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Get the 45 minute presentation 'Balance My Excess Sweet' given by Joyful Belly founder and director John Immel.
This presentation will show you Ayurvedic essentials on fixing this imbalance, including diet, lifestyle, and herbal tips from Ayurveda.
Price: $15.95
Sweet refers to anything builds tissue, including macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
Before refined sugars people thought bread tasted sweet. That's why in Ayurveda, sweet taste doesn't always mean sugary, but also includes any food with nourishing macronutrients. Sweet taste includes nourishing foods like carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Sweet taste generally builds muscle or fat tissue. Sweet taste is life giving. We need sweet taste to survive. It builds ojas because it nourishes the sap or blood plasma of the body.
Sweet taste is rare in nature, and difficult to obtain. So we have strong cravings for it. After the agricultural revolution, sweet taste became abundant. It dominates the modern grocery store, probably because this is the taste that humans are most attracted to.
The modern abundance of sugar availability doesn't mix well with ancient survival cravings for sweet, causing pathological weight gain.
Sweet Taste & the Tongue
One of the first signs of too much sweet taste is a foul taste on the tongue, and enlargement and thickening of the tongue coating. As sweet taste builds, you may also notice puffiness in the skin and Sour sweat.
Sweet Taste & Circulation
Excess use of sweet taste, especially refined grains and refined sugars, thickens blood plasma. Thick, sticky blood plasma bogs circulation, causing stagnation and high blood pressure. Poor circulation also causes swelling in the hands and feet.
Sweet Taste in the Skin
When circulation is excessively boggy, metabolic byproducts (cellular poop) get trapped in the lymphatic system, causing inflammation. To see this effect more clearly, make a thumbprint on your arm. A white thumbprint surrounded by red skin could mean the lymphatic system is stagnant and inflamed. Note: this effect is usually prominent on the arms and legs.
Sweet Taste, the Lungs, & the Thyroid
Healthy lungs depend on good circulation to keep them hollow, otherwise, the lungs fill up with mucous and water. Excess sweet taste causes mucous buildup in the lungs and back of the throat. Boggy circulation and a thick layer of mucous covering the lungs reduces the circulation of oxygen (prana). The thyroid compensates by lowering metabolism. Many people have low thyroid activity without being aware of it. Symptoms of low thyroid include being overweight, cold body temperature, dry skin, and constipation.
Sweet Taste & the Kidneys
Dense, gooey, sticky blood plasma causes water retention in the kidneys and may lead to edema. While Kapha types are prone and should discourage water retention, dry Vata types can use the sweet taste to help retain fluids.
Ayurvedic Classifications
Sweet taste is cooling, heavy, oily, and sticky. It brings softness and stability. Sweet taste coats the tongue and throat. It facilitates elimination of bowels. It is beneficial to children, the elderly, and in debilitated persons. Sweet taste alleviates thirst, pacifies Pitta and Vata, and nourishes the mind. Sweet taste helps in wound healing as long as the wound is not infected.
Remedies for Excess Sweet Taste
It's not always easy to avoid refined sugar, candy, soda, ice-cream, and other processed foods with sugars. These foods often contain con syrup and 'vanishing caloric density' that confuses your 'appestat' - your body's natural appetite control mechanisms. Then you overeat these foods.
Honey and fruits may be a safe way to satisfy your sweet cravings without weight gain, and are also much less addictive. Raw honey is a great natural fat metabolizer and stabilizes blood sugar, and its warming quality boosts your energy. Raw honey is known to help reduce the toxins off of the intestinal wall. You can also try date sugar, bananas, or raisins as sugar substitutes in your cooking.
Choose sweet foods that also have some fat in them. Sugary foods lacking fat cause blood sugar instability. This is why soda is worse for your body than ice-cream.
Choose sweet foods that also have some fiber in them, which keeps blood sugar more stable. This s why an apple pie is better than jelly beans.
Favor sweet foods that also have some sourness. Sour taste offsets sweet taste, and refreshes glands and the liver. This is why a key lime pie is better than a chocolate cake.
Eat some bitter greens before bed. Bitters like kale and dandelion leaves directly oppose sweet taste. Bitters are drying, reduce blood sugar levels, refresh the liver, reduce cholesterol, and thin the blood.
Ojas is the essence of healthy tissue, immunity, stable energy and happiness. Substances that improve ojas are recommended after long-term illness, debility, emotional and physical trauma, and even sadness.
Sattvic foods promote awareness and a refreshed mind by nourishing the body without taxing digestion. Sattvic foods do not stimulate desire or nervous energy. They create clarity instead of drowsiness or heaviness.
A tonic herb restores function through strengthening tissue. This can happen through a combination of nourishing the tissue, and invigorating tissue metabolism. The tonic should not be withering, as in caffeine.
Herbs that promote urine formation, thereby flushing the kidneys and urinary tract while eliminating any excess water retention. As diuretics reduce water retention, they are often used to reduce blood pressure.
Encourages feelings of stability and heaviness. Makes you feel settled, mentally relaxed. Mildly sedates the nervous system to ease stress. Can bring a spacey or anxious person back to earth. Reduces agitation, irritation, stress and racing thoughts.
In Ayurveda, oily refers to anything moistening. More specifically, oily refers to building substances that increases fat, or are themselves fatty. For example, sugar is Oily.
Bland means doesn't have much taste. In Chinese medicine, bland taste refers to afood without little macronutrients, such as cabbage, radish or bok choy.
Herbs or spices with volatile essential oils that present strong aromas. Aromatic oils shock, refresh and numb tissue, with the end result of relaxing, opening and clearing stagnant fluids in tissues.
Geriatric conditions typically involve low agni / metabolism, poor circulation, weakness & debility, muscle weakening, poor digestion, a drop in sex hormones, and connective tissue degradation in bones & skin.
Herbs that promote urine formation, thereby flushing the kidneys and urinary tract while eliminating any excess water retention. As diuretics reduce water retention, they are often used to reduce blood pressure.
A tonic herb restores function through strengthening tissue. This can happen through a combination of nourishing the tissue, and invigorating tissue metabolism. The tonic should not be withering, as in caffeine.
Encourages feelings of stability and heaviness. Makes you feel settled, mentally relaxed. Mildly sedates the nervous system to ease stress. Can bring a spacey or anxious person back to earth. Reduces agitation, irritation, stress and racing thoughts.
Ojas is the essence of healthy tissue, immunity, stable energy and happiness. Substances that improve ojas are recommended after long-term illness, debility, emotional and physical trauma, and even sadness.
Sattvic foods promote awareness and a refreshed mind by nourishing the body without taxing digestion. Sattvic foods do not stimulate desire or nervous energy. They create clarity instead of drowsiness or heaviness.
In Ayurveda, oily refers to anything moistening. More specifically, oily refers to building substances that increases fat, or are themselves fatty. For example, sugar is Oily.
Herbs or spices with volatile essential oils that present strong aromas. Aromatic oils shock, refresh and numb tissue, with the end result of relaxing, opening and clearing stagnant fluids in tissues.
Bland means doesn't have much taste. In Chinese medicine, bland taste refers to afood without little macronutrients, such as cabbage, radish or bok choy.
Geriatric conditions typically involve low agni / metabolism, poor circulation, weakness & debility, muscle weakening, poor digestion, a drop in sex hormones, and connective tissue degradation in bones & skin.