Feeling Inflamed & Tired? Unlock Ancient Wisdom with Ayurveda & Turmeric!

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

And we know that between perimenopause, menopause, even before that pregnancy, all the different women's decades, gut health matters. And it's going to have a role when it comes to our inflammation. We know leaky gut is rampant and problematic. Really, the American diet and lifestyle, most of the world's diet and lifestyle at this point, are hazardous to the gut. And so we have to really have a gut first plan in place. Then in Ayurveda, we also talk a lot about self-care rituals for detoxing. And Ayurveda always teaches about the importance of seasonal detoxing at the intersection of seasons.

So between spring and summer, between summer and fall, taking a week and just gently detoxing the body, cleaning and clearing out accumulations that have been there. And so imagine if you hit your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and haven't done detoxification as part of your life. This is Dr. Talks. Real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hi, welcome to truly healthy and the podcast today, I have the joy of having doctor Shivani Gupta on my podcast. She is an Ayurvedic practitioner.

an expert in fusing Eastern and Western practices that help our bodies achieve equilibrium. She completed her master's in Archaeobatic Science and her PhD on Turmeric. Inflammation is a root cause for many of our health issues. Every single one of my patients, and hopefully all my listeners understand this. And so I'm so happy to have her here so that we can talk about inflammation. So we do have the power to overcome it. Her passion is teaching at-home remedies to reduce inflammation naturally that will help you enjoy more energy, less brain fog, less pain, and ultimately achieve vibrant health.

This conversation is going to be awesome today. Dr. Shivani Gupta has practiced Ayurvedic medicine for over 20 years, and her approach is to show you the tools in your toolkit so you can reach for them every time you need them. She is the founder of Fusionary Formulas, an Ayurvedic company that helps people with inflammation and pain. She has a website. She has a podcast. She has Facebook. She has Instagram. She has LinkedIn. She has free gifts that she gives people. She has a seven day inflammation detox challenge.

All of the links are going to be in the show notes so that you can learn from this amazing doctor that I'm so happy to have here today. So welcome to truly healthy MD podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Amazing. I am so happy to get started. So the topic that we're going to talk about, obviously we're going to talk a ton about turmeric. I'm so excited to learn from you because this is something that I have recommended for, like before I went into integrative medicine, even when I was a conventional doctor, I was aware of some of its benefits as I went into integrative and functional medicine, I learned more and more, and every day I learn more.

So I think today is going to be super helpful for me and for our listeners to hear about some of what you know about turmeric. I'm sure it would take you days to explain, months, years to explain everything you know, but you'll break it down in a way that we can all understand. But the main topic we're going to talk about is bridging our uvata and functional medicine tools to thrive through every stage of life. So thank you so much. I'm so excited about this conversation. So tell me first a little bit about yourself, about your background, and then I'll start asking you the exact questions.

Obviously, I told your bio, but just give us a little intro to help warm us up to this conversation. Sure. So I grew up in America, an immigrant kid, like so many of us. And I grew up eating the typical American lifestyle. Like I ate fast food, did all my activities. Every time I got sick, my parents would take me to the pediatrician. And back then, in the 80s, they would just give you a prescription for antibiotics because you had a cold and you wanted to get over it. And simultaneously, I would also travel to India every year with my parents to go see my grandparents and my cousins.

And when I got sick in India, my grandma would reach for her spice cabinet and she'd use turmeric and ginger and different spices every time to fix my stomach or to fix my body. And I always thought, who's right? Like these are two very opposite systems. Oh, yeah. How are they both winning? But they're so different. I don't even understand this. And fast forward through high school, through college, I used to get sick often. And what I didn't realize was i was a very chronic heavy antibiotic user and back then we did not have a conversation about gut microbiome gut health and probiotics and so it took until my college years till i was traveling through india i got disastrously sick they thought i would need to be hospitalized and as i was there I looked at the doctor and I said, you know what, enough is enough.

Can you drop down that antibiotic? I can't have you guys explode my gut anymore.

Ayurveda for Women's Hormonal Health 5:00

And I don't want 12 drugs for symptoms. And you didn't even tell me a probiotic. Like, what is this? And I looked at my parents and I said, we need to go look at this thing called Ayurveda. We're in India. It's all about yoga and Ayurveda. And I went on this quest and this journey just to figure out, like, could this help me? And I was able to heal my own gut, build a robust immune system, feel amazing and vibrant again, and not like a person without a defense system in place. And as I studied Ayurveda at each center around India at the Guru's feet, I realized, wow, This is an ancient wisdom.

It's pretty complex. But if someone would just simplify it and pull all the golden treasures out of it and bring it to the West, then we could use it and apply it. And fast forward now 20 years later, I study and love functional medicine. I work alongside incredible functional medicine practitioners who are, who are the best investigators for our health. And so I love that functional medicine is actually gonna figure out what's wrong, give you a deep analysis of what went wrong and what we need to adjust.

And then Ayurveda is the perfect lifestyle to place alongside functional medicine to help hold all those results. Because if we go back to our old habits, we're going to cause that inflammation and cause all those problems again. And so I find Ayurveda is beautiful. It's a system of health and healing and medicine, but it's also a lifestyle that you can apply to yourself to systematically, consistently reduce inflammation and thus feel better. That is amazing. I love it. Love it. I know that. My listeners are also on the same page.

That's the reason that they come to us. So I, um, I'm, I'm a medical doctor and I was in conventional medicine and I did not know how to integrate these things either. And it's my mission to educate people about bridging that gap. So you are exactly the type of, uh, person that I love having on my, on my podcast to help, you know, do that, to help bridge that gap. It's, yeah, this is going to be such a good, good, um, uh, talk. So, um, that being said, let's get down to, uh, you know, the getting healthcare.

So I wish there were more men that were trying to get healthcare because, uh, they, they really need it, but it is what it is. Women are better at getting healthcare. Um, women's hormones are a lot about things that I help women with a lot of women right now are. understanding that there's so much that we can do as practitioners to help them. So can you talk to me a little bit about the argument principles to help women navigate hormonal changes, for example, menopause more effectively? Absolutely.

So Ayurveda is really like this older wise woman in your life. In Ayurveda, we always had the village doctor, the village wise woman who people went to who would say, look, there's always tools in the toolkit that you can use to shift things. And so some of the big Ayurvedic pillars that we use for health are circadian rhythm. The circadian clock comes from Ayurveda. So this idea that we need to live in rhythm with nature and not defy nature's clock is a key piece to women's health. Because we as women already know that we live according to cycles.

We have our monthly cycle. We've had it throughout our life until that transition point of menopause. And so paying attention to cycles even after menopause is still important. But leading up to menopause, perimenopause phase, which is where I'm at, I'm 44, At this age, I find we have to triple down on the self-care rituals from Ayurveda because we've got to live on that clock if we want to stay healthy and balanced. So we teach a lot around circadian clock. We also teach about gut health and digestive fire.

And we know that between perimenopause, menopause, even before that pregnancy, all the different women's decades, gut health matters. And it's going to have a role when it comes to our inflammation. We know leaky gut is rampant and problematic. really the American diet and lifestyle, most of the world's diet and lifestyle at this point are hazardous to the gut. And so we have to really have a gut first plan in place. Then in Ayurveda, we also talk a lot about self-care rituals for detoxing. And Ayurveda always teaches about the importance of seasonal detoxing at the intersection of seasons.

So between spring and summer, between summer and fall, taking a week and just gently detoxing the body, cleaning and clearing out accumulations that have been there. And so imagine if you hit your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and haven't done detoxification as part of your life, then that's sometimes why we have so much stagnation, Our lymphatic system is like, hello, I'm clogged. There's congestion. There was a traffic jam here between me and inflammation. You're kind of screwed. And so I really do like talking to women about, look, if we can focus on this pre perimenopause, in perimenopause and menopausal or post, Then we've got this continuum of building health practices that can be really supportive.

And then finally, in Ayurveda, we talk a lot about the super spices like turmeric, ashwagandha. I love reaching into that toolkit to show people teas and elixirs and supplements, different ways that they can calm down the system. We know that Ashwagandha is beneficial as an adaptogen. We know Tulsi is very beneficial in the menopausal phase because it's adaptogenic and it's cooling to the system. Then we also have adaptogens like Shatavari, which is the queen of adaptogenic herbs for male and female reproductive organs.

There's a lot to play with in that toolkit. Then we also teach one big concept out of Ayurveda called the Doshas or the mind-body constitution. And so knowing whether you are more air and ether or fire or more earth, knowing your template and your body type can really help guide how you manage yourself through these transitions. So in perimenopause, I'm a fire, I'm a pitta, so I really have to keep the fires cool or else mood, dysregulation, anger, all those kinds of things can come up. And if you're earth, maybe you've got extra weight gain going into menopause.

And so we have certain recommendations that we make for that template. Or if you're more air ether, more vatha, you will have more anxiety, constipation, dryness. Going into menopause, it might really throw you off kilter and have more dryness and exacerbation of your existing template. types and tendencies. And so our job in RV that's just to create more balance to the whole system using these different lifestyle practices, herbs, spices, and then diet as well. If you like this discussion, please hit the subscribe button and consider leaving us a review.

It really helps people find us and we truly appreciate your support. That's really, really cool. And it's such a timely conversation. I know that just like you, when you were growing up, we're trying to find things that worked that wasn't just Western, just what you got from your grandmother. So many of our patients, so many people in our country and around the world are trying to figure that out too. And so people like you that can come explain this to us is a conversation that is so valuable to so, so, so many people.

So I'm loving absolutely everything that I'm hearing. Yeah, absolutely. Women's hormones are such a huge, huge topic, something that a lot of women need help with. I'm also 44, so I'm going through that too, and I see that struggle in my friends, in my patients. So this is something that is such an important topic. You touched a little bit on the gut. Can you tell me a little bit more about what the healthy gut how that plays in Ayurvedic and functional medicine, how that improves overall vitality.

Can we go a little bit deeper in that, please? Absolutely. So Ayurveda is this entire system of medicine that's 5,000 years old. And I find it so fascinating that a 5,000 year old system said, gut is the center of everything. Your gut health is your immune system. Your gut health is your brain health and your mood. Your gut health is everything. And now through modern science, we're proving so many of these ancient Ayurvedic concepts to be true. We're proving circadian clock. where we've already proven it.

We're proving gut microbiome is the key to everything. And so Ayurveda teaches us that we have a gut digestive fire. That was the language used for the gut, this campfire within us. And if we build with consciousness and with integrity, a healthy, robust fire, You know, if you go camping, you use different types of branches, small, medium, large, you really intentionally build that fire with the right pieces. So in our case, in modern times, we would interpret that as eating your polyphenols, eating your fiber, eating your prebiotic foods, your probiotics, like having a variety of nutrients in our diet, bringing in all the rainbow into our diet.

So do all the good gut health practices and then make sure you have daily practices that ignite the gut digestifier. A lot of times we just wake up, have our coffee. We're already on social media, distracted, running. All of us, even those who are trying to do better every day. It's a hard habit to break, but yes, that's a good message. We need to start with those little things. So yes, go ahead. Correct. And we're like coffee, social media, running through our day on watching videos while we're eating, eating in motion while we're driving through drive through.

So there's a lot of practices that we have for convenience that are not pro gut health. IRV that says always hydrate the system first. Let's inspire peristalsis first thing in the morning. Let's make sure we have at least one bowel movement a day. and that we're not constipated, that we're not holding on to waste and backing up our system. And so if anyone who's listening to this doesn't have their first bowel movement before they leave the house for the day,

Gut Health, Detox, and Daily Rituals 15:00

we recommend simple things like aloe vera juice. And there's aloe vera juices out there that taste like water. They taste like nothing. And so so many people who are constipated, I'm like, just come to my house. I'll give you a bottle of it. You'll do great. And then they're like, wow, you fixed me. No, aloe vera is something Ayurveda has loved forever. Or we'll recommend ginger lemon tea in the morning or just hot lemon water if you want to be quick about it. And while you're heating up your coffee, while you're getting ready for all the things you're going to do, just get that down first.

We get the system moving and doing what we need it to do. and we know that that's detoxing. We know it's alkalizing. We know it's beneficial if we don't put caffeine in first. If we put anything in first, it's protective of our adrenals. So we know all that now, but these are practices that we were taught in ancient Ayurveda forever now. Then when you go through your day, we recommend three square meals a day. I know that can be here or there based on your fasting schedule and what you're doing, but we like people to have a breakfast where they're intentionally eating something healthy, something robust, something that involves nutrient density.

Lunch, we recommend that lunch is the biggest meal of the day. So between 10 and 2 on the circadian clock is the pitah or fire time of day. And so we recommend that in that window you eat your biggest meal. that you're most supported by the sun highest in the sky to digest your most hard to digest ingredients. So if you're going to have salads, hemp seeds, nuts, all these kinds of things, that's your best window to absorb the nutrition out of that. And then fast forward into dinner. We actually recommend dinner smaller because you want that gut digestifier to open up, process and assimilate the nutrition from each meal, give you all that nutrient density into your system, and then close and let the fire rest.

We're not meant to nibble and snack all day. We're not meant to take water and drink huge glasses of cold ice water before a meal. That's like pouring ice water on a fire that'll shut down your fire. So we recommend, okay, if you're going to get to a restaurant and they offer that, say, no, no, no, no, thank you. Can I just have a cup of hot water? maybe sip a little hot water, ignite the fire, and then have the meal. And then we recommend that small dinner so that it's easy to digest. Digestion finishes by about seven, seven thirty, eight, latest, and then you have those two hours.

Everything's digested and fully done before ten to two, again on the circadian clock, which is when we want the body to use all of its fiery energy to clean inflammation out, cleanse the lymphatic system, the glymphatic system. We want that fire to switch over and have a completely different person, completely different job called detoxification. And so that's a big piece of gut health is timing. It's how you eat. It's when you eat. It's not just what you eat. We all have a lot of opinions right now about diet.

Ayurveda definitely has a diet. It's called the sattvic diet. I would relate it more closely to Mediterranean diet. And we're all about eating according to your circadian clock, according to your dosha constitution, and according to the seasons around you. But I don't worry about that as much as when are we eating and how are we focusing on hydration and eating throughout our day. Fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, weight gain. If you're a woman in your 40s to 70s, you've probably been told that it's just aging.

But what if it's not? At trulyhealthymd.com, we look deeper. Hormones, nervous system health, hidden toxicities. You're not broken. You just need a doctor who really listens. Visit trulyhealthymd.com and book a consultation today. It's time to feel like your real self again. such so many pearls. It's like one after another, after another, such so many, so many things. I'm super happy that I'm taking notes while we're doing this because this is such good information. That is amazing. So, you know, we see people in all stages of life.

You know, I talked a little bit about seeing perimenopausal women, but really, you know, we see patients that are uh, children, adolescents, young adults, middle age, older age. Um, so are there ways that Arju Veda helps to personalize health strategies to empower people at each of these different stages of life? Um, what can you tell me about that? Absolutely. You know, Ayurveda is very much a piece of this personalized medicine puzzle. It's why I love functional medicine. You guys as practitioners really drill into the details of what is going on and how are we going to rebuild the body and build vibrant health.

And Ayurveda also does that really beautifully. Ayurveda says, look, when you're young, it's about making you robust and healthy and strong. So with my kids, I feed them a very robust diet. I'm trying to pack as much nutrition and health in there as I can. As we're moving into our 30s, post actually that depends on whenever people choose to have kids but moving into our 20s and 30s you know it's so important as women that we start to really honor self-care circadian clock gut health and all these practices because if we don't we see that high prevalence of PCOS endometriosis different issues with people's menses and things like that.

Then I see a lot of women who are struggling with infertility, pregnancy, sometimes not being easy. So we really look at this as all of this is rooted in gut health, gut dysregulation, thus we're inflamed. We're defying nature's clock. A lot of times we're choosing to push our careers while trying to do so much. And so the body is just like, I can't do all this. You're not giving me space just to breathe. And so the Ayurvedic self-care rituals, we teach 12 self-care rituals to do throughout the day, are really built to help you have a rhythm with your day.

And the goal is you wake up in the morning, Ayurveda says touch the ground, touch your forehead, and just tune into your day. And that's interesting because it also has you touching, when you touch the ground, you're also, in a sense, in essence, squatting. You're causing this peristalsis of the gut. You're helping your first bowel movement. Then we say take a moment and meditate. pray, meditate, whatever it is you do in your day, a few deep breaths, prana, oxygen into the system. And then when we move people after that, we say, okay, we actually say hydrate first.

And we recommend take a copper lined vessel, keep water in it overnight, let it mineralize, and then hydrate the body first thing in the morning. You can do that pre or post brushing your teeth. I'm a post brush your teeth person for hydration. Brush your teeth, and then we have another habit in Ayurveda called using a copper tongue scraper. And the copper tongue scraper is a really interesting habit. You can have it stack it on top of brushing your teeth, but you'll gently scrape the tongue seven to 14 times.

And what that's going to do is it's going to allow the body to ignite the digestive fire, clear out your tongue, your taste buds, And we also teach that all the organs of the body are reflected on the bottom of your foot, just like they're reflected on your feet. So just like reflexology teaches us all the organs are reflected on the bottom of the feet, they're also reflected on the tongue. And so by scraping the tongue gently, you're going to detox all the organs of the body. You're going to ignite digestive fire.

I've helped people with constipation just by using a tongue scraper, which I thought was so fascinating. So this is a simple habit that can create a big change. And then we also teach oil pulling as a wonderful habit to help you pull all the bacteria, heavy metals and toxins out of our mouth and help detox that out of the body as well. That is amazing. Wow. so much so much that people can do that's not just you know taking another pill which I think I try very hard as you know being conventionally trained as an MD I just feel like I need to I have that knee-jerk reaction to give people more pills and there's so much I can do that's not adding more pills and so listening to a lot of these things that you're telling me is reminding me there's so much that people can be doing that I can be Uh, recommend to my patients that people out there who are not my patients are just my listeners on my podcast, uh, can be doing for their health.

That is not more pills. That is the most valuable way that we can take care of our health is not the pills. Pills are important sometimes, but everything else we do is more important. So everything telling me is like, wow. So, so helpful for all of this. Um, you know, something that I see a ton in my practice, and I'm sure everybody is seeing this is that we're, we're all suffering from less energy. There's a lot of chronic fatigue out there. Uh, a lot of my patients see me for a chronic fatigue.

I am, uh, I do pride myself on trying to find the root causes of that fat, of that fatigue, be it, you know, a chronic infection, uh, excess toxin load. You know something wrong with circadian cycles or hormones. Usually it's more than one thing, right? But I you know, I the little bit I know about our uvata is that it helps a lot of people with energy So what are some of those? Simple are you beta habits that help they can help our listeners feel feel more energized You know even feel unstoppable even if you you know, don't If you don't have the time and money to invest in a full you know, seeing a functional medicine doctor, which I really encourage all my patients to, but there's some stuff that we can do even if you can't do that right now.

And, you know, people who are seeing a functional medicine doctor, they also need to listen to these things. So what are those things that you would advise people? Absolutely. I think our number one recommendation would be aligned to your circadian clock. Your circadian clock is actually the reason why you're lacking energy, so it can also be the number one way to bring back your energy. If you can rise with the sun, make sure you're eating that biggest meal in the middle of the day. In the evening, start to wind down.

Personalized Ayurveda Across Life Stages 25:00

A lot of times we stay wound up until the minute our head hits the pillow expecting high quality sleep and that's just not going to happen. So it's so important to have an evening routine where we cut off using our laptops and our devices by about eight o'clock. By nine o'clock, house is settled, life and responsibilities are settled. Switch into self-care mode and really switch into dry brushing, which helps move the lymphatic system and clear it so it's better utilized overnight to clear our body.

Or we teach a Pyong massage. A Pyong massage is this full body massage with any organic food grade oil. You can use coconut oil, sesame oil. any oil you like, and really let that oil soak into the body. What it's gonna do is it's gonna absorb, it's gonna really oiliate the gut lining, oiliate the skin, oiliate the joints. It's like an oiliation gift to the body. But that's also gonna help you get beautiful, sound, deeper sleep. And it's a very Vata balancing activity to do. So many of us in our day do so many activities that wind us up and dysregulate the vagus nerve, dysregulate the nervous system, have us in our fight or flight, and that's a problem.

And so by switching into the self-care mode for that last hour of the day, we're going to settle the nervous system, set us up for a better detox overnight, and support the body in rejuvenating. Because the problem is we're not letting the body repair overnight. We're literally hitting bedtime at full speed, expecting beautiful quality sleep, and then waking up tired. And then we keep staying in our cycles of extra caffeine, extra sugar, extra carbs, whatever it is we can use to keep us going through.

So that would be Ayurveda's number one recommendation. Number two is to really follow these self-care rituals that help gently detox the body daily because a lot of that toxic burden just from living modern day life is the problem. And so by allowing the body to detox every day, what we're saying is I'm getting rid of that burden. Don't worry. You can function better because I'm doing this for you. Excellent. Things that sound simple, but they just have, they give us so much when we actually implement them correctly.

I'm a big supporter of having people work with health coaches too, to help really implement these things. Sometimes it sounds good, but it's hard to really implement. So finding yourself a good health coach, every single person that comes to my practice has to work with a health coach. Even if they think they know how to do things, health coaches have a huge place in helping people implement these things. So yeah, these are all amazing, amazing things that people need to start implementing, start living healthier.

Even if they're already healthy, they're going to be healthier if they implement them. If they're a little bit sick, if they're a lot sick, this is the cornerstone. You cannot heal if you're not implementing these things. So super, super important things for everybody to listen to. And as I was telling you, I'm a functional medicine doctor. I'm a commercially trained MD. I'm an internal medicine doctor. So I do integrated medicine, both internal medicine, functional medicine, and anything else that I can use to help my patients because those are not the only two modalities.

And as you well know, but just to reiterate to our patients, to our listeners, sorry, what functional medicine means, the only thing it means is root causes. We just look for root causes. It doesn't mean that we do, uh naturopathy it doesn't mean that we do we do implement it but that's not what it means the only thing it means is root cause medicine and i think that's real important for everybody to understand because uh some people think that functional medicine is not evidence-based it won't it's just about spending a lot of money no it's root cause medicine that's all it is a lot of doctors who are conventional practice functional medicine when they do root cause medicine they just don't know that they're practicing functional medicine right anyway after after explaining all that reiterate that to the public and to other doctors that might be listening.

But how does our Uveda complement functional medicine to provide these holistic solutions for chronic health problems? Because as we all know, there is a epidemic in our country, in our world. There are so many chronic health problems. And so conventional medicine is falling short. So we need to have more root cause medicine, AKA functional medicine, and bring in and keep expanding our toolboxes. I want everybody to keep looking for more and more things that will help them. Do not just take what your MD and DO says as the end of what could be offered.

There are more and more things out there that can be offered. Today we're talking about Arduvatus. So people with chronic health problems, how can that be integrated to help these people? Absolutely. You know, I love functional medicine. I've been going to functional medicine doctors since 2020. When the pandemic started, I thought I better make sure my immune system is so robust. And so when I started, I realized, wow, functional medicine has such incredible tools in the toolkit. You can do stool testing, hormone testing.

You can learn what food intolerances you have. You can do DNA testing. So I have definitely gone through the gamut and I love, I've actually worked with multiple practitioners now because first we got me optimal. Then I moved to a new practitioner where I was like, okay, perimenopause, whole new ball game. and now i'm working with a new one where i'm like listen i actually have won because of functional medicine and i'm holding those results with my lifestyle practices now let's talk about optimization so she gives me big lectures around hydrating with electrolytes and things that i forget because we get so busy in the world but i agree with you functional medicine meets health coaching is this perfect combination because you understand what is causing all the trouble what has historically caused the trouble you have this diagnostic understanding you have a practitioner who's really guiding you on what you can do to address it not just oh here take a drug that isn't gonna really reverse anything you're actually giving a solution where you're like okay this is multifactorial let's say it's heart health let's talk about your exercise your diet your stress all the different elements and then health coaching really helps with accountability I find I need the health coach to to say hey how are we doing this week and I'll They'll say, uh-oh, I ate this and I'm off base completely.

And they'll say, no worries. How can we get back on the track? So I love the whole combination. And the place where I see Ayurveda fit in there is it's this beautiful lifestyle practice that we can teach. It's another tool in the toolkit of functional medicine. And all of functional medicine doctors get it. They're utilizing a lot of the different herbs and practices out of Ayurveda already. I have so many practitioners who recommend tongue scraping, or they talk about ashwagandha, they talk about turmeric, they talk about using these spices based on what they see with the patient and what's needed.

So that's really exciting to me. And Ayurveda always says, let's reach for the herbs and the spices and the tools that'll really get the job done first. And then we can add on lifestyle, because sometimes it takes time to add on those different habits. And it'll take time to see the results. Tongue scraping is not going to give you a same day result, usually. So we need to use the ones that are quicker. I use ashwagandha, turmeric, ginger, these things usually first. And then I reach for the other lifestyle that I teach as your daily rituals.

Amazing, amazing. This is all such great information. I think our listeners are going to start you know, they're going to go to your website. They're going to start Googling. What's Arjuveda? Because I think, you know, we're still in the process of learning all these other things. We don't have the culture of learning these things. Sometimes people feel like it's not something that's evidence-based or something that's for them just because it has a name that's not, you know, a Western name, right?

So all of this is such a great intro for all our listeners to Arjuveda or they're learning more if they already do a little bit. Um, so let's, let me, uh, pivot just a little bit. I want to talk to you about tumoric because that's what your PhD is in. And I find it such a powerful tool in my practice with my patients, with my own body, my own body responds so well, just, you know, a little bit of history about myself. I suffered from in the past, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. I, um, had a million-dollar workup, people thought I had multiple sclerosis, and when all my workup came back negative, they're like, well, it must all be in your head, right?

You must have, you know, IBS, all that stuff that where the patient gets blamed, right? And so I had to find my healing with my own studies, but by integrative medicine and functional medicine. And now I You know, I really don't have, I don't have chronic fatigue. Yes, I do feel the symptoms when I, you know, I overexert myself. I want to do everything. I'm a mom, a physician. I don't always follow the principles that I preach. And so, yes, I will have some of my symptoms coming back. But with every birthday that I have, I feel younger.

I feel more vibrant. I feel more energized. I do more. I can show up to my patients, to my family more and more because of the way that I've learned to take care of myself. All that being said, I take very few supplements. I'm not a person that just is taking pills all day. I focus on my nutrition. I focus on my hydration. I focus on my mental health, on my sleeping. And that keeps the number of supplements that I take very, very low. And I think turmeric is one of those few that to me is really important.

And so tell us a little bit about the science of turmeric, what our listeners need to know about turmeric. Absolutely. I love turmeric.

Turmeric Science and Inflammation 35:00

When I learned about it in my herbology class, I was sitting there And the teacher was teaching us, like, you know, turmeric does all these things. And I thought, I'm Indian. I eat it every day. I did not know all those benefits. And what's cool is Ayurveda has used it for all those things in the past. And now modern science is proving item after item of what turmeric can do for us. So we have over 17,000 published studies and papers on turmeric in PubMed that talk about its benefits. And one of the biggest benefits is that it's anti-inflammatory.

The number of pathways that turmeric impacts, NF kappa B, Cox and locks, TNF-alpha, like a lot of these big pathways means that it affects an entire inflammatory cascade that's happening in the system and naturally helps shut those down. And that's really powerful because it's a simple plant, but it does so much for us. It's like Mother Nature created this perfect tool. So it's anti-inflammatory, it's antioxidant, which we know all the oxidation in our system is kind of like the rusting that's happening.

It's why when people say, After 30, after 40, they're like, I feel like I'm just getting old. Everything kind of slows down. I just get tired more easily. Things hurt. I wake up with stiff joints. And I always say, guys, that's not aging. That's inflammation. So let's just understand that our oxidation is causing some of our inflammation. It's probably also gut health and diet. But we've got to address the inflammation in a natural way to help prevent all of that from happening. But it's also antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, which as a mother is a big deal to me.

I need a defensive system for the junk that they bring home. My kid had norovirus, and I was like, nope. A kid had COVID. I was like, nope. And I don't catch anything from them because I put this big defensive shield in place and increased my tumor intake. So it's antibacterial, like I said, antiviral, antifungal, anti-H pylori, anti-Candida. We know it causes cell apoptosis. So when there are cells in our body that are meant to go, sometimes they don't go. They don't have cell suicide and cell death.

So turmeric is like this ultimate janitor. It'll come in there and just clean house and all the things that are meant to be cleaned out and go, turmeric will do that, which I love as well because we know that as we age, things do slow down metabolically, our mitochondria, A lot of things slow down, and when cells stop working properly, sometimes they can become zombie cells, and they just start running into everything, causing damage, causing havoc, and infecting other cells. And so I love that Turmeric comes in there.

It clears up the zombie cells as well. It has a lot of anti-aging properties. So to me, it's this ultimate support. It supports healthy microbiome. We know it's gut supportive. So I take it as my preventive tool. I know it's going to do so much for me. And then over the years, over the last 10 years, I've educated a lot about how to take turmeric. So taking the regular plant turmeric in its raw form is fine. A lot of people are juicing it and are into that. Nowadays, we're so inflamed. I think it's important to take it in the best way possible to get the most support.

So raw works. Then you can draw it, dry it into a spice. A lot of people are using the spice turmeric. They're taking like a half teaspoon and making a turmeric latte. Unfortunately, it's being sold in Jews and lots of sugary things, which makes no sense because it's anti-cancer. I know, right? Don't add sugar to your life to add a little bit of a benefit from turmeric powder. But when you are going to cook with turmeric powder, make sure you add black pepper or a healthy fat to increase the absorption.

We know that black pepper increases that absorption by 2000%. And I worked in the lab in Houston where they discovered that. Healthy fat we know is also very beneficial with it. So I always say to people, take your turmeric any time if it's built with black pepper, but you can also add it with a meal so you get the benefits of both. And then finally, there's the extract. And that's where things get interesting. We have extracted curcumin from turmeric. And we know that out of the entire turmeric plant, only 3% to 5% is the curcuminoids.

And of those curcuminoids, the one curcumin is the most effective at reducing inflammation. And so a lot of people build turmeric supplements, but oftentimes they're selling you something called curcuma longa on the label. And that just means regular turmeric. So they're putting regular turmeric powder into a pill, which in my opinion is a waste of your time. Then many of them use many different patented forms of curcumin that they made. But when I worked for my advisor in his lab, he's like, please never be someone who breaks off pieces of the curcumin molecule and calls it better.

That's not a game you should ever play. He's like, using the extract in its most potent form with the whole powder of turmeric is the synergistic approach to help get the best results. And so about 10 years ago, I went to work. Well, I finished my PhD and I had a group around me of all MDs and doctors who were like, that's so great that you think turmeric's great, but it can't really stand up to an anti-inflammatory. And I said, you know what? It absolutely can. I'm going to prove it. And so I built a formula just to prove that we can use turmeric for joint pain.

And when an orthopedic surgeon is going to say, hey, you have pain, here's a natural solution for you that it can stand up to whatever else they're offering. And so that's what I've been doing for about the last 10 years now is giving people solutions for their chronic joint pain. And then once I realized how well it worked for pain, I thought, OK, then it's going to work for everything else, of course. Because if we can attack pain, then that's the most obvious thing that turmeric can help with.

Wow, yeah, and you just touched on something that's very near near to my heart, which is having mainstream doctors understand supplements, because the way the studies are sometimes done is that they're just not done correctly. One, there's very few studies done, right? And the few studies that are done are just not done correctly. They're not with the right type, the right dose, the right absorption, everything of supplements. And so there's all this evidence out there saying that, oh, my supplementation does not work.

Of course, it's not going to work if you don't do the study, right? If I did a study on any of the pharmaceuticals and design the study wrong, I could also make science in a preview journal saying medications don't work, but we know medications work and we know also that they're overprescribed because of all the, you know, that's another story, right? Of all the money that's put into that as creating science. There's not enough money put into the research. So first, I'm so excited to talk to one of the researchers, which is you, about people who are actually doing the work so that we can understand as a better scientific community.

And I do want to help people understand just what is published in peer-reviewed journals is not the end of the story because a study has to be designed right and people have to take the right supplement at the right dose that's absorbed correctly. And curcumin, as you just mentioned, is something that you can't just go out there and buy any curcumin supplement and expect it to take your aches and pains away and have all these benefits that we know scientifically because curcumin is, you know this better than I do.

You've explained it, but I just want to reiterate this to our listeners. Curcumin is not easily absorbed. It's not that simple. Just go buy any turmeric out there and it'll work. No, we have to understand the science behind it. So we need researchers like you to do the research and then come and educate all of us, the public, the MDs, the DOs, the, you know, everybody else, all the practitioners, NPs, PAs, chiropractors, everybody that's recommending these things to our public. And so you that to me is so important so that people understand.

Yes, there are signs behind it, but you have to understand how the science is researched and published in order for people to benefit from it. True, very true. I think there's so much application for tumor into Western medicine because we know that when we're going to so many different subspecialties, a lot of what they're saying is you're inflamed. Their diagnosis you is something itis and so my point to my doctors is look offer your solution you know your solutions work. Offer to mark as the adjunct solution just the additional one and the patient will know how quickly they can come off certain solutions and stay on the to mark and so it's just really been fun over the last decade to watch.

orthopedics, rheumatology, gastroenterology, primary care, functional medicine, work with it. And then I teach about it online because I really am passionate about, let's have a healthy immune system. Let's have a defensive system in place. Let's address inflammation early. In women's health, we know that we're hitting each decade really inflamed. And I think that's why we're suffering so much. Anytime I'm like, oh, Peri, menopause, I'm like, well, Are you inflamed? We know that, like I said, all these cellular processes slow down as we age.

So if we're not going to take the time to reduce that inflammation, and we're not going to stop that cell damage, of course we're going to be more tired, more sluggish, more brain fog, gut isn't going to work. and all these things get dysregulated. So I look at it as a way to clear the decks, get us less inflamed so everything can heal and work better. And so turmeric's my first go-to always. And then after that, I look at ginger and other things. So I've just been formulating for the last 10 years and then trying to keep creating solutions for people.

Wow, amazing. Thank you so much for helping us move the science forward because we cannot get healthier and get better outcomes if people like you aren't researching and moving the science forward and then, like I said, educating us. So that that is all just amazing. Amazing. This is such an important conversation. I really encourage our listeners to look at your website to maybe listen to this whole podcast again because it's a lot of information. Do the research, understand what Arubata is, how these supplements that we've been talking about work in their body, talk to their practitioners, spread the word with their peers, spread the word with their Conventional doctors that there is science that these doctors can learn about as a community.

Key Takeaways and Closing Remarks 45:00

We can continue to grow and help people be healthier and not just put people on more pharmaceuticals every time they go see their doctor. Right? So this whole conversation has been invaluable. I wish I could continue to talk to you for hours and hours, but we're close to. running out of time. So, um, in addition to thanking you for being here and reminding people that all the links to your website, social media, everything are in the show notes, please visit them. Uh, before we go, I do want you to just, uh, give us a recap.

If you are like, okay, I know it's a lot of info. What are the three takeaways? Uh, what would those be for our listeners? Number one, take a very high quality turmeric, one that actually works. Not a lot of the junk that sold to us at the drug store or these types of big box stores. Number two, use a copper tongue scraper. Adding a tongue scraper into your life can be a big game changer. And we know that our oral health is tied to our gut health. So the cleaner we keep oral cavity, the better off our gut health will be.

And then finally, sleep on time. honor your circadian clock, honor your circadian sleep, and that sleep is the key to helping you reduce that inflammation so that we're more supported overall. Wow, so those are extremely important things. Some of them are going to be a little bit easier for everybody to implement than others. I know we had a lot of night owls out there that feel like they don't want to go to sleep on time, but this is just super important information and it's coming from a person with a PhD that's done a ton of research.

So you are definitely a source that we need to be listening to. Thank you so much for being on the Truly Healthy MD show. And I hope to talk to you real soon. Perfect. Thank you. And I made a special code for your audience. Truly Healthy MD will give them 15% off at FusionaryFormulas.com if they want to try it. That is really cool. Very, very cool. We'll also include that in the show notes so that people don't miss out on that. in case they didn't get to the very end of this podcast. But I hope everybody listens till the end.

I hope this, I know this was a captivating conversation for me at least. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks.

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