is formed, which is kind of like the space element in action. The space element by itself can’t do anything, but the air element carries the space element. Then the fire element is formed out of the air element; this fire element next forms more dense water, which then forms the most dense element, the earth element.
Thus, the original 3 vibrations of Soma, Agni and Marut become 5 elements of space, air, fire, water and earth, and then when these elements come into our body they form Vata, Pitta and Kapha.
Vata represents the space and air element; Pitta is the fire element and Kapha represents water and earth elements. And it is these 3 elements which are behind the scenes controlling all the various functions in our bodies. But because they can’t be seen they are currently being missed in our discussions of what the body needs to heal itself.
All the herbs, foods and spices we ingest have Soma, Agni and Marut — they carry the vibration of Aditatwa which is how they create their various actions. So this is very important: pranic energy has to be there in all the herbs, spices and food in order for true healing to occur.
Ojas is the compound made by our bodies from the finest digestion of our food — once the food has nourished all 7 tissues, at the end of the 7th tissue Ojas is formed. Ojas is a life-supporting factor, and is semi-vibrational — it carries a lot of vibration connecting 1 organ to another organ, and is the connecting factor to everything inside and outside of the body. That is why Ojas is considered the lamp at the door — it gives light inside and outside of our bodies, and connects the outer universe to the inner universe inside our bodies.
Together these 3 energies, Soma, Agni and Marut make up Prana, our life-giving vibrational energy which comes into the body at the top of the head, through the nostrils, eyes, ears and mouth and goes down the spine through a vibrational channel known as the Shushumna Nadi. The Shushumna Nadi delivers this vibrational energy to all the organs and glands and cellular systems.
The herbs, spices and foods receive varying amounts of Soma, Agni and Marut as they grow out in the fields and it is this vibration that gets delivered into our bodies when we ingest them. For example, chili peppers contain lots of fiery Agni while zucchini and cucumbers contain more cooling Soma energy.
It’s important that whatever we take into our bodies has this intelligent vibration of nature. We now know that there is a lot of communication within the various systems of our bodies. We have just discovered the fact that the gut microbiome “talks” to the mitochondria and new feedback loops are being discovered all the time. The whole endocrine system has a dialogue which monitors the levels of circulating hormones and then signals are sent out to all the glands when more hormones are needed. The production of melatonin is increased when our pineal gland senses that the sun is going down. And like that hundreds if not thousands of pieces of information are being carried both throughout the cellular system and in the gaps between the cells where transformation takes place.
And how does the body actually “talk” or communicate with itself through these thousands of discussions? Through vibration. Through the Pranic energy delivering the Soma, Agni and Marut so that all the cells in our bodies can function through the direction of the newly transformed Vata, Pitta and Kapha inside of our bodies.
So it becomes imperative that whatever we take to heal ourselves contains this pranic energy. This vibration of nature. In fact, if we want to heal ourselves with “natural medicine” then the food needs to be grown in “nature.”
Supplements such as the various synthetic vitamin supplements on the market may have some effects, but we are beginning to discover that at the deepest level, the cellular system is being “dumbed” down by these “dumb” remedies, which is how we describe unintelligent synthetically made supplements, as well as processed foods, which contain less nutritional value and are devoid of pranic energy.
Which is why many of the new patients I see feel so much better when I tell them to stop taking many of their vitamin pills which were prescribed by their well-meaning physicians and practitioners.
Part of the paradigm shift that needs to occur in both modern medicine and what we perceive to be holistic medicine here in the Western world is that we need to break the habit of:
Isolating the active ingredients out of natural remedies and trusting that the whole remedy will work better at a deep cellular level in our bodies. So for example, instead of taking synthetically derived butyrate supplements we can trust that ghee (which contains high amounts of naturally occurring butyrate) will work much better without the side effects. We should drink warm goat’s milk to help heal the infections in our gut with the naturally occurring caprylic acid found in the milk. This is much better than taking a supplement of caprylic acid to kill infection since killing in the gut is not always the best idea since you invariably will also kill the friendly bacteria which is why you got the infection in the first place. In the same way, isolating the ascorbic acid out of the citrus fruit is bound to have some side effects, such as creating acidity in the cells. Ayurveda extensively uses the Amlaberry which is loaded with Vitamin C but creates instant alkalinity upon entering the body. Our cells need to be alkaline in order to function smoothly. And we’re not isolating the Vitamin C out of the Amlaberry but instead keeping it intact with all the other nutrients located within the berry for a more balanced approach to healing the cells. Lately it has been shown that people who are taking biotin for hair, skin and nail problems are developing false readouts of hyperthyroidism, specifically Grave’s Disease, on their blood workups for the thyroid gland. So while biotin may help hair and nail growth, it seems to have an unintelligent side effect since it is an unintelligent nutrient.
2) We have to break the habit of thinking that just because something is good for us it doesn’t necessarily mean that more is better. Flooding our cells with a nutrient just because we’ve studied that it is beneficial won’t necessarily create good health as the cell may lose its balance of nutrients. For example, high copper levels can create extreme nervousness in the patient. Most of the vitamin supplements contain levels of vitamins that are much higher than those found in the original food. Is it good to go against nature like this?
3) Underlying most of the diseases we experience are problems associated with the flow and delivery of pure prana to our cells. And again, prana comes from the vibration of nature— from the sun, the moon, and the delivery of that prana to our cells. This is why the ancient systems of healing such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine use the pulse to analyze the patient’s health — in the pulse you can feel these energetics — the flow of the prana, the balance between Vata, Pitta, Kapha and their subdoshas (the areas of the body they affect). These can’t be seen on an MRI or Cat Scan. So by overlooking the role these energies play in keeping the body running smoothly, we are effectively missing out on a big piece of that person’s total healthcare, preventing a full cure. For example, if your thyroid gland is weak because your Vata is too high, you will only gain minimal healing of the gland whether you use pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals or even our Ayurvedic herbs if you don’t learn what Vata is and how to keep it balanced in your body.
We must therefore take into consideration the vibrational in all of our healing modalities since underlying this physical body and all its ailments is a disruption in the energy pathways that make up and control the physical body.
So to reiterate, the root of all health problems begin at a vibrational level, and if let go will eventually lead to the more physical ailments which give us all the symptoms and diseases we experience in much the same way that the physical universe manifests out of vibration which ultimately expresses itself as more and more dense earth elements.
Many people report to me that they take vitamin supplements because their diets are lacking, that they don’t have the time to cook. Food has been shown to have thousands of phytonutrients and to think we can isolate them out of the food to make these synthetic supplements at doses much higher than found in nature is not good thinking and won’t necessarily give us the health we are looking for.
Instead, please try to figure out how to cook at home as much as you can using wholesome ingredients choosing from a wide variety of foods so you can maximize your nutritional intake. This is what our ancestors did and the human race was built on food growing outside in the fields. When you eat real food you’re not consuming single nutrients but rather a whole range of vitamins, minerals, co-factors and enzymes and fibers that allow for optimal use by the body. Without these additional factors found in the whole food, synthetic nutrients are unlikely to be used by the body in the same way as their natural counterparts. For example studies show that natural Vitamin E is absorbed twice as efficiently as synthetic Vitamin E. Here’s some research proving that synthetic vitamins have side effects:
A study that included data on 35,533 healthy men found that Vitamin E supplements significantly increased the risk of prostate cancer.
A review of 49 studies found that supplementation with Vitamin A was associated with a 16% higher risk of cancer.
Beta carotene supplements have been shown to significantly increase the risk of lung cancer in people who smoke.
A review of 42 studies found that while calcium from food sources did not increase the risk of heart disease, calcium from supplements might increase heart disease and heart attack risk.
Unlike the natural folate found in food, folic acid from supplements has been associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer.
One thing that you’ll notice when you read these studies is that there is a higher incidence of specific types of cancers when one ingests synthetic vitamins. Why? Because there is no intelligent vibration in these supplements. When we take in dumbed down or dead nutrients the cells get confused. And what is cancer? The cells can’t remember what they’re supposed to do because they lose their intelligence and start to do odd things, like growing out of control into tumors. This is exactly what we mean by lack of intelligence creating unintelligent cells.
Whenever groups of people are examined by teams of scientists because they live to be over 100 years old, it is always found that they are eating foods originating from the earth, not processed food devoid of pranic energy. They are drinking milk directly from the cows or the goats — not ingesting synthetically made coffee creamer, skim or powdered milk.
And you can bet these centenarians aren’t taking large doses of synthetically made vitamins.
I hope this information helps you in your quest to attain perfect health.
Thank you,