I was extremely fortunate to have sat with Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra who hailed from a 5,000 year-old lineage of Ayurvedic physicians. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs and as a result was asked to give up his busy Ayurvedic practice in India and come to America to develop formulas for Maharishi Ayurvedic Products International, one of America’s first Ayurvedic herbal companies which sold to both doctors and patients alike.
We ended up sitting together for almost two decades while he imparted to me his family lineage secrets, which sometimes included the use of quite rare and hard to find herbs.
As he taught me the herbs, he would regale me with stories from India revolving around the use of these Ayurvedic gems, which were used by his father and grandfather in their busy Ayurvedic practices.
One of the more fascinating stories revolved around the use of a very rare and precious herb called Mankand or Alocasia Indica. The herb itself is not only interesting in how it affects our bodies, but came with a fascinating story which I’ll never forget.
It turns out that one of Vaidya’s extended family members fell extremely ill and wound up in a hospital in a coma due to liver failure caused by severe cirrhosis of the liver. While in the coma he was put on a waiting list for a liver transplant. During that time the family reached out to Vaidya Mishra to see if there was anything he could recommend to help him.
He told them about this rare and precious herb, Mankand, which he himself had been unable to find, but if they scoured India thoroughly and were perhaps lucky enough to find it, he thought there was a chance it could save his life.
Miraculously they were able to find it and they immediately administered it to him. He not only successfully came out of his coma, but his liver improved so quickly that he was taken off the liver transplant waiting list.
And even more amazing, he flew shortly after that to the States where Vaidya and I were teaching a course on the liver. I got to meet this man firsthand and Vaidya told me to feel his pulse. I could see that the liver was now very strong which meant he could now be put on the herbs to clean it out.
Vaidya told me that Mankand is THE only herb for the liver that doesn’t detox the liver, which you might feel would be counterintuitive. But the truth is when the liver function becomes this weak you can’t “torture” the liver, as Vaidya used to call it, but you have to gently bring the liver back to its normal state so it can eventually be cleaned.
The diet needs to be adjusted as well, only allowing cooling nurturing well-cooked foods, summer squashes and other soma-producing vegetables to nourish the weak, sick organ.
He told me that while Mankand doesn’t clean the liver, it actually does something even more amazing: it regenerates liver cells! That’s the good news about the liver — that it is capable of regenerating itself, and this is the herb to do it.
In the early stages we gave him the vibrational version of the herb, so his liver didn’t have to digest it, since it was too weak to digest any herb. This homeopathic version of the herb gives the same benefit of the crude herb but is easier for the liver to handle since the liver isn’t involved in its digestion and assimilation, but instead the vibrational version goes to all the gaps in the body creating its healing effects just as the crude herb would.
Of course, I asked Vaidya if there was enough of this herb left for me to offer to my patients, fully aware that it is very hard to find in India. He said that creating the vibrational versions of the herbs requires very little of the crude herb, so he said he was glad to share it with me and my patients.
I was thrilled and to this day, about 20 years later, I still use this herb very commonly in my practice. There may have been a few gaps through the years where we were unable to source it, but over the past two to three years we are lucky enough to have ample quantities to share with our patients who need urgent care for the liver —which is about 90% of my patients.
Since that time I have used it to regenerate the liver in so many patients, helping them to reverse a fatty liver, to heal the liver from cirrhosis, autoimmune and regular hepatitis and just helping to heal the liver from the use of bad vegetable oils, margarines, white table sugar, agave, alcohol, food additives, preservatives, the overuse of antibiotics, vaccines, statin drugs, birth control pills and other medications, all of which damage the liver.
Now you can understand why most of my patients need this herb — barely any of us has escaped the use of some of these bad foods and dangerous pharmaceuticals.
Please don’t run out and try to purchase this herb on your own, as you need to be instructed by a practitioner who has been fully trained in the use of it. Each person is unique and if the liver is too weak we need to use the vibrational version at first, in conjunction with a diet tailored very specifically to that person’s health problems. Once the liver heals enough, we can then transition them to the crude version of mankand to be used in a tea. And some patients already qualify even from the start for the crude mankand if the liver isn’t too weak.
I am telling you about the use of this gift of nature so you know that such an herb exists. This herb is in a class by itself — much different than the herbs we know of to clean the liver, such as milk thistle, dandelion, burdock root and even some of the Ayurvedic herbs for the liver. Again, when the liver is this weak, we cannot use these herbs, since they are too powerful for the liver to have to process. Everything you swallow has to be processed by the liver, so we must always take into account each unique patient’s physiology and tailor their protocol based on their strengths and weaknesses.
So if you are dealing with any health problem, from diabetes, to high cholesterol, autoimmune diseases and cancer, one thing you can bet on: the roots of these problems began with faulty liver function. So you must first stop doing the things which are weakening your liver and then take this herb before you begin any other treatments so that it can tolerate the cleanses which you will inevitably need in the future.
I will always be grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from such a Vedic master who taught me not only what constitutes a healthy diet and daily routine, and the fine art of detoxification, but who also imparted the use of hundreds of herbs to me, some very common and some, like mankand, very rare and precious, yet highly effective especially for use in this modern age where everyone’s liver has been weakened tremendously by the toxins we so freely allow into our diet and environment.
I hope this information is valuable to you as you seek to find answers to your health problems.
Thank you,