Q&A

Main causes of nausea at night?

What are the main causes of nausea at night?  I've been waking up between 2-4am with bad nausea, usually feeling very hot. I am not menopausal or pregnant.

While it is difficult for me to say what your exact problem is, the period of time you are getting your symptoms correlates to an increase in pitta, or excess bile.  Thus one measure would be discharge the liver of excess bile by going on a liver cleanse for a few weeks, avoiding heavy and greasy foods, and emphasizing lots of leafy green veggies.  Pay attention too to issues like food-combining, or eating foods that are hard to digest such as flour products.  You might have a food sensitivity as well, and so think about going on an elimination-challenge diet.  You can find details on all this information in my new book Food As Medicine.

Best herbs for healthy teeth and gums?

What are the best herbs and care practices for healthy teeth and gums?

I have a number of recommendations to promote healthy gums and teeth, and chief among these is to avoid eating sweet foods and drinks, attend to good digestion, and avoid stress, alcohol, smoking and coffee.  The teeth and gums do well when there is a healthy oral ecology and the mouth is slightly alkaline from sufficient saliva production.  So things like stress, which inhibits digestion, or substances like coffee, alcohol and smoking, which dry out the mouth and inhibit saliva production, are a definite no-no.  In Ayurveda we recommend cleaning the tongue with a tongue scraper every morning, followed by a procedure called gandusha, or oil-pulling, which is rinsing out your mouth with sesame oil.  This is followed by using bitter and pungent tasting herbs to clean the mouth, including neem, pippala and karanj.  In my practice I use a mouth rinse with herbs such as bayberry, myrrh, and spilanthes.  Using such techniques, I have been able to help people overcome chronic tooth and gum problems.  Make sure to visit your dentist regularly, just to know what's going on with your teeth - you don't have to go for every procedure, such as fluoride, but it is good to be informed so you know just how vigilant to be.  For problems like cavities, I recommend a relatively new, less invasive technique called Cari-Solv, that preserves more of the tooth mass, and prevents microleakage between the filling and the tooth that can initiate new decay.

The importance of psychology in disease.

How important is dealing with pyschological/emotional issues when dealing with disease/illness and what is the most effective way to go about this?

In Ayurveda it is said that all disease is psychosomatic in nature, and that all of the suffering we bring upon ourselves is the way we react to it, engaging in behaviors that bring about more suffering, rather than practicing those that alleviate it.  For example, if someone is angry at us, do we respond with anger, or do we try to find a way to resolve the conflict in a peaceful manner?  Or, if we injure our ankle while playing sports, do we continue playing or do we sit out the game and attend to healing? In the ancient Indian text called the Katha Upanishad, the human life is likened to a horse-drawn chariot, with the charioteer being the mind, the horses our senses, and the road our actions.  If the horses go down the wrong road, is it the fault of the horses?  No - it is the responsibility of the person driving the chariot, or in this case, our mind. Likewise, for all our actions including how we control our senses our mind is responsible, even if things happen to us for which we have no direct responsibility.  Even in bad weather and when thunder and lightning scare the horses, it is up to us to drive our chariot safely home.  Thus the mind is of paramount importance in dealing with disease and illness, simply as a way to avoid and reconcile behaviors that bring about ill-health. 

Ayurveda provides a list of many different behaviors that bring about ill health, called pragnaparadha, or 'crimes against wisdom'.  Examples of these negative behaviors include the improper use of the mind and senses (over, under or deranged use), inhibiting the expression of natural urges (e.g. crying, sleep, sex, food, urination, burping etc.), excessive sexual activity, engaging in violence (thoughts, words or actions), and not attending to disease symptoms when they manifest, or using drugs that simply suppress symptoms rather than resolve the underlying problem.  To promote good health it is important to develop the faculty of wisdom and patience, and the way to do this is to have a clear mind.  Thus activities such as yoga and meditation can be very helpful, creating a solid foundation for conscious awareness that helps us to root out unconscious patterns that bring about unhealthful and destructive habits.  Nonetheless, the process is very different from demonizing negative behaviors - rather, we should try to find out what it is we really need and want from our lives, and then regard our negative behaviors with compassion and love. Often these behaviors were initiated as a coping strategy, out of a fundamental desire to avoid suffering. And while they often work for some time, they only delay the inevitable, or eventually cause some other problem. Meditation, yoga and counseling are all very good ways to help us figure out what we truly need to be happy and peaceful.

Why don't some people heal?

Why don't some poeple heal even though they do all the "right" things?

Sometimes the right thing for one person isn't the right thing for another - so part of the problem is the "one-size-fits-all" approach that modern marketing uses to sell their products and services.  In traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, everyone is seen as an individual, and so when someone is unwell, a specific plan must be created to address their specific health issues.  In a related fashion, sometimes the problem is that what is being recommend as the "right" thing isn't right at all.  This is more a problem of ignorance or not knowing.  For example, some people are sold a product or a service that claims to be helpful when it is not. Likewise, sometimes people continue to engage in behaviors or activities that are counter-productive to good health, but aren't aware of this.

Another issue relates to the staging of the disease, and depending on how far the condition has progressed, different measures will be used at different times to bring about a resolution.  For example, if someone has arthritis, and is taking all the "right" remedies for arthritis, but hasn't treated underlying problems such as poor digestion, the condition won't get better and all those supplements are a waste.  So it is important to understand the causative factors for the illness, and properly address these before trying to get much headway with the presenting issue.

Sometimes the problem is that condition has progressed too far to resolve.  It is a sad but nonetheless universal truth that we are all going to die, and illness is a part of this existential reality.  There is nobody that escapes suffering, illness and death.  So sometimes the lesson of chronic illness isn't necessarily about getting better, it's about understanding our relationship with life itself, and the importance of seeking a deeper understanding to our existential plight.  In ancient India, the Buddha was often seen as the 'great physician', not because he was a remarkable healer, but because his teaching addressed the fundamental problem of our existence.  It is important to have a larger, deeper and more spiritual perspective - this alone can bring about a kind of healing that might not heal the body, but heals the very soul.