What Are You Hungry For? (15 page)

One of the primary active ingredients in turmeric is known as curcumin, which is not easily absorbed by the body, but another chemical, the piperine in black pepper, can increase the absorption of curcumin. Turmeric and pepper are components of most curry powder blends. Studies by epidemiologists indicate that in India, where curry is the mainstay of everyday diets, the rates of Alzheimer’s disease are among the lowest in the world. In the population of 70- to 79-year-olds, the rate is less than 25 percent of that in the United States. Although a lower life expectancy and death from other causes play important parts, some researchers hypothesize that the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of a compound like curcumin may be a major factor in preventing Alzheimer’s. You can enjoy turmeric in soups, sautéed vegetables, and other dishes where brilliant color and mild spiciness add a new dimension.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a sweet, warming, pungent spice derived from the inner bark of the cinnamon tree. Since ancient times cinnamon has been used to increase energy and treat colds, indigestion, and cramps. While there are approximately one hundred varieties of
cinnamonum verum
trees, the most common variety in the United States is commonly referred to as cassia. Cinnamon is a powerful antioxidant and contains compounds that decrease inflammation and fight against bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Cinnamon may help reduce chronic inflammation, which is linked with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and meningitis. Researchers continue to add to a growing body of findings. Here are some of the most recent discoveries:

When you buy cinnamon, whether in stick or powder form, smell it to make sure that it has a strong, sweet fragrance.

Peppers

Used in many of the world’s cuisines, both spicy and sweet peppers contain many phytochemicals with antioxidant properties. (Although they share the same name, black peppercorns aren’t from the same family as chilies, bell peppers, and related fruits.) Fresh peppers come in a variety of colors, including red, yellow, green, and purple. Each color is associated with a different family of phytochemicals and other nutrients. Red peppers, for example, are a rich source of lycopenes, lutein (which is beneficial for eye health), beta-carotene, and vitamins B
₆
, C, and A.

Spicy peppers such as jalapeños and habaneros contain high levels of an enzyme called capsaicin, a natural antioxidant that makes you break into a sweat and tear up when you take a bite. Researchers have found that spicy peppers may increase metabolism and curb the appetite, benefits that can help with weight loss. Here are some of the recent findings about capsaicin (which is found only in tiny quantities in bell peppers and other sweet kinds):

As the American diet becomes more diverse, including dishes from all over the world, cooks are using peppers in salads, salsa,
guacamole, and curries. Try to eat a variety of peppers so that you get a wide range of the phytonutrients they offer.

Garlic

Garlic is native to central Asia but was also well known in ancient China, Greece, and Egypt. For many centuries this pungent herb has been a staple in the Mediterranean region, valued for both medicinal and culinary purposes. It has a long-standing reputation as an effective treatment for relieving lung congestion and arthritic stiffness and pain. In traditional healing garlic has also been used to calm anxiety, promote regular menstruation in women, and improve libido in men. Garlic oil is applied topically to soothe sore muscles and accelerate the healing of wounds.

Thousands of scientific studies have been published on this complex botanical ally, which contains almost two hundred different chemical components. Most of them haven’t been carefully researched yet. Most research to date has focused on allicin, a phytochemical in garlic that has various healing properties. Here is what the most recent scientific understanding of garlic reveals:

Keep in mind that when garlic is cooked or dried, it loses most of its medicinal benefits. For this reason, garlic pills don’t offer the same health value as eating fresh, raw garlic. If you love garlicky food but don’t like the effect it has on your breath, one possible remedy is parsley, chewed after the meal or taken in pill form, easily found in health food stores.

By breaking each disease down into its components, scientific medicine has achieved an astonishing sophistication. Within days after a new strain of flu breaks out, the virus that causes it can be analyzed. Cancers are being tracked down to the molecular level and typed according to the patient’s genome.

But Ayurveda holds that advanced diagnosis—which is the great strength of scientific medicine—comes into play at the end of a long string of events. Before any symptoms appear, the stage where drugs and surgery are forced to step in, the body’s own healing system has reached a critical stage of breakdown. Breakdown is the result of feedback loops that are overloaded through some kind of drastic imbalance. Imbalance begins at a subtle level that makes itself known through signals of comfort and discomfort. So the long chain of events that culminates with illness actually begins with everyday choices that either help your body remain in balance or throw it out of balance.

This simple logic isn’t denied by modern medicine. But physicians are trained as interventionists who spring into action after the
damage is too advanced for the body to take care of itself. There is no training in the predisease state, although in the past two decades the overwhelming role that prevention can play has begun to make an impression on the mainstream medical community.

Ayurveda keeps its sights fixed on how to create the good life, following practices that merge mind and body. On a daily basis you should choose the most nourishing input, whether your choice is based on Ayurveda or on principles couched in the language of feedback loops. A balanced, harmonious lifestyle represents the earliest prevention program. Here’s a quick summary of the lifestyle I’ve recommended in this book.

Eat natural, whole foods.

Follow your body’s signals of hunger and satiation.

Tune in to sensations of discomfort and heed them.

Pay attention to daily biorhythms, particularly sleep.

Remain in a state of restful alertness.

Promote energy and lightness in your diet and also in your choice of exercise.

Consciously deal with stress levels.

Have a vision of well-being and follow it.

The best way to prevent illness is to live so harmoniously that the subtle precursors of disease (i.e., early imbalances) don’t gain a toehold in the mind-body system. That’s the assumption followed by Ayurveda, and even though its principles were laid down more than two thousand years before the rise of science, with no technical understanding of homeostasis or feedback loops in the brain, today’s best knowledge about wellness and illness comes remarkably close to the major themes of Ayurveda.

The first signs of imbalance aren’t mysterious; we’re all well acquainted with them, with a host of low-grade symptoms such as fatigue, lack of energy, insomnia, susceptibility to colds and flu, heartburn, headaches, digestive problems, ill-defined aches and pains, depression, and anxiety. Being low-grade, not yet rising to the level of serious symptoms (most of the time), these peripheral signals don’t mean much in Western medicine unless they persist. Even then, it’s assumed that peripheral discomforts aren’t as serious as full-blown diseases.

Ayurveda takes the opposite view, seeing early imbalance as the first link in the chain of events that will lead eventually to a full-blown disease. This perspective has been rapidly gaining ground in scientific medicine, however, once researchers realized that genetic changes linked to diabetes, autism, depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease—just to mention a few prominent disorders—crop up years and sometimes decades before symptoms appear. We also realize that lifestyle choices have long-term consequences in changing genetic output. Genes don’t simply turn on or off like a light switch but work on a sliding scale like a dimmer switch or rheostat.

That’s why the daily input entering the mind-body system is so important. The body is built like a sand dune, one grain at a time, not like a wall, one brick at a time. So each day is a microcosm of your whole life—what you eat, think, feel, and do is foretelling your future. The experience of harmonious living today foretells a harmonious future, which is different from living any way you want to until the day when bad things start to happen, at which point you must scurry to make up for your past. Sometimes that isn’t possible.

Can Ayurveda solve the problem of noncompliance? I think so. After decades of public health campaigns, Americans continue to be sedentary and to eat the wrong diet. One of the main reasons is the climate of fear surrounding cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and other major diseases. These are largely disorders of
middle to old age, and people fear them so much because they belong to a frightening image of overall decline. Fear-based motivation rarely works over the long haul. On a day-to-day basis, people won’t comply out of anxiety.

Ayurveda turns the situation around with its focus on early imbalances. These are not frightening. Quite the opposite. Living a harmonious, balanced life adds to your happiness and staves off the specter of what might befall you in your declining years. By being in balance, you don’t have to decline. The “new old age” has already replaced the worst assumptions about old people sitting uselessly in rocking chairs, lonely and unnoticed. The baby boom generation sees seventy as late middle age, and one survey that asked when old age begins found that the average answer was eighty-five. The best way to live a long, active life is to have that expectation in mind.

The key is to find a lifestyle that makes you happy at twenty, thirty, fifty, and eighty. I believe that Ayurveda lays a good basis for such a lifestyle. If you add another element, you can make your entire life span a rising arc, with no fear of decline. That added element is higher consciousness, which we are ready to explore to the fullest. Awareness eating is just one application of awareness—a wider horizon opens when you discover that awareness holds the key to the higher states of mental and spiritual fulfillment.

Power Points

•  When you eat, either you are aware of what you are doing or you have blanked out, unconsciously taking in your food.

•  Many people eat unconsciously, which is why their eating is out of control. You can only control what you’re aware of. When you eat unconsciously, you go blank and don’t realize what you’re doing. Going blank is a choice—you don’t have to do it.

•  Mindfulness provides a simple way to tune in to your brain, which is sending you four kinds of messages: sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts (SIFT).

•  The joy of awareness dawns when you can escape the prison of conditioning. Awareness is all about restoring your freedom to choose what you want instead of what your past imposes on you.