Why Does Ayurveda Recommend Occasional Fasting?

Highlights

• Fasting doesn’t mean you go through the day without eating.

• The food you eat should be either absorbed by your body in form of ahara rasa

• Or removed from the body in form of malas.

Ayurveda always advocates fresh, pure, and vegetarian sattvic diet. Regular intake of sattvic food helps prevent diseases and maintains good mental, physical, and physical health. In addition to healthy eating, an equally important thing is healthy digestion. People often complain that they feel discomfort, lethargy, and heaviness after a meal. This is due to eating improper quantity of food that hasn’t been digested properly by the body.

The strength of the jatharagni - the digestive fire - is determined by the quality and nature of food you consume. The basic rule is that whatever you eat should be completely digested, thus avoiding ama production.

General Advice for Good Digestion

• Meals should be eaten at the fixed time every day, around every five hours.

• Skipping meals aggravates pitta and consistently under-eating aggravates vata.

• Frequent hunger weakens the dhatus and destroys ojas.

How Fasting Helps

There is a saying in Ayurveda, you are not what you eat, but what you digest. The whole purpose of eating is for the food to absorbed by your body in form of ahara rasa (nutrition) or removed from the body in the form malas (stool, urine, sweat). Therefore, for regular cleaning of the digestive system and minimizing the production of ama (toxins) in the body, occasional fasting is advised.

Fasting one day per fortnight maintains the strength of digestive system and cleanses the intestine. On the day of fasting, food such as fruits and light vegetable soup can be eaten. Also, drink lots of liquid including juices, herbal tea, and water with lemon and mint (pudina) leaves.

For more advice on healthy Ayurvedic eating and lifestyle, talk to a Jiva doctor today. Dial 0129-4040404 or click on ‘Speak to a Doctor’ under the CONNECT tab in Jiva Health App.