Ayurveda therapy for fifteen days

15 days of basic Ayurveda conditioning that is standardized and matched to your personal constitution can help 80% of people with sub-health problems such as chronic fatigue, digestive disorders, emotional sensitivity, metabolic edema, etc. to experience a perceptible improvement in their condition.； But it is by no means a miracle cure for all diseases. Improper following the trend may worsen discomfort, and it cannot replace regular medical treatment at all.

I stayed at a small Ayurveda center in Dali for 15 days last fall. I was accompanied by 6 people, all of whom were office workers suffering from sub-health. The final results were ridiculously bad, which just confirms the above conclusion.

The Hunan girl who works as an e-commerce operator in the same group has a typical Pitta physique - she is usually very spicy, her face is red and swollen, constipation is the norm, and her temper will explode at the slightest moment, which even bothers her. The plan given to her by the center was basically to "cool down": drink 10ml of ghee mixed with neem juice on an empty stomach in the morning, do cooling breathing through the left nostril for 15 minutes, have three meals a day of cool boiled quinoa and steamed green leafy vegetables, and even the hot tea she loved to drink was replaced with room-temperature mint water. To be honest, I felt bored when I looked at it. She gritted her teeth and persisted for 15 days. Finally, the acne on her forehead that had been accumulated for three months disappeared by 70%. Not to mention her constipation, she didn't even get the menstrual migraine that she had suffered once a month before.

Another copywriter girl from Jiangsu fell into a trap. She has a typical Vata constitution. Her hands and feet are usually as cold as ice. She gets bloated after eating something cold and often suffers from insomnia. In the first two days when I went there, I saw that Ms. Pita's plan seemed to be "effective in detoxifying". I secretly drank neem juice for three days, and I had diarrhea for two days. I kept my eyes open all night long until dawn. I was so scared that I hurried to a doctor for adjustment. Later, she switched to drinking turmeric hot milk every morning, applying warm sesame oil to her feet for half an hour before going to bed, and eating only warm and soft root foods such as steamed pumpkins and roasted sweet potatoes. It took the next ten days for her to slowly recover. Before she left, she told me that the bloating problem after meals that had troubled her for more than half a year had basically disappeared.

Interestingly, Ayurvedic doctors from different schools have very different opinions on how to perform the 15-day conditioning regimen. Traditional Indian doctors insist that the 15-day regimen must be accompanied by a complete "purification process": fast for the first three days and only drink herbal water, eat only boiled grains without oil and salt for the middle seven days, and slowly resume food for the last five days, so as to completely remove undigested toxins (Ama) from the body. However, the modern Ayurvedic school popular in Europe and the United States completely disagrees with this statement. They believe that ordinary people do not have professional doctors to watch them all the time. Blind fasting can easily lead to hypoglycemia and electrolyte imbalance, which will harm the body. Their 15-day plan is more focused on fine-tuning your lifestyle: drink a warm drink corresponding to your body type every morning, do not look at your phone when eating, apply local oil for 5 minutes before going to bed, and do not need to fast. Just avoid foods that conflict with your body type. The center I stayed at happens to be a combination of the two. For people with Kapha constitution like me (who are usually prone to edema, phlegm, and difficulty in losing weight), the doctor will recommend a light fast for the first three days and only drink vegetable soup with ginger and black pepper. People with Vata constitution do not need it at all and can just eat warm and soft food normally.

When I was fasting for the first three days, I was so hungry that I scratched my head and scratched my liver, and when I watched other people eat steamed sweet potatoes, I swallowed my saliva. However, I slowly adapted to it the next day. My eyes, which were so swollen that I couldn't open them when I woke up every morning, could actually see clear double eyelids on the third day. The process for the next twelve days was actually not complicated: I used a copper tongue scraper to scrape my tongue coating every morning. The first time I scraped out a thick layer of white coating, I almost felt sick and vomited. Later, I got used to it and my mouth felt particularly refreshing after scraping. ； Then I rinsed my mouth with warm coconut oil for 15 minutes. The oil I spit out was milky white. The doctor said it was toxins in my mouth. During that time, I replaced all the iced American drinks I drank every day with hot ginger tea, and I didn't even touch refined sugar. I lost 4 pounds in 15 days, which was not the kind of dehydration. The swimming ring I had accumulated on my waist for almost a year shrank by a circle. I used to feel sleepy at 3 o'clock every afternoon, but I still felt energetic until get off work without drinking coffee. I also looked at the data from the smart watch. During that period, the duration of deep sleep increased from an average of 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours, and the resting heart rate also dropped from 75 to 68. It was not all psychological.

Nowadays, many people on the Internet criticize Ayurveda as an IQ tax. To be honest, I can understand it. Nowadays, too many businesses package it as something magical, often selling "Ayurvedic detox pills" and "universal ghee" for thousands of dollars, claiming that chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure can be cured in 15 days. This is purely a lie. When I was at the center, I met an uncle with essential hypertension. When he came, he said he wanted to stop taking medication through conditioning, but the doctor persuaded him to go back on the spot. He repeatedly said that Ayurveda is essentially a lifestyle adjustment, not a medical treatment. It can help him stabilize blood pressure in 15 days at most, and he should take no less than one pill.

After I came back, I still retained several little habits I had developed at that time: scraping my tongue every day, gargling with coconut oil, and taking a sip of warm water to balance before eating iced food. More than half a year has passed. The allergic rhinitis that I always suffered from every season changed this year. I only had a few sneezes and passed away without taking any medicine. You say it’s all due to Ayurveda? Not necessarily, but it at least allowed me to learn to observe my own body signals, instead of blindly following the trend and buying Internet celebrity health products and stuffing them into my mouth what others say is good. In the end, what is suitable for me is the one that is useful.