Chapter 1: Understanding Diet and Health (How to have better health to better serve Krsna)
The first part of my book about health: The connection between diet and health we often don't understand.
Chapter 1: Understanding Diet and Health
There are two essential factors for good health: we need to exercise, and we need to eat well, maintaining a proper diet. The exercise part is relatively simple: anything that makes one move, like walking, yoga, cycling, or even doing house chores will help. However, when we come to diet and eating habits, things become more complicated. There is so much contradictory advice around that one will have a hard time reaching any kind of conclusion.
I did a lot of research on this area in the past and reached some interesting conclusions, supported both by the Ayurveda and by modern studies. These are rules of thumb that you can use to maintain or regain your health and of your family.
Actually, having a proper diet is even more essential than exercise. If one can keep a healthy diet, he can prevent many different health problems, keep the immune system working properly, and increase the longevity of the body, without having to spend time and money on different treatments.
“In Kali-yuga, the duration of life is shortened not so much because of insufficient food but because of irregular habits. By keeping regular habits and eating simple food, any man can maintain his health. Overeating, over-sense gratification, overdependence on another’s mercy, and artificial standards of living sap the very vitality of human energy. Therefore the duration of life is shortened.” (SB 1.1.10 purport)
Nowadays, most have very unhealthy diets. What we normally call a “sumptuous feast” is not always very nutritional. Quite the opposite: it usually contains a lot of refined carbohydrates, fried preparations, sweets, and so on, which may taste well but is very unbalanced nutritionally. Once there was a special feast in a temple, with many different preparations, but I noticed that actually, the main ingredients for all the different preparations were basically the same: rice, white flour, oil, sugar, and potatoes, with a few preparations containing a little milk, paneer or fruits. The different preparations were basically just variations of the same ingredients, mixed with heaps of oil and sugar.
Most people nowadays have a diet based on white flour, rice, refined oils, sugar, potatoes, and meat. It started in the western countries but slowly became popular all over the world. As devotees, we, of course, skip the meat, but we tend to mimic most of the rest of the diet, not only eating a lot of refined, poorly nutritious, processed, sugar-coated, and deep-fried food but also overeating. This combination of refined food and overeating wreaks havoc in our bodies, causing all kinds of premature problems. As Srila Prabhupada points out, the secret is in eating healthy, wholesome foods, and at the same time be moderated:
“People in rich nations eat more, become fat, and then pay exorbitant prices to so-called yoga instructors in order to reduce. People try to reduce by all these artificial gymnastics; they do not understand that if they just eat vegetables or fruits and grains, they will never get fat. People get fat because they eat voraciously, because they eat meat. People who eat voraciously suffer from diabetes, overweight, heart attacks, etc., and those who eat insufficiently suffer from tuberculosis. Therefore moderation is required, and moderation in eating means that we eat only what is needed to keep body and soul together. If we eat more than we need or less, we will become diseased.” (Path to Perfection, ch. 4)
In his purport to SB 4.26.13, Srila Prabhupada emphasizes that we should have a simple and balanced diet. Too much rich foodstuffs, he points out, can make one fall down, making him attracted to gross sense gratification:
“Sattvika-ahara, foodstuffs in the mode of goodness, are described in the sastras as wheat, rice, vegetables, fruits, milk, sugar, and milk products. Simple food like rice, dal, capatis, vegetables, milk and sugar constitute a balanced diet, but sometimes it is found that an initiated person, in the name of prasada, eats very luxurious foodstuffs. Due to his past sinful life he becomes attracted by Cupid and eats good food voraciously. It is clearly visible that when a neophyte in Krsna consciousness eats too much, he falls down. Instead of being elevated to pure Krsna consciousness, he becomes attracted by Cupid.”
As explained in the Bhagavad-Gita (17.8), one of the symptoms of food in the mode of goodness is that it is wholesome: pure, nutritious, and health-giving. The effects of such foods are that they “increase the duration of life, purify one’s existence and give strength, health, happiness and satisfaction”. Most food that people eat nowadays is refined, with most of the nutrients taken away, which is a characteristic of food in the mode of passion. As the Lord points out, it “causes distress, misery and disease.”
A few years ago, when I started having health problems, first I tried different doctors as almost everyone does. However, in my case, this didn't help much. One thing I learned in this connection is that allopathic medicine is good for treating specific diseases but not very good about maintaining one’s health. If we have a bacterial infection, a doctor can easily cure it with antibiotics. If we break a bone, the doctor can put it back in place and then immobilize it so it can heal, and so on. However, when one simply has a general decline in his health, without showing specific symptoms, frequently doctors can do little about it.
Allopathic medicine is good at interventions, but not so great at improving one’s health. Ayurveda works under the opposite principle, helping one to improve his health and thus preventing disease. It’s great when one can understand and properly follow it, the problem is that many ayurvedic doctors try to use it as a replacement for allopathic medicine, using ayurvedic medicines to try to cure specific diseases like in allopathic medicine, without however paying much attention to the underlying causes. There are still a few good Ayurvedic masters available in certain places, but unfortunately, the number of proper Ayurvedic practitioners is declining. For the ones who live outside of India, the chances of meeting a qualified Ayurvedic doctor are not very great.
One solution I found that is available for everyone regardless of the place of living is to change one’s diet, simply eating nutritious food at the right times. As the saying goes “Let food be thy medicine".
The human body is a very amazing machine in the sense that it can repair itself from most damage. The problem is that to be able to repair, the body needs spare parts: different types of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that are used to build and repair different tissues, produce different types of hormones, and other important assets. Without the necessary nutrients, the repairing processes are hampered and the body starts to break down, just like a car that doesn’t receive proper maintenance. We then go to see a doctor, and expect that he will be able to magically solve all the problems with a pill.
To have a proper diet is essential to keep our health. If one can keep a healthy diet, he can prevent different health problems, keep the immune system working properly and increase his longevity, without having to spend time and money on different treatments.
How disease is cured
One interesting point about health is to understand how disease is cured and how damage to the body is healed. Let's imagine that someone broke a leg and went to the hospital to fix it. The doctor takes an X-ray to see how bad it is, does some manipulation to put the bone in its proper place, uses plaster to immobilize it, and sends the patient back home with the recommendation to rest and drink plenty of milk.
We can see that the doctor can't directly fix the bone. All he can do is create the necessary conditions so the body can heal itself, by immobilizing the leg and giving it calcium and other nutrients, so the body has the necessary raw materials to heal. In any case, all the healing is done by the body. The doctor can just adjust the conditions so the body can heal itself. We can observe that in most other conditions.
The Ayurveda, as well as most other systems of traditional medicine are based exactly in restoring the equilibrium of the body, so it can heal itself. The most basic condition for this to happen is that the body has the proper raw materials and the proper conditions. That's precisely what our modern lifestyle negates.
Going back to the example of the broken leg. Let's say that instead of drinking milk and eating real food, our friend decides to eat a lot of french fries and take a supplement based on calcium carbonate. Calcium is needed in order for the body be able to fix a broken bone, however, to properly absorb and transport calcium, the body needs vitamin D, and to properly mobilize it, making it fix in the right place (in the broken bone, instead of forming plaques in the arteries, for example) it also needs vitamin K2. Finally, to use calcium, the body also needs magnesium.
We can see that in this case, apart from the calcium, at least three other nutrients are needed. If one or more are in short supply, the process will not work very efficiently.
Interestingly enough, full-fat milk has both calcium and magnesium, therefore a good amount of milk, combined with a good diet and sunlight would offer good raw materials for the healing of the bone. However, our friend decided to discard the advice and instead adopted a diet based on french fries, which hardly have any nutrients at all. To make matters worse, he decided to take calcium carbonate, a very low-quality supplement with low absorption. Without the proper building blocks, his body would have a hard time and the bone would take a long time to heal. At the same time, the poor diet would probably cause other problems. Without vitamin K2, for example, it's not such a good idea to take more calcium, since the calcium may end up in the wrong places, causing plaques in the arteries or even cataract (which is accumulation of calcium in the retina).
From this we can detect two problems we frequently face nowadays: we fail to supply our bodies with the necessary nutrients, and try to cover for it with synthetic medicines or low-quality supplements.
This is especially true with industrialized products: there is not a single industrial process that increases the nutrition of the food we eat. Every time any grain, vegetable, nut or fruit is processed, part of the nutrients are lost. The more something is processed, the less nutrition is going to remain. As the original ingredients are stripped of their fiber content, dried, heated to high temperatures, combined with unhealthy ingredients, like sugar, refined vegetable oils, and so on, they become progressively unhealthier, to the point they start to actually become toxic.
For example, wheat in its original form is rich in B vitamins and a few minerals, such as iron and magnesium. When the wheat is converted into flour, most of the nutrients are lost (since the bran and the germ are discarded) and the little that is left is lost in the bleaching process (used to make the flour white). To try to fix it, the white flour is sometimes enriched with some synthetic B vitamins, iron and calcium. Although this helps to alleviate malnutrition on vulnerable populations, these synthetic nutrients are a far cry from what was originally there. They are cheap chemicals, with low bioavailability, that often do more harm than good.
Let's say that this white flour is now used to make biscuits. The white flour is then mixed with hydrogenated fat, sugar, and artificial flavorings, creating a final product that is even worse. To add insult to the injury, preservatives are often added to increase shelf-life.
We can see that the humble wheat ends up being converted into something that is quite bad for our health. The same is true for most other industrialized products. One of the secrets of a good diet is to avoid processed products and instead focus on “real” food: vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, different types of millets, milk products, herbs, and so on.
To function properly and repair wear and tear, our bodies need a lot of different nutrients. It’s actually not so easy to get all the nutrients we need from the food, especially nowadays, when most of the soil is depleted in minerals. Most people nowadays don’t get enough nutrients from what they eat. Although we can survive with much less than the ideal, many functions of the body will be impaired, and therefore one will not have the best health.
Apart from proteins and fats, there are 13 essential vitamins, 16 essential minerals, and a great number of other trace minerals. All these different nutrients are essential for certain functions of the body, just as much as different materials are essential for the operation of a construction company.
Let's imagine that a large construction company is hired to repair a dilapidated building and build a few new expansions. The manager supplies the workers with plenty of cement but forgets about other materials and components, such as steel bars, wood, pipes, wires, glasses, doors, paints, etc. Without such materials, how are the workers supposed to fix or build anything? Instead of being fixed, the building will just continue to degrade.
Similarly, when we don't get enough nutrients from our diet or we eat foods that are actually toxic, the body starts to just break down. It may start to show all kinds of strange symptoms that doctors are frequently not prepared to deal with. The doctor may then ask for a few tests, then for a few more, and a few more on top of them. Finally, not being able to find anything wrong, he may conclude that it must be a psychological issue and send the patient to a psychiatrist, who may end up prescribing drugs for schizophrenia! One could end with more problems than he started with.
Many start to feel tired or have different problems and end up having their condition classified as psychosomatic or as some mental disturbance, since the doctors can't find anything wrong with their bodies. We can observe in our society many cases of devotees who start to feel tired, or have different problems and end up being classified as "mental" since the doctors can't find anything wrong with their bodies. On top of the physical difficulties, they also have to deal with emotional trauma.
The reason most doctors are not able to help in such cases is that allopathic medicine is based on masking symptoms and not so much in investigating the underlying causes of the disease. Someone with fibromyalgia (a condition common in women, that causes weakness and pain) could end up being given antidepressants. This would make the person feel better for a time, but without treating the underlying causes, it would just make the condition worse in the long run.
In other situations, not being able to correctly identify the problem (since one may actually have multiple problems simultaneously and show a multitude of unrelated symptoms) a doctor may try to prescribe multiple medicines to address each of the symptoms separately, and a few more to counteract the side-effects of the first batch. The patient ends them with a bag of medicines and a progressively weaker health. Most of us know many such stories. This is one of the reasons many become interested in alternative medicine: even if it may not be able to help much, at least it doesn't involve so many dangerous drugs and don't have so many collateral effects.
Instead of falling into this circle, it's much more productive to start by fixing our diets, eating nutritional food, and offering the body the right conditions to heal. This is something that costs little and has no side effects. After following this regime for a few months, the majority of one's health problems will be solved automatically. He can then seek a doctor's help to treat any major problem that is left. Chances are that with the problems narrowed down to just a few symptoms, the doctor may really be able to help.
The takeaway is that modern medicine is focused on medication, not on diet and proper eating habits. People become diseased because of their poor diets and hectic lifestyle and frequently doctors can do little to help them. To avoid this, one needs to understand how his own body works and fix his diet and habits. Without changes to our eating habits and lifestyle, we shouldn't expect that some magic pill will solve all our problems.
Three health issues that are the source of most other problems
Of all the different health problems we face nowadays, three are especially significant. In fact, most other health conditions are caused or accentuated by these three. By solving these three problems we become less susceptible to all kinds of diseases, from flu to cancer. Incidentally, all three of them are connected with our eating habits.
The first is a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin is an essential hormone for the body. It allows us to use glucose, which is the basic fuel for all the cells in the body. Inability to produce insulin is called type 1 diabetes, a condition where the body loses the ability to control the levels of glucose in the blood and of using it as a fuel, resulting in serious problems.
Every time we eat foods rich in carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks the starches in the food and dumps the resulting glucose in the bloodstream. As a response, the pancreas secretes insulin, which signals to all cells in the body that they should absorb this glucose and replenish their reserves. As the cells pick up the glucose, the levels in the blood normalize, at least until the next meal, when the process repeats itself. High levels of free glucose circulating in the blood are toxic (we can see how much this can be a problem in the case of diabetic patients), therefore everything needs to work like a clock, so the glucose levels don't rise so much.
Eating carbohydrates is a normal process. Human beings have been eating grains, fruits, roots, and other foods rich in carbohydrates since the beginning of time. The problem is that our modern diets are too rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars (imagine yourself eating a cake, which is basically a combination of white flour, oil, and sugar). This type of refined carbohydrate is digested very quickly. The resulting glucose inundates the blood, provoking an equally strong insulin response. This creates a roller-coaster effect, where the glucose in the blood rises too fast, and then (due to the strong insulin response) drops too low. This makes one feel hungry, which makes him repeat the process, eating again after a few hours. As this repeats, the cells in the body stop responding to the insulin, forcing the pancreas to secrete higher and higher doses to get the same level of response from the cells. It’s just like if the cells would start to become deaf and the pancreas would be forced to scream higher and higher to get their attention.
This resistance from the part of the cells and the resulting higher levels of insulin leads to a condition called insulin resistance, in which the body tries to compensate for the resistance from the cells by pumping more insulin. One can then end up with levels of insulin up to four or five times higher than normal and still have high blood sugar, a combination that results in serious problems.
Insulin is such a dominant hormone that it will block other important hormones (such as growth hormone) resulting in a lot of abdominal fat and less muscle. Over time, this condition can lead to type 2 diabetes, a very debilitating disease.
The difference between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes is that in the first the body is not capable of producing sufficient insulin, and in the second the insulin production is normal, but the cells stop responding to normal levels of insulin, forcing the pancreas to produce much larger doses to compensate. In short, type 1 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin, and type 2 diabetes by an excess of insulin due to the resistance of the cells.
It happens that most people who adopt a diet rich in refined carbohydrates end up developing insulin resistance to a higher or lesser degree. According to recent research (‘Insulin Resistance: Insulin Action and its Disturbances in Disease’ by Sudhesh Kumar and Stephen O'Rahilly), insulin resistance is the cause of most health problems, including:
Metabolic syndrome
High blood pressure
High Cholesterol
High Triglycerides
Fatty liver
Obesity
Diabetes
Inflammatory conditions (arthritis, tendonitis, autoimmune reactions, hormonal problems)
Contributes to heart problems, dementia, problems in the eyes, etc.
Lack of concentration, brain fog, weak memory
In other words, insulin resistance is actually a factor behind the development of most chronic diseases. Research from the TGHRI (Diabetes 2015 Jun; 64(6): 1886-1897) points out the existence of an important link between chronic inflammation, poor immune responses, and insulin resistance. It happens that insulin is an important hormone for the immune system. The T-cells (just like all other cells from the body) can become insulin resistant, and when this happens, they ignore the signals from the body when there is an infection. Insulin resistance almost always comes together with high blood sugar, which is another factor that suppresses the immune system. The combination of these two factors results in a sluggish immune system that undermines the capacity of the body to fight disease.
Insulin resistance is caused by a combination of a diet rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars and the habit of eating frequently. Unfortunately, most people nowadays have insulin resistance to a major or minor degree. If you crave sweets or carbohydrates and have difficulty concentrating, mood swings, or dizziness after a few hours without eating, you probably already have it to some extent.
Apart from the effects on the immune system, another of the major consequences of insulin resistance is weight gain, which may lead to obesity over time. One thing actually leads to the other. The main causes of insulin resistance are sugar and refined carbohydrates. Every time we eat foods like cakes, bread, biscuits, or sweets, the glucose in the blood rises quickly, forcing the body to respond by releasing a great deal of insulin. The insulin makes the glucose be quickly stored as fat in the cells (instead of being converted into energy), and thus lowers the blood sugar. The consequence of low blood sugar is that we feel hungry or dizzy again after a short time, tending to repeat the dose. Every time the cycle repeats, we gain a little bit of fat and we make the cells of our body more resistant to insulin. Over time, we start to accumulate more and more fat (which may lead to obesity), and the pancreas is forced to release more and more insulin to compensate for the resistance of the cells (leading to insulin resistance). As we can see, these two problems frequently walk together.
It's important to understand that obesity is not genetic, nor is it necessarily caused by a lack of willpower. Rather, it's caused by one’s eating habits. The same person that can gain weight very easily on a diet of refined carbohydrates and sugar, can lose weight equally quickly on a healthier diet. Some people gain weight easier than others, but any person can maintain an ideal weight under the correct diet.
One of the main pillars of a good diet is to reduce (or completely avoid) refined carbohydrates. Much of what I write here is dedicated to explaining how to do that. Once this is done, problems like insulin resistance and obesity are also automatically treated.
Finally, we have the problem of inflammation. Actually, inflammation is a natural function of the body that increases the blood flow on damaged areas, facilitating the healing process. Inflammation is a problem when it becomes chronic.
Chronic inflammation is especially connected with painful conditions, like tendonitis, arthritis, etc. It can also aggravate circulatory problems in the arteries, heart, and brain, and even cause or contribute to the appearance of certain types of cancer. Just like insulin resistance, chronic inflammation can cause many different health problems. Many of these conditions are actually a combined result of both.
It happens that just as in the case of insulin resistance, the main cause of chronic inflammation is a bad diet: refined carbohydrates are also highly inflammatory. There is also another factor, which we are going to discuss in more detail a little later: refined vegetable oils (like sunflower, canola, corn, and soy oils). These oils are too rich in omega-6 fats, as well as other inflammatory substances. Their regular consumption is another important factor that leads to inflammation, especially considering that they are combined with refined carbohydrates in most of the snacks we eat on a daily basis.
When one is young, the body can take a lot of abuse. One may eat pancakes with soda for breakfast, a sandwich and fried potatoes at lunch, and pizza for dinner (with a few sweets and snacks in between), and still be able to function. However, as we get older, the body becomes much more sensitive. It comes to a point (for most people it is around their 40s) where we have to choose between cakes, soda, and milk shakes and our health. The ones who choose wisely may be able to remain active and healthy for 20, 30, or even 40 years more. Others often start to face serious health issues after a few more years. One may not necessarily die earlier because of a bad diet, but it will greatly decrease his vitality and energy, causing all kinds of premature health problems that may be very difficult to treat. We fear invalidity, pain, and suffering in old age, and having a better diet is the surest measure we can take to avoid that.