Diet Tips for Pacifying Kapha

How to Reduce Kapha

I have been trying to slim down lately and it has been quite a challenge.  There are so many different diets around with conflicting ideas.  I think the only way to choose which one is right for me is to just pick one and try it.  For the next few weeks I am going to try an Ayurvedic diet to relieve a Kapha dosha. Listed below are my notes on how to implement this diet in my daily life.

Foods and Activities to Favor

1.  I need to increase my movement.  This is hard because I have a desk job. However I am going to try to get up and move around more.  I really only have been overweight since the advent of the Internet. However, since I make a living working at a PC, there seems to be an inverse relationship between my career success and weight battle.  The more I sit the more money I make but then my weight tends to go up as well. Too bad no one will pay me to work out to an exercise video each day. :) 

I bought an little peddle exerciser that fits in the closet.  Last night while my husband I watched a video I got got my peddler out and fit in an hour of peddling.  I am not sure how many calories I burned but it has to be better than just sitting doing nothing. Not surprisingly, people who watch a lot of TV tend to have more weight issues. I don't watch much TV but I am on the computer a lot, so I guess that is just as bad. 

2.  Have a cup of hot water with a pinch of ginger and lemon juice before meals.  Ginger is one of the most alkaline foods around, which I think is significant. Many of the foods recommended in Ayurvedia medicine to reduce Kapha seem to have an alkaline ash.

Ginger is a common remedy for Kapha symptoms in Ayurvedic medicine, and for similar conditions in TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine. 

3.  Favor the following foods:

• Tea
• Asparagus
• Seafood
• White meat chicken and turkey
• Apples
• Pears
• Honey
• Beans
• Barley
• Corn (organic!)
• Millet
• Quinoa
• Most spices
• Eggplant
• Beets
• Cabbage
• Carrot
• Cauliflower
• Garlic
• Greens
• Onions
• Potatoes

I have problems with iron deficiency anemia from time to time, so I am not sure about cutting out red meat.  Maybe I can make up the iron with seafood like clams.  I will have to research this a bit more.

Ginger tea is a good for slimming down in traditional Chinese medicine as well as Ayurvedic medicine.  I think part of the reason is that ginger tea is very alkaline, and an alkaline digestive system has less stomach acid to digest food.  This is probably the same logic behind eating drier foods - they aren't as easily absorbed as water based foods like soups.  Yet in Western diet advice, soups are a dieting main stay.  Maybe I can compromise by only having very low calorie soups so I am absorbing lots of nutrients but not a lot of calories.

4.  Eat more light, dray and warm foods. 

Things to Avoid

1.  Eat less sugar, yeast, cheese yogurt, nuts, tofu, cold foods, red meat, nuts, starchy and sweet fruits (bananas, coconut, figs and dates) and refined grains. 

2.  Sitting for long periods, day time napping and not exercising.  The day time napping for me is tough because of the anemia.  I think it is better to nap than spend half the day falling asleep.  I may not be able to implement that idea very well.  Maybe I can limit how long of naps I take and then exercise right when I get up.

Interesting Health Quote on Ayurvedic Medicine

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use. When diet is correct medicine is of no need. - Ayurvedic Proverb


I first became interested in Ayurvedic medicine when one of my sons developed a bad case of night sweats. He was so hot at night he could not get to sleep, and then was so tired in the morning he couldn't go to school. He had to be home schooled for a few weeks. During this time we took him to many conventional doctors, few had any clue as to what was wrong with him. I searched the Internet and found out that he had been drinking ginger ale for an upset stomach, and in Ayurvedic medicine ginger was classified as a a warming spice.

The Ayurvedic solution was to give him milk, bananas and broccoli which were said to be "cooling foods". After he was on this diet he got better very quickly. Now I search my Ayurvedic and other holistic health books first for answers before going to the regular doctors. I used to go to the local health food store and look through their alternative health book library, but these days I have a more extensive collection of alternative health books than they do.

Treatments for Poison Oak

My husband is currently recovering from a nasty case of poison oak. He got it at the local archery range when he went into the brush looking for his arrows that missed the target. The rash started a few days after the archery outing. At first he thought the itching was caused by a bug bite, but after a few days it turned into a pretty bad, bright red rash. He went to see the doctor who seemed to correctly diagnose it as poison oak, and prescribed a steroid cream. Unfortunately, the cream spread the poison oak oil around on his leg and made the rash spread and turn even more red than it had been.

Tonight I went to the drug store and bought every poison ivy remedy in sight. My husband ended up using something called Tecnu. What he didn't realize until tonight was that he had never really washed off the oil properly after the initial contact, so it just kept spreading around and creating new, little satellite rashes. Poison oak oil doesn't seem to wash off from daily showers, and evidently not even from multiple washings with Palmolive dish washing soap (a home remedy treatment I got off the Internet).

One other product he found that was really helpful was called ProtectX. It came with a first aid kit I bought at Sam's Club. ProtectX came in towelette form and immediately stopped the itching and some of the redness. Unfortunately there were only two towelettes in the kit and we could not find any place else to buy it, online or off. Too bad. It seemed like a great product.

The Tecnu is supposed to actually get the oil off for good. So tonight we rewashed all of his clothes he has worn over the last couple of weeks and he washed his skin everywhere with the Tecnu. He said this made the itching stop, unlike the steroid cream which made the itching worse.

Even though the Tecnu helped, he still ended up getting oral steroids from the doctor. Steroid aren't very alternative health oriented, I know. But in his case the common home treatments, like Calamine lotion and washing with Palmolive just weren't helping him. When I was young I lived near woods and used to get poison plant rashes on a fairly regular basis, but I don't remember them looking anywhere near as bad as the pictures above. We have a friend who isn't allergic at all to poison oak. He can literally rub it on himself with no adverse reaction. My husband must just be one of the people on the opposite, highly sensitive, end of the spectrum.

Updates on My CTDS Site Regarding IBS

I've added updated my pages to my Connective Tissue Disorder Site on irritable bowel syndrome and the links to diet and fungal infections. In general, the tips I personally found helpful are to: 1) eat mainly cooked foods; 2) cut out sugar; 3) cut out most dairy except for yogurt with active cultures; 4) eat a lot of soup with nonstarchy vegetables, beans and meat; 5) cut buck on grains; 6) eliminate spicy foods; and 7) take probiotic supplements when needed.

I don't always stick to this diet mainly due to a lack of willpower, but when I do stick to it I feel much better. My husband and I used to enjoy going to a local French restaurant, but I've realized now that while the rich sauces and sweet desserts taste great, I just don't feel well afterwards. So instead now we often go out for Mexican foods with cooked meat beans and veggies dishes and feel much better afterwards. Whenever I eat sugar I've noticed it is not only hard on my stomach, but I also get more congested, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep.

Can Diet Changes to Increase Magnesium Help Tourette Syndrome Symptoms?

One of my sons had the beginnings of Tourette Syndrome when he was little - eye blinking, facial twitching, eye tics, etc. Our regular doctor didn't have any advice for us, so I researched my son's condition using the book library at the local health food store. The indications were that he was low in magnesium, so we changed his diet to get more magnesium rich foods and give him magnesium supplements for a few days crushed in yogurt. It worked great. The tics, twitches and eye blinking all stopped within a few days. We made the diet changes permanent, and for years I never gave the tics another thought. The only other time my son developed tics and twitches was when he was older and went on vacation with friends (without mom around to remind him to eat his vegetables!) and ate junk food for a few days, but the tics and twitches cleared up after he got home and ate healthier foods, including vegetables and nuts, for for a few days.

Then when my children were older they would come home from school and tell me about class mates with tics and twitches similar to the ones our one son experienced as a preschooler. That prompted me to put up a web page on my connective tissue disorder site about tics from magnesium deficiency a few years ago. The response to that one web page has been very positive. While one mom wrote that magnesium did not help her child, I think about 8 or so reported positive results, sometimes a complete recovery and often symptoms were alleviated within a few days. One parent emailed me that her child's vocal tics improved with increased magnesium. Many of these kids had been seeing a variety of medical specialists. Some were on prescription medications, yet no one was asking about their diets, which were often described by the parents as very low in healthy foods, especially nuts, beans and vegetables, and foods high in magnesium.

I find it odd that kids with tics, twitches and other signs related to Tourette Syndrome do not seem to be regularly checked for magnesium deficiency. A web page on magnesium in diet from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health's web site clearly notes that muscle twitching is a sign of magnesium deficiency. Yet based on my experience with my son and the experiences of parents who write to me, children with symptoms of tics and muscle twitching who are taken to the doctor are unfortunately not usually asked about their diets or checked for low magnesium levels.

Organic Produce May Have More Flavanoids

In a study published in the The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, researchers found that the level of one flavonoid in organically grown tomatoes was almost twice as high as that in tomatoes that were conventionally grown. This may give people who choose organic vegetables and fruits in order to avoid pesticides yet one more reason reason to spend the extra money on organic produce.

Flavonoids may fight a number of age-related diseases, so in recent years researchers have been trying to grow crops with higher levels of them. In the U.S. , only potatoes are eaten more often than tomatoes.The authors of the study, researchers from the University of California at Davis, examined tomatoes grown over a ten year time frames in regular and organic fields. The organic tomatoes scored much better, and over time their levels of flavonoid levels kept increasing.

Ingredients of Health

The common ingredients of health and long
life are:
Great temp'rance, open air,
Easy labor, little care. - Sir P. Sidney

Healthy Thought For the Day

We are what we repeatedly do. - Aristotle

Preventing Back Pain When You Have to Sit at a Desk All Day

Back pain is one of the most common reasons why people visit the doctor. It is especially challenging to keep your back in shape when you sit at a desk all day long. Our bodies were designed to be outside picking berries, fishing, and walking miles to look for shelter, not sitting stationary and reading email for hours on end.

Yoga can help to get all of your major muscles groups moving and strengthened. Watching your posture is also importent. If you sit hunched over a PC all day long, eventually your muscles may shorten into that position. Then when you need to stretch out your body for an activity like tennis or even reaching for a something on a high shelf, your back may "go out". The best way to prevent this is to keep your muscles flexible and aligned even before you have pain. Practicing yoga regularly and watching your posture may help.

Veggies for Asthma?

A study published in the journal Thorax found that women who ate the most tomatoes, carrots and leafy green vegetables had lower asthma rates. It is important to note that this study showed association, and not cause and effect. Women who eat a lot of veggies may have other healthy habits that lower their asthma rates. However, since no other fruits or vegetables were significantly associated with asthma prevalence, the study authors concluded that these results suggest that the intake of some vegetables may decrease the prevalence of adult asthma.

Coffee and Heart Attacks

This article from Yahoo News notes that people who are "slow caffeine metabolizers" are more likely to have a nonfatal heart attack if they drink two cups of coffee or more a day. In this study the researchers believed the ability to metabolize coffee is a genetic trait. The authors stated that there is no commercially available test to see if your body metabolizes caffeine well.

This is interesting because there are alternative health tests to see how well phase one of you liver detoxification process is working that involve a caffeine challenge test. In alternative health, caffeine processing is generally thought not to rely mostly on genetics but on how well your liver is working. In holistic medicine, how well your liver is working is thought to depend upon factors such as exposure to chemicals and toxins, proper diet, etc.

The truth about people who are slow caffeine metabolizers probably lies somewhere in between environmental, genetic and dietary factors. I can tolerate more caffeine when I'm eating healthier, but never more than a cup or so at most. Yet I know some people who can drink coffee all day long and not seem to have any side effects from it.

Study Shows Limited Benefits From Calcium

Yet, another urban myth of modern medicine bites the dust. Many alternative health experts have questioned the wisdom of women automatically taking calcium supplements for years, only to be dismissed by conventional medical doctors. Now a recent study validates that there may be a only very limited benefit for women's bone health from taking calcium and vitamin D supplements.

BioPiracy: Drug Companies Hop on the Herbal Bandwagon

If you can't beat them, file a patent to use against them.

Multinational drug companies are now beginning to see the value in herbal and nutritional medicine. That part is good. The bad news is that they are trying to patent centuries old traditional herbal cures to prevent other companies from marketing them.

Fat Helps with Nutrient Absorption

A study from 2004 shows that eating some fat with salads actually increases vitamin absorption, while eating vegetables without any fat reduces absorption rates of nutrients.

I've suspected this for years from trial and error because of my diet changes. If I eat a very low fat diet, I get edgy and my fibromyalgia returns, so I thought this was because I just wasn't getting enough nutrition from low fat diets.

I've been trying to lose weight lately, but I'd rather be a little overweight than in constant pain. So anyway now I'm trying to cut out high glycemic foods and any empty calories foods instead of fat. So far that seems to be working better for me than eating low fat.

Feeding Minds - The impact of food on mental health

A new report from The Mental Health charity of the U.K. along with Sustain, the alliance for better farming and food, highlights the impact of nutrition poor diets on mental health. Basically, it goes back to we are what we eat, and this include the human brain. The human brain is made fromthe foods you eat. Is you brain made from carrots, asparagus, cashews and salmon, or lattes, Doritos, hamburgers and pizza?

The report blames highly processed, trans fat laden, nutrition poor convenience foods with the rise in mental health issues in the U.K. The authors of the report believe that modern diets have reduced the amounts of essential fatty acids, amino acids vitamins and minerals in our foods. Since the brain is basically made from particular types of fats and vitamins and minerals, a lack of these can result in poor brain function. The result can be disorders such as Add, depression, memory loss and anxiety.

If you have been reading alternative health books over the last ten years, this report has absolutely nothing new in it. What is significant is that one of the coauthors of the report is a leading mental health nonprofit in the UK, which means that the alternative health ideas are becoming more accepted by mainstream groups.

Exercise Alleviates Depression

I think this just proves what many people interested in alternative health have known for a long time - that exercise is good for both your body and mind. While I'm not against mental health counseling, I think all too often people are given drugs and talk therapy, when their basic problem is they may not be getting enough healthy food, sunshine and exercise in the fresh air. Anyone is going to be depressed if he or she sits inside all day with the drapes drawn and eats nothing but junk food.

In one of my alternative health books there is a story of a woman who was put on anti-anxiety drugs while she was drinking 12 cups of coffee a day! Most people would be anxiety prone if they drank that much coffee. In this case the woman didn't really need drugs as much as she needed nutritional counseling.

Nutrition and Multiple Sclerosis

A number of people who come to my connective tissue disorder site also have symptoms of multiple sclerosis. A few years ago one of my neighbors was telling me about her MS symptoms, and there seemed to be a lot of overlap with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

So I did some research on Pubmed and found many nutritional deficiencies linked to MS, and interestingly many of the symptoms of MS are also linked to nutritional deficiencies. It's unfortunate that these studies are not made widely available to the general public. Researchers seem to want to focus on a single cause for MS like there is for chicken pox, but the evidence indicates that MS isn't caused by a virus at all. Malabsorption, low body weight and nutritional deficiencies are a common and pervasive theme in much of the MS research.

Magnesium deficiency seems to be common in MS as well as many symptoms of EDS, so that might explain some of the overlaps.

One really interesting point about MS is that is seems to be mutually exclusive with gout. Since we know the diet people need to have to avoid gout (one low in uric acid forming foods) then it would be logical to consider that a diet high in uric acid forming foods would be good for MS.

Tics, Tourettes Syndrome, and Magnesium Deficiency

I just added a new page to my Connective Tissue Disorder site on tics. My sons have mentioned kids at school with odd tics, eye blinking and assorted involuntary movements. So it prompted me to write about my own experiences with one of my children and facial tics. For a while, when one of my sons was around four years old, he had facial tics and weird eye blinking that was getting worse and worse. I was very worried he was going to end up diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. I ended up finding out that tics could be caused by a magnesium deficiency. So we changed his diet to get more magnesium and within a few days he was fine. I see so many people these days with facial tics and other involuntary movements and I do wonder if some of them might also be helped my some relatively simple diet changes. In my sons case I think one of the main culprits was that I thought I was helping my kids by giving them multivitamins and fortified foods. However, it turns out that many fortified foods do not contain magnesium, and to make matters worse, they often contain magnesium antagonists. So add that kind of a diet to a family history of issues with magnesium deficiency and the diet I thought was healthy for my kids was actually causing them more harm than good.

Sham Acupuncture as Helpful as Real Acupuncture for Migraines

In my experience, acupuncture didn't help any of my headhache or other pain problems at all. As such, I found the above link interesting. In my main web site I made a list of alternative treatments I found helpful for all of my connective tissue disorder issues, including headaches.

The helpful treatments included diet changes, yoga, and Ayurvedic medicine. Treatments I personally did not find helpful for either myself or my family included homeopathy and acupuncture.

Homeopathy No Better Than Placebo - Study

A recent paper published in the Lancet cliams that homeopathy works no better than placebos at treating illness. I would tend to agree with those conclusions. I've never been a fan of homeopathy so I can't say I was sorry to see these headlines today. I find it unfortunate that homeopathy gets thrown along with proven therapies such as nutrition and exercise when people talk about alternative health treatments. For more information on my experience, see my web site pages page on my experience with homeopathy.

I took my some to a homeopathic doctor out of sheer desperation one time when he had some unusual health issues our regular and even holistic doctors could not figure out. I spent a signifivant amount of time and money on the appointment and I thought it was a complete waste. The "remedy" never helped one bit.