‘WHEN’ TO EAT
A have interacted with you extensively with you, through many of my blogs earlier about diet, lifestyle and Ayurved. As you must have realised that to stay healthy a correct lifestyle is what is needed that includes the right food at the right time and in the right season too!
Taking it a little further to prove my point, let me share some of my experiences, where without any medicine, only dietary changes have successfully cured the ailment.
A female patient (age 40) who is a working woman complained of constant bloating and burning in the epigastric region, a condition that had persisted over almost 6 months. She is very conscious about her diet, exercise, yoga, pranayam…….all in all, a very good follower of the teachings of Ayurved!
But despite this she started having these complaints. Typically like any other normal person, her first reaction was to neglect the symptoms blaming it on probable hormonal changes, stress in working life, social and family concerns and so forth…
But the symptoms persisted over almost 6 months when she decided to visit my clinic to discuss the issue.
While taking a detailed history I noticed that she has shifted her lunch timing from 1 pm to almost 3 to 3.30 giving priority to other important assignment at the office. At 5 pm, she was taking a tea break and again at night 8.30 pm dinner. She has a habit of having breakfast at 8 am, before she leaves for work.
Looking at her schedule, I observed that the only change that was really necessary was to advice her to shift her lunch time back to 1 p.m. and a bit of stress nothing else.
So instead of prescribing any medicine, I only advised her to change the lunch time back again from 3/3.30 to strictly between 1 to 1.30 .
With that simple change, the miracle happened. She started feeling light. Bloating disappeared slowly and the heartburn stopped completely!
Now let me explain, how and what was exactly happening to her body.
According to Ayurveda, 10 am to 2 pm is the ‘pitta’ period. So Ayurved recommends to take lunch between this period of day for proper digestion. Now my patient had shifted her lunch timing from 1 to 3/3.30,which what everyone thinks is not a big deal, and so did she too.
But then she was not taking the food during the ‘pitta’ time of day, instead she was taking her lunch during the ‘vata’ time, which according to Ayurveda, is between 2 to 6 pm. that is why the bloated feeling, and the heartburn.
When the body is demanding food in the pitta period, no food was there for digestion. And when the body is in vata phase of day, she was feeding her body, which created bloating.
Another thing in this case was there was a gap of more than 6 to 7 hours between breakfast and lunch that also was causing vata and pitta aggravation.
Ayurved says that when diet is correct, medicine is not required and when diet is wrong, medicine is of no use… quite enlightening, isn’t it..?
Readers, please take a note of not only what you have in your diet but also ‘when’ ! When Ayurved talks about the right diet, it is related to the quantity, quality, & time, all that I have earlier discussed as the 8 golden rules of dietetic.