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Is Inflammation Holding You Back? Ayurveda’s Natural Solution with Dr. Shivani Gupta

Is Inflammation Holding You Back? Ayurveda’s Natural Solution with Dr. Shivani Gupta

Julia Ward, MD with Dr. Shivani Gupta

About the Expert

Julia Ward, MD

Dr. Julia Ward

Dr. Julia Ward is a compassionate and forward-thinking physician with over a decade of experience in functional medicine, known for her systems-based approach to healing chronic illness. She is the founder of Balanced Body Functional Medicine, where she helps patients uncover the deeper drivers of disease and restore health by addressing the body as an interconnected whole.
After earning her medical degree from the University of Southern California, Dr. Ward served in the U.S. Navy, practicing general, urgent, and emergency medicine both domestically and abroad. Her own personal struggle with unexplained fatigue led her to question the limitations of conventional medicine and ultimately guided her toward functional medicine.
While she initially focused on identifying root causes, Dr. Ward’s approach has continued to evolve. She now emphasizes the importance of how and when the body is treated—not just what is treated. Through her Balanced Body System Reset™ framework, she focuses on restoring nervous system balance, improving mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation, and addressing root causes in the right sequence to create lasting and meaningful healing.
Dr. Ward integrates advanced diagnostics, personalized care plans, and innovative therapies such as hyperbaric oxygen and ozone therapy, while also emphasizing foundational elements like nervous system regulation, lifestyle, and patient engagement. She believes that healing is not a one-size-fits-all process, but a guided journey that requires both strategy and active participation.
A lifelong learner, Dr. Ward continues to expand her expertise in areas such as precision genomics, brain health, and complex chronic illness. She is deeply committed to helping her patients not only feel better, but truly understand their bodies and take ownership of their health.
A devoted wife and mother of five, Dr. Ward brings both clinical expertise and personal insight to her work, with a mission to transform the way chronic illness is understood and treated.

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Guest

Shivani Gupta, PhD

Dr. Shivani Gupta, Ayurveda + Inflammation Expert

ShivaniGupta.com is about empowering women with the knowledge and tools to take control of their health and well-being is my passion. Through the lens of Ayurveda and modern science, I strive to educate and inspire women to make meaningful changes in their lives that promote optimal health and vitality.Investing in our health is key to unlocking our potential. Neglecting self-care is a stumbling block on the path to success, wealth, joy, and vibrancy. But with ayurveda, we have a powerful blueprint for optimal health and wellness. By embracing its principles, we can pave a new path towards vitality and unleash our full potential.Visit ShivaniGupta.com to learn about Ayurveda, Circadian Rhythm, Gut Health, Inflammation, Sleep Optimization, and more. Download my free guides and free 7-day challenges.

More from Shivani Gupta, PhD on DrTalks

So turmeric is my mothership favorite plant on Earth. I love it. Ginger is also phenomenal. Ginger is anti-inflammatory. It’s gut protective. We know when people are nauseous, we give them ginger ginger ale.

Get in there in line the gut lining. So just using ginger in the morning will ignite the digestive fire and support gut health for the day. I love ashwagandha.

Ashwagandha is like this powerhouse. It’s it’s my favorite herb. After turmeric, I would do a whole Ph. D. on ashwagandha if I had all my free time. But I have kids, so I have not going to do that yet.

So they’re older and after college, but ashwagandha is a adaptogen, so if the body is stressed and anxious, it calms it down a couple notches. If you’re having the blues and depressed, it lifts you up.

It’s like this perfect thermostat. So I love that adaptogens have that intelligence in the system. Welcome to Doctor Talks, the podcast where every episode leads to a healthier you.

Join us as we navigate the world of optimal health, uncovering groundbreaking strategies to conquer chronic disease. In each episode, we’ll bring you the latest insights from leading health experts, medical innovators, and wellness warriors.

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This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Here we go. So how does chronic inflammation impact the aging process and what unique insights does?

Are you better offer about mitigating this impact? Absolutely. So I read that is this entire ancient system of medicine, health and healing from India.

That’s over 5000 years old. And within our video we have a lot of different tools in the toolkit. But what’s cool is a lot of these different tools help with addressing inflammation, and we know that chronic inflammation is one of those big root cause issues that’s plaguing us as a society that we’re struggling with.

So many people around me, I’m 44, so everyone around me in their 40s and 50s says, oh, I’m getting more and more tired. I’m fatigued. I can’t go out as much.

When I wake up, my joints are stiff. I always have digestive issues. Doesn’t matter what I eat, something always throws me off. Can’t drink alcohol anymore.

All these kinds of things. Yeah. Weight loss is a big struggle as we age. And so I always look at them and say it’s not aging, it’s inflamed aging. We are chronically inflamed.

We have this low grade persistent fire going on. And that’s the troublemaker. And so that’s where I read that is really powerful because I read the teaches us about circadian clock, about our gut digestive fire, about eating a diet that’s seasonal and circadian and has a lot of nutrient density and nutrient variety.

We talk about self-care rituals every day that help gently detox. We talked about the importance of big seasonal and annual detoxes to clean and clear the lymphatic system and support that gut health and and every system of the body to be clean and clear.

So the body can stay healed. And then finally, we teach a lot about super spices and tumeric because I love using turmeric as a tool, but also so many of the others.

Adaptogens. Ashwagandha, ginger, different teas and tools we can use from the Mother Earth kingdom of solutions to help with chronic inflammation. So I really look at inflammation as, yes, we’re going to get inflamed.

We have a toxic burden just living in modern day times. But we also have a lot of tools we can use to switch that around and and change the course of things.

So we aren’t so plagued by it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There’s so much inflammation. And that’s one of the things that I teach about in my practice as well, that there’s just an infinite number of insults to the body, but it kind of boils down to inflammation as the lowest common denominator.

Yeah. So in your view, what are the main contributors to inflammation in modern lifestyles. And then how can we address these using the argue Vedic principles.

Absolutely. You know, a lot of our toxic burden nowadays comes innocuously in ways we don’t realize. I look at it as our water quality, our food quality, our air quality.

Some of these are hard to change, but we can filter our water better so it has less toxin residue in there. We can buy good air filtration systems for our home, change our filters regularly, diffuse essential oils as opposed to candles or other fragrance, creating things that are endocrine disruptors.

When it comes to food. Really taking a look at pesticide burden, making sure you know, what are those dirty dozen foods and avoiding them if they’re going to have that big pesticide burden on them.

Let’s watch organic for the Dirty Dozen, and also for dairy and meat and these kinds of things. Switching to organic, we also know thanks to functional medicine and practitioners like you, that there’s a lot of root causes that are causing trouble.

There’s, you know, Lyme disease as an example. But mold, heavy metals, a lot of these bigger issues are actually the root cause problem that people are dealing with.

And so from the IRA Vedic perspective, we know that just living our normal life will cause a toxic burden. That’s just factual. It’s just worse now in modern day times, now that our skincare and cleaning products and everything are kind of adding up, but we look at it as what are your daily practices that you can use to gently detox?

It’s a body. We’re not dealing with a machine here, so let’s be gentle. Let’s be kind to it. So one simple practice from Irvine that is to use a copper tongue scraper.

So we need to take a tongue scraper in the morning and gently scrape your tongue 7 to 14 times. And what that. What is that going to do when it comes to our feet?

And reflexology. According to ancient Chinese medicine, all of the organs are reflected on the feet. So that’s why when you have reflexology, if you’re pregnant, they’re like, don’t let them push every button on the bottom of your foot.

But in our video, we teach that all those organs are reflected on the tongue. And so by gently scraping the tongue, you’re gently massaging all the organs of the body.

You’re gently detoxing them. We’re clearing those taste buds. We’re supporting oral health, which is gut microbiome health. We know that scraping the tongue will increase nitric oxide, and we also know that it helps ignite the digestive fire in the morning.

So it’s going to help ignite that movement that we want. So you have your first bowel movement. So everything is clean and clean and moving clean and clear and moving properly.

So that’s a simple example of our videos perspective which is daily detox practices. And we also teach another one called oil pulling. So many people have heard of oil pulling.

Oil pulling is an Arabic practice. You just take organic food grade oil, not any junky oil. So your coconut oil, MCT oil, we love sesame oil. And I provide that.

You take about a tablespoon or two, put it in the mouth and hold it in your mouth for 5 to 20 minutes. And you can swish this around, move it through your gums, through your teeth, and when you spit it out, make sure you spit it out in the in the trash, not in the toilet, sink or shower because it’ll clog the pipes of your home.

And what you’re doing is you’re collecting all those heavy metals and toxins and junk that accumulates in the mouth, cleaning up oral microbiome for the the conversation that’s going to happen between oral microbiome and gut microbiome.

So that’s early. That’s really gentle practices that add up over time I love it. That’s great. Tell me about so tumeric is a cornerstone in both and both are Vedic and functional medicine.

Can you explain the specific anti-inflammatory and longevity promoting properties of tumeric and its active compound, curcumin? Absolutely. So for about 20 years I’ve been practicing feed that.

I’ve studied it. I’ve loved it. It’s this system that helps heal my gut. After I had taken way too many antibiotics growing up, and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have an immune system that supported me.

Anytime someone sneeze or cough, I would just go down. I couldn’t fly without getting sick. I couldn’t go to a party without getting sick. And so I always wished like, was there something out there that could just solve this?

And definitely using functional medicine for what are those root causes in the gut that we need to address, bringing in great probiotics and tools to win it.

That helped. But the I think piece was also important to me. So spice is like turmeric are great support. It’s a powerful polyphenol. We know through all the science.

Once I did my master’s and I read that and I studied all the spices, I realized turmeric has this really multifaceted approach of supporting their health.

And so my entire PhD dissertation was on it. So for about three years they’re all I did. I think it was three years. It could have been like five years.

It took forever. But I sat there in the science of turmeric in PubMed and Google Scholar and online and I met with the researchers who are working on curcumin in the labs.

Basically, turmeric is a very powerful anti-inflammatory and it affects many of the different pathways of inflammation. Two key ones are NF kappa B and TNF alpha.

And so the fact that it affects those two and Cox and locks across many different pathways means that when the body is really inflamed, tumor goes in there and just cleans house, it addresses it simmers down a lot of that inflammation.

Then it goes after the medium sized problem and then the smaller problems. That’s what I’ve seen anecdotally working with tumor for the last ten years in the science.

We just know factually that it’s kind of it’s kind of shocking, I think, to modern day science how well tumeric works. And that’s why there’s so much investigation going into like why it works for chronic or, you know, chronic joint pain for different patients who are losing function in their hands and their back.

There’s just a lot of science going into to tumor right now, which is exciting. And it’s not only a powerful anti-inflammatory, it’s a powerful antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti candida, anti-aging, pylori.

When they’re cells that don’t belong in the body, curcumin from tumeric is the ultimate janitor. It goes in there and causes cell apoptosis. So when we have cells in our body that just don’t belong anymore, it causes cell death.

We know as we age, zombie cells, zombie cells form in the body and start running around and damaging us to works like this. Ultimate janitor comes in and cleans those out, and we know it has an impact on our sirtuins, on our telomeres, Ampk pathways.

We know it’s anti-obesity. We know it’s gut microbiome supportive. So it helps the gut microbiome lining. So there’s just so much application when it comes to tumor.

And that really excites me I utilize it for two things. One, I know we have to reduce those chronic fires of inflammation. And two, I have an immune system that defends me when my kids come home with their viruses and their stuff that they bring home.

I have a complete like Wonder Woman shield around me and I don’t get sick anymore because I use tumeric. And so my study has been about the benefits of tumeric and then the applications.

So a lot of people say I juice my tumeric, it’s fresh, it’s amazing, and I get all the benefits. I’m like that is great for you. Some people can do that.

Then there’s the spice tumeric, which is the more concentrated version. If you’re going to use the spice turmeric in your cooking, that’s great. Make sure you’re adding black pepper or healthy fat to get the benefits of it.

And then finally we’re we’re playing with turmeric. Much more in the functional medicine world and in the medical world is out of the entire turmeric plant.

Only 3 to 5% of it is the humanoids. And we know that the humanoids are most effective at reducing inflammation, so 95% of it is okay, but it’s not as effective as that last 5% for the inflammation and to taking curcumin in the correct proportion at the correct potency is what drives that result to reduce significant inflammation.

And so my work ten years ago was can we formulate something that we could use in orthopedics, rheumatology for these patients who really have pain. And that’s what I was that that’s what I’ve loved doing for the last ten years.

And then now I teach a lot more about the preventive aspects of tumeric as well. Great. Well, that kind of leads me to my next question with with so many, turmeric products available, how to how do people kind of identify high quality supplements that are both safe and effective?

You know, it’s actually pretty hard. I was wrapping up my PhD and everyone was like, well, I’m taking turmeric. Is this a good one? And they send me pictures.

And I myself was like, oh my gosh, there’s 50 different ways to label a turmeric supplement, and there’s hundreds of people making them. So this is actually kind of hard to read.

And I have a Ph. D. in the topic. So wow. And so I remember reading some labels and it would say curcumin longer and like curcumin as the plant name, they’re just giving you tumeric powder.

But because curcumin sounds like curcumin, you think it’s that stuff that really works sometimes I found them and they had no black pepper or healthy fat.

And I was like, what are you guys doing? You can buy a bag of turmeric at the Indian grocery store for $3, and you’re selling it to me. Encapsulated. That makes us. Yeah.

Then there’s the world of extraction and curcumin and humanoids. And it gets even harder there. So I always say find a curcumin supplement standardized to 95% at a minimum.

Then a lot of companies invest in trademarking and patenting their own special version, putting science behind their version. My PhD advisor, when I was studying to work, I said, never do that.

Don’t break off pieces of curcumin and call it better. So I never did that. I never manipulated Mother Nature. I went out and sourced the best curcumin extract I could that rises above that 95% standard, but holds those three humanoids in the correct proportion to mimic Mother Nature, because then the body will receive it.

A lot of times we’re eating foods that are not even real foods to our body. We’re eating a lot of ingredients that aren’t real to our body, and our body’s not going to utilize that.

And so I’m very much about honoring the ancestral wisdom and using things in their correct proportion and form at the highest potency to deliver a result.

And so about ten years ago, I built my formulas, and the doctors and I were all astounded at how it works. They were like, your stuff really works. And I was like, I knew it would work for joint pain, but I didn’t expect these types of stories that you’re telling me now.

So it’s been really cool to to prove my point, which is we can utilize turmeric for a lot of the pain and things that we’re seeing people struggle with.

Well that’s great. So what inspired you to create fusion three formulas? Line of tumeric supplements. And how do they stand out from other products on the market?

Sure. So ten years ago when I finished the PhD, I am surrounded by a family of all MDS, and they kind of looked at me like, that’s really cute that you studied turmeric.

Happy for you. But teamwork doesn’t actually have an application into Western medicine. It doesn’t actually work. Right. And if you challenge me, I’m one of those people.

I’m going to have to prove you wrong. And so I went out there and I was like, I will prove to you that it’s as powerful as the other stuff you’re giving us.

And also around that time I had, like thrown out my back, I had plantar fasciitis, and they would always at PT say, just take NSAIDs 24 seven for ten days and then you’ll be all healed.

And I listened because I was pre studying tumeric and I was like, okay. And I would get these horrible stomachaches. And I thought, wow, you solved one problem, but you called cause another.

And don’t you realize gut health is a major priority to me based on my history? I just built like a gut. You can’t damage it now for no reason. And that’s what led me to thinking, okay, if you can make a tumeric that actually works, then you solve this problem called when we hurt ourselves, which happens in life.

We can naturally address it quickly, get it out of the way, and we’re not going to harm the body. And so that’s why I created visionary. So what we’re known for is being the most potent tumeric formula.

And a lot of people call me and they’re like, I took yours. And now I can’t go back to anyone else’s. None of theirs work. I actually feel yours. I never felt it when I took someone else’s.

They tell me their back pain is gone. They can walk again. They can walk up the stairs. Lately, like a lot of people at my gym take it, and they’re like, my finger.

I was having joint pain, but now I can bowl again. So it’s just really fun to see what what one herb from Mother Nature can do for our health. Yeah. That’s awesome.

So for individuals with with busy modern lifestyle, what’s the easiest and most impactful? Are you Vedic practices that they can adopt to reduce inflammation and promote vitality?

You know, I would say have a very gut focused lifestyle where you honor gut health, understanding that circadian rhythm is so important, rising with the sun setting, with the sun, we have a lot of practices around circadian rhythm.

And then we also teach each person that we each have a bio individual, mind body, constitution called the dosha, and that we’re driven by the five elements from Mother Nature.

So fire, earth, air, ether and water. And so understanding your combination, are you more air and ether, light and thin and wiry and just go, go, go. Are you more fire, more driven and ambitious.

And you’re one of those people who’s a go getter. Are you more earth? Are you more kapha? That’s the person who’s more earthy. They’re more loyal. They’re more one thing after another, bigger boned, different body type.

So each of these body types, if you learn how to honor your own and build your own balance, then all of a sudden life feels better. And so it’s really an understanding of self understanding of how to eat and live so intuitively, how to reach into that spice cabinet and use different tools as we need them.

But truly, to build a lifestyle practice throughout your life that detoxes and helps you build a lifestyle with more energy. And that’s always my goal with peoples.

How do I help you have more energy for myself? I want to be strong. I want to have my brain on point. I always want my energy to last me till the end of the day.

Those are my key things and if I’m doing what it takes for that, then I’m happy and then next after that, I’m always focused on my bloodwork. I’m one of those health nuts.

So sometimes I go to extreme in areas of my health, and I’ve got to work on my blood work all the time and or our modern day diet. It’s just not giving us the vitamins and minerals we need.

And so I always have to look at, okay, I’ve got to support thyroid more. I’ve got to support hormones more in these things. So I have, you know, really gives us a blueprint.

And once you understand that blueprint lifestyle, you can customize it to yourself and evolve with it through your decades. That’s great. That’s great.

So how can diet according to the our Vedic principles support long term wellness and prevent chronic conditions? You know, we teach a lot about nutrient density, nutrient variety, eating seasonally, sourcing foods that are grown with love, which is a little hard to do right now.

Eating with intention, eating according to your circadian clock. So some basic principles from my RV. That would be when you go to sit down to eat, don’t drink a huge glass of ice water right before you eat.

That’s just turning off your digestive fire. And then you don’t have the fire to assimilate and absorb the nutrition from your food. When you sit down to eat, take a moment, take one deep breath and focus on your food and chew your food.

We’re in the habit of watching something while we’re inhaling a meal, while we’re running off to the next thing, and we’re all culprits of that, myself included.

Today I was like, you know, you’re eating an organic egg salad made with love on gluten free toast. Let go of the phone. But then I was chewing too fast and I was like, sure that to absorb the benefits of this high protein, clean meal you’re eating, right?

Yeah. And so it’s just about remembering that even though we’re practitioners and we’re changing the world and impacting lives, we matter to, and everyone in the audience does too.

No matter what your career or responsibilities are, honoring that food is medicine, and each time you sit to eat, really infusing that food with the love that you need for yourself is going to feed that to you.

And then living according to that circadian plan. So I try every week to incorporate one new type of fruit or vegetable into my life. I try to just make sure I fight for that nutrient variety, because it’s easy to be on very mono diets.

For me, I’m like, okay, those are my protein goals. I’m gluten free, sugar free. I only eat these two types of cheese, you know, parmesan and better. That’s me eating clean.

And this is what I’m going to eat. Yeah, but then we lose all the joy and variety in there. Yeah. No, I and I can tell you from personal experience and coming from the bodybuilding point of view, you know, when you’re prepped meal prepping, it is the same food day in and day out.

And, and it’s pretty monotonous. And yeah, there’s very little variety. So that that’s definitely one thing that I think we all need to work on. Absolutely.

So what are your top recommendations for creating a personalized daily self-care routine? Or I’m going to I’m not going to try to pronounce this word to promote health, you know, longevity and resilience.

Sure. So I teach something called dinner, Chartier the daily self-care rituals of your life. And really, that’s a way to take the entire Ayurvedic wisdom and build a rhythm into your day.

So it’s about waking up in the morning and setting an intention, hydrating the system and making sure you have that first bowel movement. Because we want overnight everything to collect in you that doesn’t belong and evacuate the system.

But if we’re going to be constipated and backed up, we don’t get to have good health. So it really starts as simplistic as that. Then once you’ve hydrated and moved everything through that, you need to.

Let’s brush our teeth. Copper tongue scraper, oil pulling, do all that oral hygiene stuff that I already mentioned. Then when you’re ready to start your day, taking a few moments to either meditate or pray or journal, set those intentions for the day.

Maybe practice on breathwork. We call it pranayama. The deep breath work that’s going to bring prana and energy into the system and then start your day and pre any caffeine.

I Ayurveda teach us to have aloe vera juice or ginger lemon tea as ways to really support that eye justice system. Make sure everything’s moving and grooving the way we need to.

Like if I haven’t gone to the bathroom in the morning, those are my two habits to ensure I go before I start my day. Because how much the focus is, and I’ll be there to make sure that that happens.

Yeah. And once you start your day, we teach about three square meals a day. But I know nowadays a lot of people are fasting. Even I try intermittent fasting.

And so it’s about when you have a meal, have the meal and then don’t munch and snack all day because you didn’t focus on what belonged in that meal. For you to be satiated and held and have the nutrition that you’re that you needed for the meal to be really filling.

And so RB that says create that rhythm. Eat your breakfast, eat your lunch, eat lunch between 10 and 2 on the circadian clock. So that top of the clock is important because that’s when the sun is highest in the sky.

So lunch time is actually when you have the most force, the most support to absorb all the nutrition from your meal. So if you’re going to eat nuts and seeds and all these kinds of things, raw vegetables and salad, lunch is your best time to digest all the benefits and gain those benefits from it.

And then going into the afternoon, I usually have a high tea time around 4:00 my last. I do have like one snack and tea around four just to hold me over for a healthier dinner.

And we teach that dinner should be small and easy to digest so that it’s processed and done. And then from 10 to 2 again on that circadian clock, your body can rejuvenate, clean the lymphatic system, clear inflammation.

The cure job has a use for that what we call bethought or fire time of the night. And that’s to clear the system. And if we wasted if we have let’s say let’s say you go out for a really nice dinner and it’s pasta and wine and alcohol and all the stuff that we do when we go out on a Friday, Saturday night, some of us I don’t do that anymore because the punishment is too great and it kills my next yoga and workout.

But I used to do it, and that creates the sluggishness in your whole body overnight. Just focus on processing that meal. And so we know through science now circadian clock matters, circadian biology, circadian medicine and early that just really drove that point home that we have the power to set the clock for our day.

Even if you do an 8020 and you’re going to start to see those benefits of lymphatic system did its job. I’m rejuvenated and healed and feeling awesome and thus have the energy for the next great day.

Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s great. So in what ways do are you Veda and functional medicine aligned and addressing inflammation and supporting longevity?

Well functional medicine is just incredible. I love working with functional medicine practitioners. I love going to the conferences. I am like a kid in a candy store excited because functional medicine is this frontier of medicine where you have the best practitioners like yourself coming in saying, I already know longevity, anti-aging medicine, I already know everything that can go wrong.

Now I’m diving real deep into all the different root causes that we don’t normally get to talk about in Western medicine, because it’s high patient volume.

It’s a certain type of practice. Usually in functional medicine, you’re saying, hey, there’s something wrong here. Let me be your chief investigator and help you figure it out.

And so I love it. I’ve gone to functional medicine for years, and we still get deeply. We’re like, why are Shivani hormones off? Why did she cause gut dysbiosis again?

What’s happening here? But because you have that level of testing and the level of deep understanding of supplements and ingredients and things that we can use, lifestyle practices, detoxification protocols, functional medicine is the perfect place to address your health.

And what I love is our Vedic medicine is a perfect support alongside functional medicine to help hold the lifestyle practices it takes to hold the results, because a lot of times I’ve gone to functional medicine and I’m fixed, and then if you just let me rubber band back to my old ways, I’m not going to keep the amazing result.

I’ll go back to the old ways, but as long as I’m holding these Ayurveda lifestyle practices in place and living according to my blueprint, all of a sudden I get to keep this result that I just invested in getting.

So I think it’s the perfect man. That’s a perfect compliment. Yeah, it sounds like, I just kind of answered the next question about how it complements functional medicine.

That’s wonderful. Can you share some specific are you Vedic herbs or formulations aside from tumeric that are particularly effective for supporting vitality and longevity?

Absolutely. So turmeric is my mothership favorite plant on Earth. I love it. Ginger is also phenomenal. Ginger is anti-inflammatory. It’s gut protective.

We know when people are nauseous, we give them ginger. Ginger will get in there and line the gut lining. So just using ginger in the morning will ignite the digestive fire and support gut health for the day.

If you’re ever sitting down to a meal in a restaurant and you’re like, I know this is not going to sit well with me, you can have ginger in that meal and you can have like ginger lemon tea beforehand, or carry a bag of ginger tea with you as just an emergency support.

Yeah. So I do love keeping ginger in mind, especially during travel and things like that. I love ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is like this powerhouse. It’s it’s my favorite herb.

After turmeric, I would do a whole PhD on ashwagandha if I had all my free time. But I have kids, so I’m not going to do that yet until they’re older and after college.

Then I can go study in-depth like that again with all the time. But ashwagandha is a adaptogen, so if the body is stressed and anxious, it calms it down a couple notches.

If you’re having the blues and depressed, it lifts you up. It’s like this perfect thermostat. So I love that Adaptogen to have that intelligence in the system.

And the meaning of ashwagandha is 100 horses, like the power of 100 horses. And so it really gives you this, what we call dark, gut like strength. It gives you this vitality, it’s neurocognitive support.

It’s also anti-inflammatory. And I’ve seen one study that talked about how it’s as effective as 14 different psychoactive drugs. Wow. I thought it was fascinating.

So I’m not like validated that study myself. But I did read that and think, okay, there’s a lot of power behind mood support from ashwagandha. And I once had a formula that had it in there called Optimal Performance Formula.

And when I built it, it was interesting. All the men who took it were like, you know what? I just feel more calm and focused. And the women would say, I just feel a little less overwhelmed.

Like, I know everything’s a lot, but I can just focus in on what’s important. So I love that ashwagandha can help in that way. And there’s a ton of adaptogens out there like that.

Yeah, we have Tulsi. We have shut the ovary, we have rhodiola. I mean, there’s a lot in the eye over the toolkit that we reach into to help support the body.

So that list to me is really fun because you can make teas, you can make concoctions, you can just buy them in great supplement form, but you can get there.

There’s support on board in the system and you know, with different supplements, I play with taking them monthly, quarterly, seasonally, depending on what the issue is.

A lot of people say, do we have to take to work in all these things forever? I’m like, no, you don’t. But the problem is nowadays, sometimes we’re stressed chronically, sometimes we’re inflamed chronically.

So just depends on on what you need for your body. Yeah. That’s great. And so how does the are you Vedic concept of is it oasis or vital energy tie into maintaining vibrant health as we age and how can we strengthen this?

Yes. So we teach about something called oh, just an old yes. Is this vitality that we can have or loose. And so if you’ve ever had a surgery or a major illness, sometimes you come out of it and you feel weak or like you’re, you’re you don’t have the same energy level, like you’re fatigued, like you’ve been drained of your vitality.

And I, Ravi, the teaches that old just is the byproduct of really great digestion and eating. So if we, for example, eat really well and eat foods that give us strength, like let’s say all moons and ghee and butter and lots of vegetables and fruit, maybe meat and dairy, depending on your template, then if we have strong digestion and we assimilate that and process that and absorb all the nutrition and get rid of the excess, the byproduct at the end is us.

It’s this vital within us. So it doesn’t happen instantly. Let’s say you had surgery, might take a month or two of eating really well and giving the gut a break and letting it all build up to giving this all just to us.

And so I really think of that as, am I building gorgeous or am I just completely skipping over it? And what’s going to be the punishment if I don’t focus on these?

Oh, just building practices. And nowadays, as we talk a lot more about perimenopause and menopause and women, I’m in the perimenopause phase and I’m studying menopause like it’s my job and all I hear is weight training, build that strength, build that muscle.

And so that’s what ODIs is. It’s the precursor to being able to hold on to that muscle and lift. So to me that but it’s it’s necessary that we focus on having the vitality and strength we need because as we age, we know cellular health can decline, mitochondrial health will decline, all these things will decline.

So it’s our job. And I looked up you and your website. You’ve got all the cool toys and tools and technologies and I know you’re in Houston. I can’t wait to come to your center and see you because I’m from Houston, Texas.

But those are the things that will completely help us rebuild cellular health and rejuvenate and get everything back to its optimal prime level. And this is just the our Vedic way of saying that’s really important.

Let’s build that with a focus. That’s great. I love that there’s, an understanding and a role for that, that that goes back thousands of years, that that’s really cool.

So what role does stress management play in? Are you, Veda, and how can practices like yoga, meditation, or pranayama help reduce inflammation and support overall health?

Absolutely. So I hopefully the taught us that our job is actually to bring body, mind and spirit into alignment. And I don’t know how life was 5000 years ago, but I have to imagine it’s a little less stressful in some ways than it is now, because nowadays we have all the physical insults of living modern day life.

Everything I touch could cause a toxic burden, everything I breathe, my water if I haven’t filtered it and mineralized it and put electrolytes back in, is not going to help me, right?

So there’s a lot of physicality stressors onto the system. So I do think it’s important that we reduce those actively and we detox them. Then you talk about mental health and emotional health between social media 24 hour news cycles.

Maybe we’re more interconnected as ever and than ever, but we’re also more disconnected than ever. And so that’s stress also is a 24/7 stress. Then you talk about when you sleep.

When we sleep, we’re supposed to just rest and rejuvenate and recalibrate and all the things. There’s MNF and all sorts of things. If we haven’t built a tech bubble around ourselves to protect us during that time.

And so I really try to just build such a strong, as strong as I can lifestyle practice then then I also try to pay attention to stress reduction. It’s a little hard when you’re trying to build great things.

I’m trying to impact the whole world, created to work that helps everyone and raise kids and have a beautiful, healthy self-care life for myself. And so to me, it’s really about creating guardrails to to everything that we’re doing, create those boundaries and using these practices.

I go to yoga twice a week on the weekends, and that’s my practice to just really tune into self and get quiet and make space, breath work. If I’m in the car and I am driving from A to B, like let’s say I finish work, I just remind myself, no podcast, no radio.

Just take a minute, take some deep breaths. I don’t even return phone calls, which is typically the the assault is phone calls and texts and everything coming at you.

I’ll settle everyone on text and I’ll just breathe. I’ll play yoga, music in my car and breathe just so I can get those few moments. Now, if you can do that outdoors in the sunlight, that would be even better.

Let’s get that vitamin D if you can do it at the beginning of your or end of your day, that’s great. Some of us have a template where we like to move.

So my walk is my meditation. So a lot of times I’ll take a morning walk or an evening walk. And some people are like, yeah, but I can’t just walk with no purpose.

I get that because we’re so focused on outcomes nowadays. But I’ll take a walk and I’ll just say to myself, find five beautiful things that nature made that you really love, and I’ll find this flower, and then I’ll find this tree.

And by the fifth thing, I’m just like, wow, gosh, God in the universe made the most beautiful planet and we don’t even see it. And I’ll be in this bliss state and I’ll hang out in that.

And that’s my meditation. That’s there’s so many ways to just think it in. And they’re free and they’re easy, and it’s just about getting outside and letting Mother Earth heal us and Mother Nature heal us.

And that’s really the belief of our Veda is is let nature heal you. Live on nature’s rhythm and you’ll see that you can have incredible health. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

So if somebody is just beginning their journey into Arvada, where would you recommend they start? Are there specific resources or practices you suggest as a foundation?

Absolutely. On my website, I try to teach IRA Vida in the simplest way on my YouTube channel. I have about 100 videos, but I try to show people that let’s reduce inflammation by just bringing these simple Ayurvedic practices that I’ve talked about into place.

And then I have guidebooks on there, I have cookbooks, and then I have a bigger six week program that I do with people as well. But my goal for everyone is to show you circadian rhythm, gut health practices, the self-care rituals, how to reduce inflammation, how to get the best sleep ever.

And once we put those into place, then we can really start personalizing it as well. Like, hey, this is your constitution on a dosa quiz. Once you know your quiz results, let’s customize everything.

Everything. If you’re more air, fire or Earth. And so that’s been really cool, is showing people that there’s a lot of ways to do this. It’s just about where you’re at and the support you need for right now.

That’s awesome. That’s great. And as a leader in integrating, are you better with modern health care practices? What’s your vision for how individuals can use this ancient science to live vibrant, healthy and fulfilling lives?

My dream is one day we have platforms of health that are accessible to everyone. Where we’re able to use functional medicine meets our vida. So functional medicine is the perfect system to show you what’s going on, what’s going on under the hood, all those deficiencies that are causing trouble, the root causes, and also all the ways that we need to invest to optimize for longevity.

Look, at this point, I’ve addressed all the issues now. It’s like, how do we optimize? How do we rise above and really create vibrant health? For all my decades till I’m 100 years old, I think functional medicine is so cool in all those ways.

And then, like I said, let’s bring in IRA. That is the lifestyle. And that perfect platform of both is a perfect integration. And then of course, use the super spices are the spices, whether in your food or in your daily life in supplement form, are a great way to reduce that inflammation.

Be preventive, and then have the immune system defense that we all need. Yeah. That’s wonderful. I had no idea. And I’m so impressed. And it is just seems like such a perfect combination of functional medicine.

And are you Veda? So thank you so much for all this information. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today’s episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w ww dot doctor Talksport.com.

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