Why We Need Medical Systems Like Ayurveda More Than Ever

Earlier this month a report came out that first the first time since 1993, the U.S. death rate rose. That means that the overall life expectancy dropped. If you look at the numbers, it doesn’t appear significant but researchers say there is reason to be alarmed because life expectancy typically does not drop, especially in people under the age of 65, which is the case in this study. 

Deaths were up for heart disease, stroke and Alzheimers and also from unintentional injuries and suicide. Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, believes that some of the reasons for these results are because of the obesity epidemic in the U.S. as well as the national crisis of prescription opioid abuse and misuse.

Let’s look at the leading causes of death in the U.S. 

1. Heart disease
2. Cancer
3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4. Unintentional injuries
5. Stroke
6. Alzheimer’s disease
7. Diabetes
8. Influenza and pneumonia 
9. Kidney disease
10. Suicide

Most of the diseases listed are chronic lifestyle diseases. Lifestyle diseases are those which are directly affected by one’s actions, behaviors, the ability to manage stress and emotions. When a person is able to modify his or her behavior with a chronic lifestyle illness, his or her chances of living a longer and living a more productive and healthy life increase immensely.

Look at the experiment done by Dr. Dean Ornish who proved in his book, Program for Reversing Heart Disease, in 1995 that you could actually reverse heart disease by changing your diet, exercise regime and your outlook on life. 

The prescription of our modern medical system in the United States is to prescribe medications to lower cholesterol, liquify the blood through blood thinners, lower blood pressure, kill pain, improve the mood, etc. 

All of the prescription medications have many side effects, which in turn, make the patient more ill. We are literally medicating patients to death. 

Alternative medical systems, like Ayurveda, assist the patient in taking charge of his or her own health, by making healthy changes to enhance wellbeing. Ayurveda has been around for over 5,000-years and has withstood the test of time. 

If death percentages are not enough, maybe look at the cost of medical care. Healthcare costs are rising and keep rising for the individual. When I spoke to a physician, with 25 years in practice, he said to me, “Michelle, health insurance is no longer for people with ill health. It’s just a security blanket for major medical emergencies, but cannot be relied on.” While the Affordable Healthcare Act, insured 20 million Americans who were previously uninsured (including the writer), we have all seen the monthly costs increase yearly for the past few years. Insurance companies have gotten smart and realized that payouts for so many sick people is costing them more. So they’ve raised their rates and increased deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for the consumer. 

Making lifestyle changes or teaching patients simple but transformative techniques and rewarding them for those changes is where our health care must go. If health insurance companies are smart, they will reimburse more for services like health classes, personal training sessions and consultations, massage, yoga, tai chi, acupuncture and even for vitamins and herbal medicines, such as turmeric pills, which are known to help with a whole host of symptoms. 

A single set of chemotherapy treatments costs around $30,000 

Heart bypass surgery costs between $70,000 to $200,000

To treat one person with diabetes, it costs around $10,000 annually. 

Can you imagine if there was a menu of items where a patient could choose 20-40 treatments throughout the year, through their health insurance where they could select lifestyle change services? 

Let’s say a patient chooses:

10 lifestyle or health consultations at $175 each 

10 personal training sessions at $50 each

20 sessions of yoga at $15 per class

1 gym membership at $35/ month  (I understand that many health insurance companies are already doing this.) 

A selection of vitamins and herb capsules at $50/ month

We are talking about $3,570 per patient versus tens of thousands of dollars in payouts for medical expenses. 

Even if we don’t get that far in our lifetime, think about your personal finances. Isn’t a few thousand dollars per year worth your life, your health, and your quality of life? 

Our current medical system is not giving us the answers we need to get and stay healthy. It can no longer be a trusted model. It’s time we expand and look to other ways to regain and maintain our health and wellbeing. 

Wishing you perfect health always,

Michelle 

Michelle S. Fondin is the author of The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda: An Easy Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle (New World Library, 2015) and Help! I Think My Loved One Is an Alcoholic: A Survival Guide for Lovers, Family & Friends and upcoming book Enlightened Medicine: Get & Stay Well for Good This Time. 

Sources: 

 Sources: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/08/504667607/life-expectancy-in-u-s-drops-for-first-time-in-decades-report-finds

http://www.acsh.org/news/2016/12/12/life-expectancy-americans-drops-first-time-1993-10574

Ayurveda and The Ayurvedic Mind Body Type

Now you’ve figured out your Ayurvedic mind body type or your prakruti. So now what? How is that going to bring you to optimal health?

Ayurveda and ayurvedic health works on bringing you back to a state of balance for your personal Ayurvedic mind body type. Think of your mind body type as your baseline. When you are at this baseline, you feel fantastic. You feel yourself. You feel vibrant and energetic. 

Have you ever wondered why you couldn’t lose 20 pounds when your friend could modify her diet and lose it instantly? Or why you need only 6 hours of sleep per night but your spouse needs 8-9 hours of sleep? Things like appetite, metabolism, sleep, mood, and energy level is mostly regulated by your Ayurvedic mind body type. Now if you’ve always been thin but in the past couple of years you can’t stop gaining weight, this may be a lifestyle change or a change from prakruti to vikruti. 

Remember your vikruti is your current state or your state of imbalance.

Our goal in Ayurveda is to get us back to our own prakruti or state of balance.

Here are the ways you can get back to your Ayurvedic mind body type:

1. Honor an Ayurvedic lifestyle diet
2. Begin a dosha specific diet for Vata, Pitta or Kapha
3. Follow an Ayurvedic daily routine.
4. Follow an Ayurvedic seasonal routine.
5. Learn meditation and meditate daily
6. Follow a dosha specific exercise program for Vata, Pitta or Kapha
7. Drink dosha specific teas.
8. Following the advice of an Ayurvedic practitioner, take Ayurvedic herbs to rebalance current imbalances.
9. Work on emotional clearing. 
10. Eliminate toxins and toxic substances from your body. (i.e. alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, unnecessary prescription pills, processed foods) 

If you don’t have the guidance of an Ayurvedic practitioner, begin by balancing your primary dosha. For example, if your Ayurvedic mind body type is Vata-Pitta. You would begin by balancing Vata. Follow at Vata diet, drink Vata tea, follow recommended exercises to balance Vata, follow a Vata Ayurvedic daily and seasonal routine. Usually, if disease or symptoms are not advanced, following this advice will make you feel much better within about two weeks. However if symptoms are persistent or you have been experiencing symptoms for a while, you may need to look further into your vikruti. 

The idea behind Ayurveda is preventive health. If we can catch a disease before full eruption, we can prevent it from giving you illness. In the next blog, I’ll explain the six stages of disease according to Ayurveda. 

Wishing you perfect health always. 

Love,

Michelle Fondin, Founder of The Ayurvedic Path

www.theayurvedicpath.com

Chopra Center Vedic Master  and Ayurvedic Practitioner 

What is Ayurveda and Why is it important to me?

Ayurveda is a 5,000-year old medical system from India. It is a holistic medical system which is all-inclusive. Ayurveda respects the elements in nature and healing comes from lifestyle, nutrition, detoxification, yoga, meditation, herbal medicine and if needed surgery. The focus of Ayurveda is on prevention by keeping the body, mind and spirit in balance. According to Ayurveda, when imbalances occur and are maintained over a period of time, disease has the opportunity to manifest. Once an Ayurvedic patient learns how to detect imbalances, he can correct them through lifestyle changes before disease has a chance to grow.
The all-inclusive nature of Ayurveda means the Hippocratic oath that doctors must take upon graduating; “First do no harm.” In Ayurveda, we gently urge the body back to health. However, if methods of allopathic or Western medicine are needed, Ayurveda recognizes the complementary nature of these methods.
My discovery of Ayurveda came as a serendipitous event. When I was 28 years old, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My daughter was 5 at the time and my son was 18 months. Just hearing the word “cancer” devastated my life. After, two surgeries and radioactive iodine treatment, I was left without a thyroid, on synthetic thyroid medication and finding myself with a host of symptoms I had never experienced before. I had anxiety, panic attacks and depression. Convinced that these symptoms were directly linked to a thyroid imbalance, I saw doctor after doctor who assured me that the symptoms were “all in my head” since my thyroid levels all come back normal. Finally I found a doctor who believed me and he changed my medication to natural porcine thyroid hormone and put me on supplements. In addition, his nurse practitioner, a saint in my eyes, did Gestalt therapy and meditation with me. Little by little I was returning to normal.
On my road to recovery, a friend gave me a copy of Dr. Chopra’s Perfect Health to read. It is a description of Ayurveda and Ayurvedic lifestyle and it made perfect sense to me. Once I began implementing principles from Ayurvedic lifestyle, I began to feel better. Between the time of my surgery and my discovery of Ayurveda, three years had gone by, three years of my youth wasted on feeling horrible most of the time. I knew that if I were to feel good for the rest of my life, I was going to have to heal my body, mind, soul and spirit in every aspect and stick with it.
My journey into teaching Ayurveda came in about 2006 when my father-in-law at the time was diagnosed with failing kidneys. His toxicity level was so poor that the doctors told him in under 6 months he would be on dialysis. My husband came to me begging me to talk with his father about Ayurveda and to create a plan for him. I reluctantly did. I was reluctant because I did not feel I was an expert in any way. Nevertheless, I firmly believed and still do the power in lifestyle changes. So I talked with him and created a plan. The results were amazing. Within a month, he lost 35 pounds, was walking daily and his kidney levels improved.
I thought of how many people suffer on a daily basis because allopathic medicine does not have all the answers. I thus began my quest to help others heal with Ayurveda. It became not only a personal quest but my dharma or purpose in life. To end suffering is to enjoy life. And in enjoying life, each and every one of us can live our dharma. In living our dharma, we help others and bring joy to the world.

Michelle Fondin is the author of The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda: An Easy Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle  and Help! I Think My Loved One Is an Alcoholic: A Survival Guide for Lovers, Family, & Friends.