Support your health this winter
Date Posted:12 May 2015
Yes, winter is now on the horizon with Monday 1st of June the ‘official’ start of winter just around the corner.
As the days get colder it‘s important to protect your health by ensuring your immune system is not loaded with impurities from incomplete digestion.
When digestion is sluggish or irregular what is eaten cannot be fully broken down so impurities build in the intestines and spread throughout the body. The immune system is then kept busy cleaning up these impurities from partial or incomplete digestion. If there are also cold and flu bugs about in your environment then your busy immune system may not be able to cope with the internal clean up plus the external protection. The end result… you fall ill with a cold or flu.
So here are the key things you can do to keep your digestion strong to help support your immune strength.
- Take 1 tablet of Digest Tone prior meals 3 x a day and take 1 tablet of Digest Plus15-30 minutes after meals 3 x a day. To build and maintain immune strength take either Nervous System Support or Amrit Kalash Ambrosia.
- Follow our Great Digestion Tips below
- Eat your main quantity of food at lunchtime and a lighter evening meal by 6-7pm.
- Get enough sleep – bed by 10pm for 7.5-9 hours of quality sleep
- When stressed the body reduces digestion and redirects the body’s resources to help you overcome the challenge you are facing. So reducing the impact of stress does helps to keep your digestion strong. If you practice Transcendental Meditation, be sure to be regular. Learn more about TM
Great Digestion Tips
”Fresh seasonal foods, prepared by a happy cook, eaten with full attention, in a timely manner (at regular intervals during the day) when appetite is present, will have the best result.”
Digestion tips
- Eat in a settled environment, sitting down, with full attention Ayurveda explains that we digest what we taste, hear, see, touch and smell - in effect we digest every experience we have. When experiences compete for attention such as watching TV or reading while eating, food digestion suffers.
- Take a meal only when the previous meal is digested (from three to four hours) If there is food sitting in your stomach when you eat again, the new mixes with the old partially digested foods disrupting healthy digestion, metabolism and elimination. You may also need to have a warm drink and snack mid morning and mid afternoon.
- For your first helping take an amount of food that fills your two cupped hands Ayurveda makes a connection between the size of your hands and the ideal quantity of food to sustain you. This instruction makes it very easy to eat the right amount of food for you. For a snack take an amount of food that fills one cupped hand.
- Eat at a moderate pace, not too fast and not too slow Being attentive to chewing your food before swallowing helps to keep the pace of eating at a comfortable rhythm and ensures the food is broken down properly for the stomach. If you swallow chunks of food without chewing properly, this puts a strain on your food and drink moving through the intestines and can give rise to indigestion and problems with elimination.
- Speak only after the food has been swallowed otherwise wind will also be swallowed with your food, creating imbalance in the gastrointestinal tract.
- Sip warm or hot water with your meal Cold drinks shock the body and disrupt how food moves through your stomach and intestines. Choose lukewarm or hot drinks over cold.
- Sit quietly after your meals for a few minutes At the end of a meal your body is busy as it gets to work breaking food down to be digested. Ayurveda suggests you sit quietly for a few minutes after eating. This really helps digestion.
- To aid digestion take a walk after lunch and dinner for 10-15 minutes After sitting quietly for a few minutes at the end of your meal, stimulate complete digestion with a 10-15 minute easy walk. This also helps reduce feelings of heaviness or dullness after eating.
- Reset your digestion with a soup and juice day at regular intervals Day to day digestion is helped when we give the stomach and intestines a rest from solid food at regular intervals – weekly for Kapha types, every two weeks for Pitta types and once a month for Vata types. Then the digestive fire burns brighter during the rest of the month.
- Minimise raw foods and salads during cold weather
- Drink milk separately from meals, either alone or with cereal foods like oat porridge or rice pudding. Avoid taking fruit with milk.
- Take honey at room temperature or lukewarm. According to Ayurveda, honey when heated creates impurities so only take honey at room temperature or lukewarm.
Wishing you the bliss of balance and a healthy winter this year!
| Linda Sinden has been a practising Maharishi Ayurveda Consultant since 1990 and is a regular contributor to our weekly Insights. She has a practice in Auckland, New Zealand and also provides phone or Skype sessions for those who need assistance, but don’t have a consultant in their vicinity. Email: lindasinden@orbislife.co.nz Skype: Linda.Sinden Mobile: +64 212237525 |  |
Wayne, Linda, Theresa and Louise
The Get Balance Team [associated-products]