Your Choleric Temperament: How to Balance Fire and DriveCLASSIFICATION OF FOOD, HERBS, & LIFESTYLE

AYURVEDIC PERSPECTIVE ON CHOLERIC

Has a hot and dry metabolic nature. Enthusiastic, vibrant and bright. In excess burns up fluids and ojas, irritable. Corresponds to high bilirubin in the blood that irritates and heats up the body and liver.

People with a choleric temperament are known for their internal heat that drives creativity and passion.

A well balanced choleric's internal heat can make them a focused and successful leader who also enjoys a healthy digestion and a reliable metabolism.

When unbalanced, though, perfectionism, anger and impatience often take over. Physically these individuals are prone to hot conditions like skin rashes, acid reflux and diarrhea.

In Ayurveda, their temperament is similar to a Pitta-Vata constitution.

No matter how we identify them, however, the key to a choleric's good health and focus is taming their internal heat.

Fortunately, the biocharacteristics theory of medicine can help.

Balance & The Biocharacteristics Theory of Medicine

Greek Medicine is one of several traditional, holistic healing systems that utilize biocharacteristics to understand and treat clients. Others include Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Unani Tibb (popular in Arab cultures).

Biocharacteristics are descriptive terms for metabolic imbalances, including qualities such as hot and cold, wet and dry, heavy and light, tastes such as sweet and sour, or elements like earth, air, fire and water.

These qualities appear in people, food, herbs, lifestyle practices and habits, and diseases.

At its simplest, the biocharacteristics theory of medicine first uncovers imbalanced qualities in individuals. It then applies their opposite qualities to correct the imbalance.

If you're too hot, have a cool drink, sit in the shade or take some cooling breaths. If you're too cold put on a jacket, enjoy a hot drink or add some spices to your food. If you're too dry, drink more fluids, and eat more oily, gooey foods like oatmeal, meat or ghee.

Simple, but powerful, examples like these form the basis for natural healing systems that have kept people well for thousands of years.

Greek Medicine's 4 Temperaments

You may have encountered Greek Medicine's temperaments (Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, and Melancholic), which are often presented as personality types to help us understand and communicate better with each other.

Each is associated with a humor: yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile, respectively. Humors are named after a substance in the body, but are better thought of as a systemic nature of the body that could involve many different biochemicals.

Each humor gives rise to a temperament that includes dominant personality traits along with describing their physical body, mental tendencies, and emotional patterns.

Understanding these connections can help you understand others better and also correct physical and emotional imbalances in your body.

Let's start with a closer look at the choleric temperament.

The Challenge of Balancing Choleric's Fire & Drive

The choleric temperament is characterized by heat and dryness. In fact, it is the hottest and most catabolic of all the temperaments.

The name Choleric means bilious, referring specifically to yellow bile which is the associated humor.

A choleric person is apt to have high bilirubin in the blood. Bile is a hot, stimulating, and irritating substance. When present in the blood it revs up your metabolism and confers these hot qualities to the whole person.

Bile is produced in the liver and thus the choleric temperament is closely connected to anger and the liver.

Choleric Temperament's Physical Traits

Physical traits of the choleric temperament include a lean, muscular body that runs warm rather than cool, and curly or thin reddish or blonde hair. These are the people who often complain about being too hot.

They go hatless and wear light weight jackets in the winter. In the early spring they bring out their shorts and sandals while the rest of us are still shivering.

Their excess heat, on the other hand, makes them prone to inflammation, fevers, and hot digestive and elimination issues like acid reflux and diarrhea. Why is that?

Let's take diarrhea as an example.

Your liver produces and stores bile into your gallbladder until you need it to digest fat.

After a meal, bile is released where it helps you digest fats and irritates your intestines. In choleric temperaments with an excess of bile, the bowels empty quickly and the person eliminates quickly.

A common symptom of such, an irritated GI tract is yellow poop. This means your gut bacteria didn't get a chance to turn your bile from yellow to the expected cinnamon brown because your food moved too fast through your digestive tract.

This means you probably also did not absorb all the nutrients from your food causing deficiencies that can lead to illness.

A yellow coating on your tongue or in the sclera of your eyes, are other signs of excess choleric humor (bile) in the blood.

An unbalanced choleric may also contend with heat related issues such gastritis, autoimmune conditions, allergies or red angry skin in the form of hives or eczema.

Eventually, if you don't balance the heat, it can cause excessive dryness, similar to a neglected pot of boiling water that evaporates all the liquid and burns up the pan.

Cholerics & Mental Balance

Mentally, cholerics tend to be quick-witted, decisive, highly focused, and goal-oriented. But their intensity can promote rigid ways of thinking. In that case, others may have to remind them of the bigger picture.

Cholerics & Emotional Balance

Have you ever been called a hot head? Or been told to "cool it" or to "come back after you've cooled off?" Maybe you're prone to losing your temper.

Temper comes from the Latin tempare, which originally referred to conditioning something to its true nature (temperament). In modern times temper means moderation or restraint. To get angry and irritated means to lose restraint.

"Ira," the root of the word irritated,means anger or rage and it is related to the irascible passions.

The irascible passions are those directed at removing obstacles to direct desires like hope, when you want something that is difficult to achieve, or despair or fear, when you face an evil that is hard to avoid.

Anger and related emotions have long been associated with excess heat and the liver and are symptoms of cholerics out of balance.

When balanced, however, a choleric's heat promotes passion, along with high levels of motivation and ambition that make them successful in their chosen careers.

Attorneys, CEOs of companies or colonels in the army are typical of the kinds of professions that benefit from a choleric temperament.

Choleric Temperament's Relation to Ayurvedic Doshas

Ayurveda defines three body types or constitutions. Vata is dry and cold and made up of air and ether elements. Pitta is hot and made up of fire plus a little water. Earth and water elements predominate in Kapha, making it cold and wet.

In Greek medicine, Vata is most similar to the Melancholic temperament that is cold, dry. They are both associated with bones and astringency (earth element). Kapha is most similar to the Phlegmatic type which is associated with water and all the body's fluids.

Of the other two temperaments, Sanguine (Blood), is hot and wet resembling oily Pitta-Kapha.

Choleric, which is both hot and dry, is most similar to a Pitta-Vata constitution. Its fiery temperament produces heat and intensity along with strong digestion, sharp intellect, and leadership qualities.

In excess, both Choleric temperaments and Pitta-Vata constitutions can produce anger, inflammation, and digestive conditions like gas and bloating that arise from resultant dryness.

There are some differences, however. For example, Vata and Pitta are separate doshas in Ayurveda. To treat a Pitta-Vata constitution you would first discover which of the two doshas is the cause of the imbalance.

If it's Pitta, balance the heat primarily. If Vata imbalance predominates, treat deficiency primarily.

Choleric Balancing Diet

To balance a choleric's hot temperament with diet, favor sweet, cooling, hydrating and grounding foods.

These could include:

1. Cooling, sweet oils like coconut or sunflower seed
2. Hydrating, cooling foods like cucumber, pears, melons or coconut water
3. Grounding foods such as squash, legumes or sweet potatoes (which would also help ground Vata)
4. Sweet foods like meat, wheat or dairy, but in moderation as they are difficult to digest and can promote inflammation in both Vata and Pitta.
5. Mild bitter foods like kale and arugula are cooling and help clear blood and liver heat.
6. Mild astringent foods like lentils, cranberries or pomegranate are also cooling.

The liver may need special attention in cholerics as it tends to predominate in their imbalances.

Mild liver cleansing, cool and sour foods can be helpful including pomegranate, applesauce or blueberries. Cholerics should, however, avoid sour, fermented foods like yogurt, beer, sauerkraut, miso or pickles, which are heating.

They can also help their livers clear toxins with hepatoprotective foods like artichoke hearts, beets or dandelion leaves. Or they can strengthen their livers with livotonic foods like sweet potatoes, yellow colored squashes or almond milk.

Cholerics should avoid heating foods like peanuts, chocolate, red chilis, jalapenos or red bell peppers or sun dried tomatoes.

Lifestyle Practices to Calm & Soothe Choleric Temperaments

Helpful lifestyle practices for cholerics include:

• Stress management techniques such as contemplative prayer or meditation
• Calming breathing exercises
• Mindful exercise like walks in the woods, gardening, or gentle stretching

Herbs to Cool & Calm the Choleric Temperament

While diet and lifestyle practices are key to taming choleric heat, herbs can also lend their support. An Ayurvedic practitioner can assist with selecting the best herbs and herbal formulas for your situation.

The following are some options for your consideration:

• Cooling herbs like amalaki, brahmi or shatavari help balance a Choleric's heat.
• Demulcents like licorice root or marshmallow root or slippery elm soothe inflamed tissues in the digestive tract.
• Alteratives like guduchi, ashwagandha or vidari help balance your blood chemistry and eliminate excess heat and dryness.