More Qualities, Tastes and the Doshas

Thanks to Rod for reminding me I wanted to post about this. :)

Ayurvedic medicine has categories for foods and their actions on the body. We went over hot and cold awhile back, this takes that further. And indeed, there is more than hot or cold in that category, which is the Quality of the food. Hot foods are literally hot but can also be a food that increases transit times. Cold means actually cold like ice cream, and the coldness can cause either constipation or diarrhea depending on the Dosha. There's also heavy, light, dry, and oily.

Heavy increases Kapha, but it's good for Vata and Pitta.

Light increases Vata, so it's good for Kapha but bad for Vata and Pitta.

Dry (white potatoes) increases Vata, but Kapha is wet (mucous) so it's good for Kapha.

Oily (actual oils and meats, dairy) balances Vata and Pitta but not Kapha.

Cold increases Vata and Kapha, decreases Pitta

Hot decreases Vata and Kapha, but increases Pitta

The next category is taste, how a food tastes. The taste can be that tasted at the outset by the tongue or post-digestive - they don't have to be the same, they can change, which gets confusing! By knowing just the tongue taste is still enough knowledge to help you decide which is better intervention for you and your symptoms. Aloe vera, for instance, starts out bitter but its action is astringent.

By the way, "Food" means anything eaten, including herbs and spices too. So learning the taste of a spice or herb will give you a good idea as to its action on the body and whether it is good for your Dosha or Dosha type imbalance, so you can start making better choices about which herbs and super-foods to take.

The six tastes tell you how a food will affect the power of digestion and body overall. For instance, "Pungent" foods are hot, so they fire up agni and are good for cleansing the intestines and body of toxins/ami/undigested food particles that end up lining your arteries and cause heart attacks or lining your joints and causing Arthritis or inhabiting your muscles and causing fibromyalgia.

Each Dosha (body type and dosha-disturbance) is further defined by how taste affects it. Some tastes increase a dosha, thus, overdosing on the foods with that taste will create an imbalance. So if you're a Vata and eat things that increase Vata, you will have aggravated Vata symptoms of being too thin, weak, cold, fatigued, poor appetite, flatulence, constipation. If you're Kapha and eat tastes that increase Kapha you'll have a flare-up of Kapha type symptoms, such as asthma, ear infections, sinus infections, weight gain, depression, overally heaviness, coldness.

To bring these symptoms back into balance, simply accent foods with the taste that DEcreases that Dosha. Kapha is cold, so anything hot and pungent will decrease it. If there's a mucous condition, astringent would be called for.

Salty is a tad heating, helps maintain healthy metabolism, pH balance, improves appetite.

Sweet as in sweets and carbs in general, are slightly cooling and are body builders, so they increase Kapha, weight overall, and in excess build toxins and promote obesity. Done right, sweetness decreases excessive Vata and Pitta in the body.

Sour taste is found in found in fermented food and acidic fruit. It increases Kapha and Pitta and decreases Vatta. It is a heating taste, which counter thirst, helps maintaining acidity and improves appetite and digestion. In excess, in increases acidity.

Bitter tastes were always assumed to be poison when first encountered by herbal healers. They would carefully take a tiny bit and note reactions. Many bitter compounds are lethal at high enough doses, but wonderful curatives in smaller. Bitter foods are usually guilty of having an acidic anti-nutrient, such as spinach which has oxalic acid that binds calcium, so their good qualities (high in minerals) are often offset just a bit. Bitter decreases Pitta and Kapha and increases Vata. It is a cooling and drying taste, which tones the organs and increases appetite and is detoxifying. Eating bitter foods like bitter salad greens is an excellent way to keep from overeating. It's very difficult to eat too much bitter! Bitter herbs are detoxing to the body.

The definition of Astringent is: drug that causes contraction of body tissues and canals; [adj] tending to draw together or constrict soft organic tissue. So if you had hemrrhoids, where fluids and tissues are ballooning out, you'd want something to draw them back together. Thus drinking and applying aloe vera is a good remedy for hemrrhoids. Apples, pears and cabbage are considered astringent, which is why they are safer to eat fruits while battling candida. Overdosing on astringents would in time deplete the vitality of the tissues.

Once you know our Dosha, make a chart of what increases it and decreases it. That way you can properly categorize every food you eat. Potatoes are dry, but add lots of butter and they're balanced by the oil, making them more appropriate for Vata but perhaps aggravating Pitta. Do the same for symptoms - when making a list of your symptoms, categorize them as to which Dosha they are. If you're not sure, check a book on Ayurveda (Dr. Vasant Lad's is easy reading) or Google it. Or refer to these pages:

http://www.ayurbalance.com/explore_articlesixtastes.htm

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=diet&dbid=12

http://www.naturalhealthweb.com/articles/mouze1.html

http://www.holistic-online.com/ayurveda/ayv-taste-concept.htm

and please do share good pages when you find them. :)