Elements: Ether, Air
Treat 'Clear' with 'Gooey', 'Heavy', 'Oily'.
Show me 'Clear' ingredients.

Clear food has the ability to either 1) clear the digestive tract or 2) clear the blood. Turmeric clears the blood because it opens up circulation. Dandelion clears the blood because bitters scrape cholesterol, fats and sugars. Aloe vera clears the digestive tract because it is a slight laxative.

Actions: Scraping fat and ama from tissues (lekhana), Decreases quantity of muscle and fat tissue (karshana), Aborbs moisture from wastes including feces, heals wounds, completely devoid of stickiness.

Examples: Salt, Neem, Haritaki, Weight Away

Elements: Air, Water
Treat 'Cold' with 'Hot', 'Pungent'.
Show me 'Cold' ingredients.

Is every part of your body warm and cozy? Imagine you are lying on a couch in front of a fire under your fluffiest down comforter watching your favorite movie sipping hot cocoa. If you're any colder than that chances are a body part or two could use some nurturing hugs. Don't wait until shivering and purple lipped; get warm and cozy right now. Make Your winters like the dog days of summer!

Winter, High Healed Shoes & Aging

It takes work, wear and tear on the body to keep warm. We all work hard to reduce drafts in our homes during the winter. Something as simple as toeless high heals could create a big 'draft' in the body. Underdressing for winter leaks our vital energy. The stomach works especially hard to turn food into fuel. Organs age whenever stressed, especially repeated stress over twenty and thirty years. The best way to stay young is to keep vital energy intact.

Blood in Hibernation

Some people get cold feet even with two pairs of socks. When cold our body constricts blood vessels and pulls blood into core. Even socks can't coax the blood out of hibernation. The solution to cold feet and dry winter skin is warming the core and oiling the exterior. Daily oil massages and weekly hot baths will keep skin moist. A pinch of turmeric keeps circulation strong. Sour lemons in morning tea convince sweat glands and stomach glands to stay juicy.

Cold restricts all fluid motion, including digestive juices, and is not recommended for cleanses. Instead, Ayurvedic cleanses recommends sweat therapy. Cold stiffens muscles, condenses and compacts. Contact with a very cold temperature, such as ice cubes, constricts blood flow to the point of numbness. Cold stimulates the nervous system. The cold weather in autumn stimulates growth of tissues and a protective layer of Kapha in the skin. Animals like polar bears are large to help them retain heat.

Kapha & Vata Cold

Kapha gets cold from slow metabolism. Vata gets cold due to deficiency. Pitta is usually warm all year round! Vata cold comes from the core. When the core is deficient even digestion gets cold. Vata people with cold deficiency can forget to eat meals and have small, frequent appetites.

Cold Blood Pressure

Cold causes constriction of the vessels, hampering circulation and causing obstruction and toxic buildup. Constricted vessels cause blood pressure to rise. The kidneys compensate by filtering water from the blood causing dryness. Cold Vata people, lacking juicy blood, often have gas and constipation.

Stuffy Noses & Common Colds

Viruses thrive in colder temperatures. Since breathing through the nose makes the sinuses cool, the body stuffs up the sinuses to keep them warm whenever threatened by infection or cold temperatures. Many diseases in Ayurveda are named after patterns. The common cold is an example in English.

Causes of Cold

Improper clothing, insufficient food, climate, dryness, lack of fat tissue, lack of exercise, anemia, slow metabolism, blood stagnation, cold water.

Effects of Cold

Cold causes a slow heartbeat, weakness and loss of coordination, diuresis, pale skin, shivering, goosebumps, and slurred speech.

Treatment of Cold

Nourishment, warm spices (cloves, turmeric), ghee, extra layers of clothing & exercise all help warm the body. One of the best home remedies for cold is a warm oil massage followed by a hot bath. Hot showers heat the skin but are insufficient to heat the core of the body.

Elements:
Treat 'Difficult' with 'Easy'.
Show me 'Difficult' ingredients.

Difficult means difficult to digest. Beans are difficult to digest because they contain natural protein digestion inhibitors (saponins) to protect them from insect invasion. Red meat, nuts, cheese, and wheat are difficult to digest because they are heavy, dense foods.

Fermentation in the GI tract

When foods are too difficult to digest, bacteria in our gut digests it faster than digestive organs, fermenting the food. Everyone has a different amount of power in their digestive tract which can be determined by a practitioner in a consultation. The cardinal sign of a difficult to digest food is gas & bloating. Stinky gas means that bacterial waste products are accumulating in the digestive tract. Eventually, fermentation irritates the GI tract causing diarrhea and burdens the liver and kidneys with a substantial toxic load.

Elements: Air, Fire
Treat 'Dry' with 'Oily', 'Liquid'.
Show me 'Dry' ingredients.

Dryness & Aging

Dryness is the measure of 'wear and tear' on the body and a cardinal sign of aging. "Dry is old, oily is young." Baby fat is the plump picture of youth, but dryness shrinks tissues as in a 'shriveled raisin.' Dryness highlights wrinkles and effects of aging on the skin.

Chronic dryness is irritating to tissues causing heat and inflammation. Although dryness can come from dehydration and astringency, classic dryness refers to the roughness associated from lack of fats. Fats are essential to health, especially Omega3 Fatty Acids, because they are the basic building block of all cell membranes.

Dryness & Emotions

'Snehana', meaning oil, is also the word for love in sanskrit. Oil is pleasing and attractive but dryness creates separation. Healthy dryness can be carefree and cheerful but pathological dryness creates lack of interest, fear, loneliness, and isolation. Pain is dry. Oil is the picture of affluence but dryness is the symbol of poverty, frailty, and depletion.

Digesting Dry Fruits & Granola Bars

Dry foods, including dense foods such as nuts, absorb moisture. The body hydrates dry, dense food with saliva and secretions from the stomach to make a sauce. The source of these secretions is the blood. The loss of fluids to digestion In dry Vata individuals can be significant and lead to dehydration of organs. Soak dried or dense foods before eating them, including granola bars, and take sips of warm water between bites.

Some foods, like dry fruits, are dry due to lack of water. Other foods, soaked or not, are dry due to diuretic quality. High potassium foods like potatoes, dandelions and beans are diuretics. Popcorn is highly drying because it both lacks water and corn is high in potassium. Adding electrolytes such as a pinch of salt balances the effect of diuretics. Salt added to water increases water retention in the kidneys.

Causes of Dryness

Bitter greens like Kale scrape fats from tissues, aid weight loss, and increase dryness. Dried fruits, dense nuts, and diuretics are drying. Exercise, sweating, fasting, skipping meals, lack of sleep, lack of routine, thinking, vomiting, and diarrhea all create dryness.

Development of Dryness

Skipping meals makes the "blood dry." Specifically, dry blood means that blood is thin and lacking juiciness, sweetness, and emolliency. Fasting and skipping meals is the quickest way to make the blood dry. Dry blood is therapeutic for high kapha and is especially useful in the spring season.

Skin is generally high in fats and the first organ to suffer when blood becomes pathologically dry. Some symptoms of dry blood and dehydration include dry skin, dry mouth, chapped lips, increased heart rate, headaches, and dark colored urine. The coating on the tongue is digested and becomes clear. The eyes, nasal passages, sweat glands, and all mucosal and glandular secretions begin to dry up.

Dry glands leads to poor digestion and the inability to absorb nutrients from food, further aggravating the condition of dryness. Downstream in the small intestine undigested food begins to ferment, turning gasey and toxic. Dryness of the colon causes constipation progressing to more serious bowel conditions.

The liver stores glucose, the energy currency of the body, much as a potato stores nutrients for the rest of the plant. Dry blood creates a dry liver deficient of glucose leading to hypoglycemia. Poor circulation and toxicity associated with chronic dry blood leads to dry, cracking joints, rough skin, and inflammation. Pathological dryness also creates brittle hair and nails, dry wheezing, tissue depletion and impotence.

Treatment

Oil, electrolytes especially mineral salt, and sugar solutions help rebuild fluids and juiciness. Oil massage, one teaspons of ghee with meals, stress management and routine are several treatments to balance dryness.

Elements: Water, Earth
Treat 'Easy' with 'Difficult'.
Show me 'Easy' ingredients.

Easy means easy to digest.

Digestion takes a lot of work.

We use up to 60% of our daily metabolism on digesting our food. That means by the end of the day your intestines have run a marathon. We have a special word called 'agni' in ayurveda for the strength of digestion.

Give your digestion a break

When you are sick, taking the burden off your digestive organs gives your body some extra energy to heal itself. Giving your organs a rest improves your agni! Easy foods pull less blood into the digestive track keeping the mind light. That leaves more blood for the brain. Heavy food causes "food coma" or sleepiness after eating.

What kinds of foods are easy?

Generally cooked, soft, and soupy foods. Foods that are like baby foods are easy to digest. No one gives steak or a salad to wean a baby from mother's milk. Instead, babies get mashed bananas and carrots. The idea is to get maximum nutrition with the least amount of digestive effort. Rice soups with steamed carrots is ideal!

Ayurveda's specialty

Digestion is ayurveda's speciality and gift. Ayurveda has a straightforward approach to treating conditions like IBS and Crohn's.

Elements: Earth
Treat 'Gooey' with 'Sharp', 'Clear', 'Hot'.
Show me 'Gooey' ingredients.

Gooey foods are slimy, smooth, and sticky. Gooey foods increase mucous and sometimes resemble it also. Sugar and all foods with a sweet taste are gooey because they create more mucous.

Mucous, Yellow Sputum, and Runny Noses

Ayurveda differientiates between three types of congestion. Thick white mucous is pure kapha coming from thick, gooey, sweet blood plasma (lymph). Yellow or green sputum is kapha mixed with pitta. A thin, watery runny nose is a sign of vata ama irritating mucous membranes. Gooey foods aggravate kapha and pitta mucous only.

Mucous & Cheese

One day an adventurous Ayurveda practitioner will try the following experiment: Collect a cup full of mucous. Boil it until it becomes thick. It will resemble cheese. Cheese is concentrated mucous and should be avoided when mucous is present. Avoid all dairy products when kapha mucous is present.

Wheat & Glue

Glue is gooey. As kids, we made glue from flour and water. As adults we bake flour and water into bread. Then in our mouths, we chew it back into glue. Wheat aggravates kapha people in the blood, making it sticky and gooey. Wheat aggravates vata people in the colon because it is difficult for Vata to digest. Then the gooey fecal matter gets stuck in the cecum and ferments. The cecum is the begining of the colon, located on the lower right of the abdomen. Fermented food makes the cecum feel bloated. Celiac is pitta, it is an allergic reacton to wheat in the small intestine.

Gooey Foods & the Skin

Sometimes the skin becomes so dry even oils won't penetrate. Instead, rehydrate extremely dry skin with gooeyness. For example, make a paste of oatmeal and apply directly to the skin. After ten minutes, clean the surface and use oil to seal in moisture.

Gooey and the Digestive Tract

The inside of the digestive tract closely resembles skin. Dry skin often indicates a dry colon. While wheat is too sticky, other foods like oatmeal effectively coat a dry colon helping the colon keep moist.

Gooey Foods & Wound Healing

Unless infected, Gooey foods help wounds heal quickly. Cholesterol is gooey. High cholesterol runs in my father's family and his wounds heal more quickly and effectively than my vata wounds, which always leave a scar.

Protecting Tissues

The dull aspect of gooey coats and protects delicate tissues. Dullness pacifies aggravated doshas and slows down all bodily functions, depressing activity and dulling the mind (!--source Deshpande-->. Thick, viscous, gooey blood is hard to circulate and creates stagnation. Stagnant slimy blood reduces circulation of oxygen, depressing metabolic activity and thyroid function (see sweet taste).

Elements: Water, Earth
Treat 'Heavy' with 'Light', 'Bitter'.
Show me 'Heavy' ingredients.

Includes foods with any one of the following properties:

• Causes weight gain, nourishes all tissues especially muscle and fat
• Suppresses metabolism & causes sleepiness
• Clogs or Coats channels in the body (Gross)

Weight & Activity

Changes in weight affect the rate which we think, speak and act. Balanced heaviness creates steadiness, groundedness and stability. Excess heaviness slows metabolism and the rate of digestion causing sloth and sleepiness. Obesity is stubborn, resisting change and exercise.

The Lost art of Tonics

Heavy foods are used in tonics because they increase muscle mass, fat tissue, and strength. The use of tonics to stengthen the body is a lost art in modern medicine, perhaps because industrialized nations suffer from high rates of obesity. Foods with sweet taste, including proteins, carbohydrates, and fats increase heaviness and, used properly, can help debilitated patients rebuild strength after illness.

Types of Heaviness

Some foods create heaviness because they are highly nutritious. Other foods, such as garlic and nutmeg directly affect the nervous system causing sleepiness. Heavy foods, because they digest slowly, are sometimes also interpreted as 'difficult to digest'. On Joyful Belly, we've moved difficult to digest foods under a new guna called 'difficult'. Excess sleep causes obesity and aggravates Kapha.

Heaviness creates gravitational stress in the knee and lower back. Heaviness, especially when coupled with liver heat and low thyroid, makes tissues and tendons lax decreasing joint stability.

Treatment of Heaviness

Foods that are difficult to digest but provide little nutrition help in obesity. Fasting, exercise, pranayama breathing exercises, waking up early, sweat, pungent spices, and bitter foods help alleviate heaviness. Use Ayurvedic techniques to reduce food cravings, herbal blood thinners like turmeric, diuretics such as punarnava, and formulas such as Weight Away. Honey helps weight loss and is the preferred sweetener for Kapha.

Elements: Fire
Treat 'Hot' with 'Cold'.
Show me 'Hot' ingredients.

Hot Climate

'Hot' is anything that causes an increase in temperature or causes sweating. The body radiates heat from the blood through sweat. When the weather is hot the blood vessels on the surface of the skin dilate and the heart rate increases, making the skin red and flushed.

Summertime is the season of poor appetite. Red skin is engorged with blood leaving less blood for digestive organs. Hot weather makes the body relaxed, comfortable and grounded. Pathological heat causes dizziness and fainting. The body becomes lethargic like the "lazy dog days of summer".

Sweating and secretions helps cleanse the skin, digestive tract, circulatory and lymphatic system. Saunas, baths, steam baths, sweat lodges and exercise are among the numerous ways people cleanse with heat.

Heating Foods

Spicy food brings blood flow back to the GI tract. It stimulates the appetite, burns toxicity and reduces tissues (burns ojas). Heating foods cause thirst, sweat, a burning sensation as in chilies, and even bleeding. For example, eating too many chilies makes the body sweat. Chilies are hot because they irritate the digestive tract lining. Eat too much turmeric and you might get angry. Turmeric is heating because it dilates blood vessels. Vinegar is heating because it is acidic. Generally avoid heating foods in the summer.

Hot Water

Hot water is one of the most powerful herbal medicines. As hot weather brings blood to the surface of the skin, hot water brings blood to the GI tract. Flush with the blood, hot water improves digestion, absorption and assimilation of food. Hot water improves circulation. It is a powerful diaphoretic that opens the surface, and the primary therapy for fever in Ayurveda.

Hot water is a decongestant liquefying all kapha.

Effect of heating foods on the Nervous System

When there is too much heat, the mind becomes hot tempered, angry or irritable and impatient. Heat increases courage and valor. Passion is hot. Heat generally projects the personality outward. Yogis spend time in cool mountain top temperatures because it helps them turn inward.

Causes of Excess Heat

Any irritation or wound, fermentation in the small intestine, exercise, or too much clothing causes heat. Liver imbalance, infection, hot climate, hot foods and pitta imbalance cause heat conditions.

Signs of Excess Heat

The signs of heart and blood heat are red skin, red eyes and red tip of tongue. The signs of liver heat are yellow eyes or a yellowish tinge to the hands and skin. Other signs include rashes, acne, infection, fever, anger, irritability and sweat. Heat relieves spasms, causes suppuration of wounds, liver spots, premature graying and loss of hair.

If you have poison ivy and eat heating foods or take a hot shower the poison ivy may get worse.

Treatment of Hot

Bitter tasting food and herbs such as neem clear blood and liver heat. Astringent food and herbs such as amalaki relieve inflammation in the gut. Sweet tasting foods and herbs like shatavari and licorice root cool pitta and soothe vata. Milk, cucumber, cilantro and watermelon are cooling. Washing the face or sprinkling the body with cool water is cooling.

Elements: Ether, Air, Fire
Treat 'Light' with 'Heavy', 'Sweet', 'Liquid'.
Show me 'Light' ingredients.

Light & Many Meanings

Lightness brings numerous desirable qualities such as clarity, alertness, agility, nimbleness, swiftness, purity, and youth. Lightness is inspiring: it improves oxygen levels and creativity. It reduces viscosity of the blood. Pathological lightness creates weakness, agitation, insecurity, fear and anxiety. Too much lightness creates spaciness, ungroundedness, and instability. Lightness of being means frivolous behavior, a lack of appropriate seriousness.

Light Foods, Longevity & Wound Healing

Foods that are light aid weight loss and improve digestion. They also convince the body to scavenge and metabolize blood toxicity, thus cleansing all channels and aiding the healing of wounds. Fasting helps cleanse and lose weight. Eating lightly, including proper fasting techniques and smaller portions, directly increases lifespan in laboratory studies. Popcorn (without butter and salt), salads, and black pepper are all light. Pathological lightness creates dryness. Osteoporosis is lightness in the bones.

Light is sometimes interpreted as 'easy to digest'. On Joyful Belly, we've moved easy to digest foods under a new guna called 'Easy'.

Treatments for Excess Lightness

Although the mind enjoys lightness and often drives high vata individuals into emaciation, the body prefers stability to freedom. Sleep, rest, routine, and reducing stress are the most important ways to gain weight and become grounded and centered. Ojas building foods such as a tsp of ghee with meals helps nourish the body and bring heaviness. Ashwagandha ghee is a medicated ghee that helps ground the nervous system while nourishing vata. Licorice root and salt help retain and rebuild fluids. Daily oil massage soothes and nourishes vata.

Elements: Water
Treat 'Liquid' with 'Dry', 'Astringent', 'Bitter'.
Show me 'Liquid' ingredients.

Liquid guna causes increased secretions in the tissues. In general, sour and salty foods cause increased secretions. Sweet and oily foods too. Examples are limes, yoghurt, and ghee mixed with sugar.

In a second sense, liquid guna can also refer to the amount of liquid or dryness in food. But on the Joyful Belly website we use the first definition of liquid only. Otherwise, raw basmati rice would show up as vata provoking because it is drying.

Elements: Water, Earth
Treat 'Oily' with 'Dry', 'Sharp', 'Astringent'.
Show me 'Oily' ingredients.

Body builders oil their skin to appear healthy and strong. Massage with oil prevents premature aging and bestows a healthy, glistening, sheen to the skin. Oil repels water, preventing evaporation of fluids through the skin much as a film of oil over a simmering soup prevents loss of steam. It moisturizes while it stimulates secretions, helping replenish and rebuild bodily fluids. Ayurveda recommends sesame oil massage for Vata and Kapha, and sunflower or coconut for Pitta.

Oily Personality Traits

Oils are the number one treatment for vata. Fats nourish and soften the liver, creating relaxation, vigor & stabilizing emotions. Oil promotes compassion, kindness, tenderness and affection. Properly oiled individuals have a "smooth" personality. Oil is cooling and can help a person "chill out". Like water off a duck's back, the stable quality of well oiled individuals makes them thick skinned, impervious to insult. Healthy oiliness is steadfast but pathological oiliness creates greed and attachment.

Sticky Oil, Sticky Blood

Pathological oiliness aggravates kapha and pitta. It overwhelms the liver's storage and processing capacity causing high cholesterol, stagnant, dense blood and lymphatic obstruction. Oil clogs fluid vessels. Whereas blood stagnation from sweets and carbohydrates creates pure kapha mucous, blood stagnation from oil creates gall bladder stagnation and skin rash. When lymphatic obstruction blocks release of cellular waste products, the surface of the skin turns red and flushed. Oil makes the blood sticky causing plaque formation.

Excess oleation causes water retention in the abdomen, teary eyes, buttery loose stools, a coating on the tongue, and soft, buttery stools.

Types of Oils

There are four types of oils in Ayurveda: ghee, vegetable oil, muscle fat, and bone marrow. Ghee is an important medicine for building strength in Ayurveda because it is the lightest and easiest to digest fat. Marrow is the heaviest and most difficult to digest.

Internal Oleation

Oily foods are general bland. They facilitate easy elimination of wastes, soften dry and hard tissues, lubricate joint spaces, and increase strength wherever there is debility. A tsp of ghee with meals helps build ojas, weight and strength. Internal oleation is a process, used in pancha karma cleansing therapies, to pull fat soluble toxins from peripheral tissues and soften them.

Treatments - Reducing Fat, Cholesterol and Oil

Bitter tasting foods antidote oil, releasing liver heat, clearing the channels, and reducing weight. Bitters cholagogues such as dandelion help scrape fats from tissues. Punarnava and amalaki stimulate microcirculation and metabolism at the cellular level. Blood thinners like turmeric counteract the dense stickiness of oil invigorating the blood and burning off fats. Mild laxatives like triphala help eliminate fats through the GI tract. Triphala Guggulu is famous for reducing cholesterol. Mild exercise and breathing techniques like pranayama help metabolize unwanted fats.

For sharp, try pungent.
For dull, try heavy.
For rough, try dry.
For dense, try heavy.
For hard, try heavy.
For soft, try liquid.
For mobile, try light.
For stable, try heavy.
For subtle, try clear.
For gross, try heavy.
For sticky, try gooey.