RECURRENT FEVER/COLD/COUGH?- AYURVEDA HAS A SURE-SHOT ANSWER

Recurrent fever- immunity problem! Recurrent cold and cough- immunity problem! Recurrent allergies- immunity problem! Good Lord!!!! Isn’t it a fact that for most of the health issues especially recurring in nature, the world including the medical community has been blaming low immunity? But, what exactly is immunity? Did we ever try to find out? Unfortunately like most of the cases, here too, most of us act as messengers, instead of getting into the depth of it, for educating ourselves and others around. But then we must understand the logic because at the end of the day it is only logic that will stay forever. Lets begin.

***This post is an extract from the book THE ROOT CAUSE- Ayurveda, Astrology and beyond for a blissful life”. To pick up a copy of the book, please click the link/s mentioned at the end of this post ⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓. Also you may like to watch the following Videos to visualize the concepts- video 1 and video 2.

Our body is flooded all the time with disease causing microbes which we normally call as viruses and bacteria (some of which are good and are required by our body). However, our body also keeps producing antibodies all the time and as soon as they attack any part of the body, our body sends signals through blood and lymphatic system to produce antibodies to counter it. However, the problem comes when blood is not able to reach a place in the right quantity. Less quantity of blood means, less of antibodies reaching there and therefore this leads to multiplication of these bad microbes (which are present all around in our body as mentioned earlier) causing issues like bad throat, sinusitis, fever, infection etc.  Thus, if we ensure that the blood is reaching all the body parts properly, we wouldn’t fall sick (unless we encounter some microbes against which our body is unable to create antibodies or create less than required antibodies, due to sudden exposure to too many microbes or due to poor antibody producing system, however these conditions are very rare though Ayurveda has the answer for that as well).

So lets pick up the first condition where the person falls sick only because of less blood supply or circulation. So, lets focus on what do we eat during winters. Isn’t it, normally that food, which increases heat in our body to counter the chill of the weather like spices which are pungent (which increase current in the body). Winters also constrict or shrink our body (thus creating astringency in our body going by Ayurvedic language) thereby reducing the blood circulation to the peripherals of the body because astringency even reduces the volume of blood in our body and therefore to counter this constriction or astringency, we prefer to have more of sour foods like tomato soup etc. because sourness expands doing exactly the opposite of astringent foods. Exactly the opposite happens during summers, when the weather begins to warm up creating heat and acids in the body and since acidity also increases sourness or expansion of our cells, we should move from hot (i.e. pungent) and sour foods to cold (or say those which are not pungent), sweet and astringent foods. However, when the weather changes from winters to summers (especially in case of sudden transition), we don’t bring the according change in our diet and continue to have sour and hot foods (notice the food that you would have taken before falling sick and you will find this relevant). The result is that cells of our blood vessels expand (due to heat of the atmosphere multiplied by heat and sourness of food) leading to reduced size of blood vessel through which blood is supposed to move. Also heat increases our metabolism (burning of food) leading to reduced tissues in the body including blood. Thus, when less of blood will circulate in our body and that too in narrower blood vessels, less of antibodies will be produced and circulated. All this will lead to infection in form of sour throat, fever etc. So, the simple remedy in such a case, instead of banking upon medicines like crocine etc. which never hit the root cause, would be, to have fruits like pomegranate which are astringent and cooling, thus doing the opposite of sourness and heat. Also one must increase uptake of sweet foods during summers because high metabolism would require higher replenishment of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Thus sweet foods and low pungency (meaning cold foods) will increase amount of blood in the body and astringent foods will widen the blood vessels for antibodies to reach all around. So, guaranteed that with the use of astringent and sweet foods like pomegranate and other fleshy summer fruits, your infection will be gone within few hours 🙂

Conversely, when we move to winters from summers, we continue to have cooling and astringent foods since summers are hot and bring sourness in the body. A sudden change in weather either due to rains or chill, will cool down and constrict our body thereby leading to poor blood circulation (dryness on our skin during chilly weather is because of poor blood circulation). This sudden change will again lead to less of antibodies circulating in the body thereby causing infection. So, what we would need in this case would be things like tomato soup with a bit of black pepper to boost up our blood circulation. And Voila! You will be up and running within no time.

Thus the take away is that:-

• We must learn basics of ayurveda so that we can change our diet according to the changing weather (sometimes on even daily basis when weather changes suddenly)
• Its wrong food that creates diseases and its right food that can cure them too. And rightness/wrongness of food is all relative which depends upon different constitutions as well as weather.
• This also means that not only “One’s nectar could be another’s poison” but even “Nectar in a specific weather could be poison for the same person, in a different weather and vice versa”

Ayurveda could explain everything about how things work inside our body, how foods act on us, what causes diseases and how can we cure them from the root to lead a blissful life for as long as we live. Unfortunately during the course of time, the dust of ignorance started settling over this beautiful science especially in that era when we started believing that “Ignorance is bliss”. However, it seems that the time of its resurgence along with the other allied sciences of Vedic era, has arrived and the world has begun its journey towards becoming a better place to live.