My Journey With Ayurveda: Part Ek

It was the best night ever. The biggest all-night party in the Village. David Bowie was my muse that year. 

Was I crazy to rip my body apart in a few hours after ripping it apart for several hours? 

I had committed to using myself as the lab mouse in a scary new experiment the first of the month. ‘Tomorrow’. 

The reasoning wasn’t clear any longer. Were the pills, pain and side effects over all these years so bad? 

I was headed into the suckiest thing I had ever tried in my life. 

‘What did I get myself into?’ 

I was about to purposely miss out on upcoming season of endless gatherings with food and cocktails. 

For beauty.

As a person who was never into the latest beauty trends, this was an extreme step. I had never been to a spa, thought facials were for old ladies who got face lifts, and never considered dieting. Gross. What’s life without sugar, ice cream and cheese? No point.

This expedition highlighted everything I couldn't do. Mostly, every single thing I ate, and had eaten for the last decade or more, I could no longer eat.

It sucked. Until it didn't. 

Here’s how I went from what ‘is this foreign witchcraft’ to this is how to live life. An Ayurvedic detox regimen of herbal pills and diet was to be my life for the next 3 months. It was confusing, then rewarding. Talk about high, risk high reward.

No dairy.

My god, my cheese!

No seafood.

Cheers to death!

No fermented foods.

Is pizza fermented? I found out the hard way. Damn cheeseless veggie pizza somewhere near Eldridge.

This journey started with a list of foods that I could not eat. Not what I could. Well, except for steamed vegetables (gross) and non-acidic fruits. Goodbye juicy pineapples. Oh, and oatmeal, which taught me aversion at 5th grade camp. Adieu cream cheese bagels. Instead, every morning I sat with my list of herbs to take- two neem, 2 manas, vitamins, etc. The same process at lunch and dinner but with different pills. I hated not being able to eat a sandwich.

I tried to do normal social events. Everyone commented on, aka harangued, about the no drinking. I brought my own sugar-free sparkling fruit juice. “What’s a detox”? “Sounds bizarre”. “Is it a cultural thing”? Over and over again. The food choices were not questioned as much because I was what others called a vegetarian for almost 20 years. The only meat I ate was seafood, so not eating that left a giant vacancy on my plate. I was the one ordering steamed unseasoned asparagus at The Modern. The dessert part was an exception. Before the detox, you couldn't leave me alone with a Joey-sized Toblerone.

Joey Tribiani mesmerized by the giant Toblerone in an episode of Friends.

The dining and social scenes were not as accommodating as they are now. One vegan restaurant opened about a year in and they used cashews to make things “cheesy”. Cashews were on my no-eat list. The non-alcoholic trend, like Dry January, didn’t exist.

“You’re so skinny, why do you need to detox?” I kept hearing.

 The whole point of this? My skin became unbearable with inflammatory breakouts during the Fall. This is skin that saw maybe three pimples her whole life, including those hormonal teen years. What was going on?

I had to fix the “root cause” of a bunch of inflammation in my tissues- from the gastrointestinal tract to my skin. In the process, my nervous system also healed- the anxiety was soothed. The allopathic pills I took for inflammatory conditions increased a sweet tooth, anxiety, and skin inflammation. By this point, I was feeding a proclivity for inflammation by indulging in inflammatory foods. It was not the food itself, but rather overloading on them. I wasn't eating a lot of food, but every choice exacerbated my condition. This in addition to not properly recognizing emotions manifested into a problem where I was taking a bunch of pharmaceuticals. One for the GI, another for the skin condition it caused. These issues did not go away and the doctors kept piling on the pills and topical treatments. As those piled on, so did the side effects. But, the problem never went away.

The herbs did a lot of work to rid me of the “toxins”. I could go back to eating those “banned” foods, but not in high amounts and they had to be balanced with reasonable foods, like steamed vegetables. I remember having a lobster mac-and-cheese for the first time in a lifetime. So good. (Was it S’Mac?)

Bottom Line

I went in to fix a beauty issue, and left with a whole body and mind makeover.

I had never felt of looked better. Ever.

Then I took antibiotics prescribed at an insane dose by an allopathic, you know “regular”, doctor. That’s a whole other story for some other time.

I have continued to walk with the science and medicine of Ayurveda for 15 years. Every day is learning and adapting. You learn about yourself- changing aspects and constants. The importance of these journeys (experiments), especially for me, a scientist by profession and nature, is to determine how to modernize this traditional science and medicine for today. This improves the experience of newcomers for a personalized experience.

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MORE TO DISCOVER

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