Rakesh Sethi, BS, CAHP
Wellness Speaker/ Author/
Ayurvedic Practitioner
What is Ayurvedic Consultation?
Posts Tagged ‘Life Style’
Anxiety Disorders: Natural and Herbal Anxiety Remedies
For natural herbal anxiety remedies to be effective, you must commit to changing your diet and life style. This particularly includes changing eating and living behaviors to remove mental and physical causes that increase your anxiety as discussed in the previous article.
The physical causes must be removed prior to beginning natural and herbal remedies for anxiety. In addition, the mental causes must be addressed with the physical treatment. Along with seeing a psychologist, you can significantly benefit by joining a local self help or support group and receive help by listening and sharing problems and achievements with each other.
Natural remedies for anxiety include the following suggestions:
Diet Modification:
- Always eat warm cooked food with a table spoon of olive oil (per day)
- No ice or ice cold drinks
- Eat 2-3 ounces of mixed nuts per day. Almonds should be soaked overnight in water, peeled and taken in the morning
Life Style Modification:
- Organize your day- make a list of things to do and stick to them (have ONLY reasonable #s on to do list)
- Perform oil massage 2 -3 times per week with Ayurvedic Massage Oil. Leave oil on for 20-30 minutes before taking shower
- Aerobics or fast paced exercise NO MORE than 2-3 times per week
- Include meditation and yoga exercises in your daily morning routine (20-30 minutes be fine
Supplements and Herbal Anxiety Remedies
- Take Vitamin B12 and 2000mg of fish oil daily after a meal
- Take 1000mg of Ashwagandha herb with warm milk after breakfast and 1000mg after dinner.
- Take 1000mg of Shankpushpi herb before bedtime with warm milk. If you have trouble sleeping, you can increase the amount up to 3000mg
You can purchase both herbs and Ayurvedic massage oil in our online store. The herbal anxiety remedies suggested are rejuvenating, relaxing, and not stimulating. They are nerve tonic for nervous exhaustion with no side effects. They promote tranquility without dulling the mind. DO CONSULT with your Ayurvedic practitioner and physician before making changes in your regimen. Be Well!
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Herbs and Foods for Lower Cholesterol
Previous article “how do you lower cholesterol naturally” covered what is cholesterol, types of cholesterol, and natural way to maintain the level. Diet is one of the ways, and in order for you to lower your cholesterol level, you must make changes to your diet and to your lifestyle. This article will expand on what are the right foods for lower cholesterol. Risks are too great for developing serious health problems like heart disease so as soon as you find out you have a problem with your cholesterol, take the following steps to lower and manage it immediately. And for more expansive researched information, please sign up to our newsletter and receive free Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally e-book.
The First Step:
Cut down but do not totally eliminate the amount of cholesterol in your diet. You should also lower the total fat intake, especially on saturated and trans fats, in your diet. Saturated fats are the bigger culprit in raising your cholesterol and these are found in foods like butter, ice cream, eggs, fatty meats, other full-fat dairy products and some oils.
The Second Step:
Eliminate foods with trans fats completely from your diet. The trans fats are especially bad for your cholesterol levels. Trans fats will raise your low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the “bad” cholesterol, and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the “good” cholesterol. Trans fats are mostly found in margarines, cookies, crackers and cakes.
The Third Step:
Incorporate foods for lower cholesterol into your diet. Not all foods raise your cholesterol. Believe it or not there are actually some fatty & oily foods for lowering your cholesterol level. 
For example, foods like fatty fish, walnuts, oatmeal and oat bran can help to control your cholesterol level. Some studies have shown that a diet which contains these types of foods works as well as some cholesterol-lowering medications to reduce LDL cholesterol levels.
The Fourth Step:
Change your lifestyle to include exercise routine, if do not have one already. Regular exercise or at least being physically active for 30 minutes on most days is a simple way you can change your lifestyle to facilitate to lower your LDL cholesterol and raise your HDL cholesterol. In addition, getting enough physical activity can help you to loose weight. Excess weight has the tendency to increase your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol level. So, if you are overweight and have a high LDL-cholesterol level, losing weight can help you to lower cholesterol. Weight loss also helps to lower triglycerides and raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels. And not to mention, being overweight increases your chances for other health problems like diabetes. Poorly controlled diabetes can increases your cholesterol levels as well.
The fifth Step:
Stress is a “brain trash”. Empty it often! Cleanse your mind. Surprisingly, controlling your stress is a way to take control of your cholesterol level. Stress over the long time period has been shown in several studies to raise blood cholesterol levels. Perhaps under stress people make wrong fatty food choices. Use yoga and meditation techniques to release stress and manage your cholesterol level.
Changing lifestyle and choosing foods for lower cholesterol can help you avoid taking cholesterol-lowering medications which has several benefits. One benefit is that it is financially cheaper to eat healthier foods then it is to pay for the medications. Another you do not have to deal with any side effects from these types of medications (See FDA Warnings on Statins). As always natural health tips offer preventive care and promote health and wellness naturally. For more information, sign up and get your free copy of Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally e-book with amazing collection of researched information- all in place. It will save you oodles of time.
Herbal Support:
Cholesterol Protection is an excellent herbal formula to support your efforts in managing cholesterol levels naturally. It is a well balanced formula with Guggulu herb known for its lowering cholesterol properties.
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How do you Lower Cholesterol Naturally?
With new FDA Statin warnings, I would strongly urge to change to natural ways to manage cholesterol. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved important safety label changes for the class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as Statins (Full FDA Release). Though the cholesterol is well known term but there is still much mystery surrounding it because you hear there is good cholesterol and there is bad. Before getting into how do you lower cholesterol naturally and without using drugs, let us find out what is cholesterol exactly? Cholesterol consists of mostly fat and some protein. It is produced in the liver and other cells in the body and cholesterol is also present in certain foods like meat, eggs, and dairy products.
The question is why does a cholesterol level increase and what are the risks of high cholesterol? 
There are two main cholesterol types, LDL and HDL. LDL is known as the bad cholesterol that causes plaque buildup in the arteries and HDL is known as good cholesterol that helps keep the blood free of bad cholesterol.
Typically, the objective is to lower the LDL and raise the HDL levels of cholesterol. If the LDL level becomes high or the HDL level becomes low, your risk of heart disease increases. One has to maintain this fine balance and try to lower cholesterol without drugs. So now we know what we need to do, let us look at how do you lower cholesterol naturally?
First and foremost to lower cholesterol naturally, remove the main cause- the foods in the diet that increase the cholesterol. Make changes in your diet to eat a low-cholesterol diet. The American Heart Association recommends that you eat less than three hundred milligrams of cholesterol daily. 
If you already have heart disease, you should limit your daily intake to less than two hundred milligrams a day. You can significantly lower the amount of cholesterol intake by avoiding foods high in saturated fat like meat, dairy, and other animal products. If you smoke, quit smoking. Smoking lowers your good cholesterol levels which can easily be reversed if you quit smoking.
Second, how do you lower cholesterol naturally is by using herbs to slowly “cleanse” the blood of unwanted cholesterol. There are herbal formulas available for lowering cholesterol naturally. One of the most well known herbs for this purpose is Guggulu. Guggulu has a proven track record of lowering LDL by 20% and increasing HDL by 36%. In this matter, one must consult with the Ayurvedic practitioner and their physician before starting a herbal regimen. If you are not familiar with basics of Ayurveda, please check out the FREE mini-course.
Third, how do you lower cholesterol naturally is simply by adding exercising. Exercise increases the good HDL cholesterol in some people. Even a moderate-intensity exercise done routinely can help you to control your weight, diabetes, and high blood pressure which are all risk factors for heart disease. As always Ayurveda natural health tips offer preventive care and promote health and wellness naturally.
So what is the right cholesterol level? There is a cholesterol level guideline that doctors follow but most recent studies show some people with higher level than the guideline are equally healthy and show no heart disease. In reality, the body needs to produce and maintain certain amount of cholesterol for body to perform its functions properly. Cholesterol plays a critical role in the body in production of certain hormones, vitamin D, and the bile acids that help to digest fat. However, when the level increases or decreases beyond what the body requires problems like heart disease can develop.
Our goal is to naturally maintain the right levels of cholesterol without drugs. For more expansive researched information from several sources- now all in one place, please sign-up for our newsletter and receive free Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally e-book.
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How to Detoxify Body Naturally in 7 Days?
Vacation and holidays are fun! But we all know when we have over eaten, over drunk, over enjoyed, over done and all at the expense of our body. Our body goes out of balance (health) and if we continue such a life style, we feel lethargic, dull, lack of energy, low appetite, gas, bloating, constipation, and we gain weight. Just like we do oil change & tune up for our car, now is good time to do “oil change”, that is to detoxify body naturally.
Your body, overtime, has accumulated toxins and body systems functions are compromised and if you do not detoxify whole body now, you may land yourself some illness. If you have come to this point, taking a short cut with vitamins or energy drinks is not the answer. In fact your “digestive fire” is already compromised & you may be harming your body by putting unnecessary doses of vitamins plus throwing your hard earned money down the drain. So at this time go with the total body cleanse and also as a general maintenance to do a whole body cleanse is good for you.
Let me show you exactly how you can detoxify body naturally in 6 to 7 days gently following simple steps:
1. Start first day with ONLY 32 oz. – 48 oz. of warm to hot water in the morning. Have warm light vegetable soup for lunch. Or if you can manage with fruits only choose cooked apple or pear or uncooked grapefruit or pomegranate. In the afternoon have only fresh Ginger tea. Evening meal if you can skip great, if not, have only Moong lentil soup. Rest & avoid exercising on this day.
2. For the next 5-6 days:
- Have warm light easy to digest foods like chicken broth soups, rice & Moong lentil soups, or other light meals
- Drink hot fresh cut ginger tea 3 cups and only hot water through out the day
- Take 1000mg Turmeric (2x500mg capsules) after each meal w/ warm water
- Take 2000mg Triphala (2x1000mg tablets) Not after dinner but 1 hour before bedtime w/ warm water
3. AVOID the following during these days:
Icy cold drinks, Fried foods, Red Meats, Cheese, Heavy creamy & sugary foods, Raw vegetables, Cold foods
Follow the above steps and you will detoxify body naturally of accumulated toxins in a matter of days. No shock & aw or synthetic chemicals- all natural gentle process. If you do not see enough improvement in 7 days, extend it for 3 more days. A good measure is – Your energy level & robust appetite will return.
For more gradual and gentle detoxification, use herbal formula Eliminate Toxins.
Caution: Do NOT detoxify body, if pregnant. Also if you have any medical condition, check with your physician before starting any procedure.
Note: If you like, you can practice “mini” version of the detox by following the above steps EXCEPT rather than five to six days in step two, do this step for only for two days. Use this mini version to detoxify body naturally more frequently (every or every other month) for it to be effective. Consult with your Ayurveda practitioner how often to detoxify the body.
If you liked this article then biggest compliment you can give is by sharing this wellness with others. As always keep in mind natural health tips along with right eating offer preventive care and promote health and wellness naturally. Be Well!
Rakesh Sethi
PS: To know more if you are Eating Right Foods as per your unique Mind-Body constitution and create less toxins in the body, please subscribe to the FREE “simple secrets to good health with right eating” mini course.
What Do You Think? Feel Free to Speak Your Mind
Share your comments, thoughts and suggestions below. I appreciate your time & will take the time to read every single one!
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Can Health Care Reform and Preventive Care Fix our System?
Our health care system is broken, probably an understatement. The cost we pay under this broken system is with both our health and our wallet. Are we getting our money’s worth? Perhaps yes, in disease management but not in preventive care and health management. With health care reform and preventive care included in our health plans, we can move towards managing health.
However, we live with a belief that health care system is responsible for managing our health. I believe this fundamental belief has to change.
In order for health care reform and preventive care to work, our health attitudes must shift to take on personal responsibility of managing our own health just as we manage our financial health. How we approach our health has to change?
Take the following approach:
- Take personal responsibility- you are your first health coach.
- Practice preventive care with right diet & life style suitable for your unique mind-body.
- If you are healthy you don’t need medicine. However to stay healthy, if you choose NOT to change your unhealthy diet and life style then you have NO use for medicine.
- Don’t make the problem worse by waiting and try to find a magic pill. There is none. Preventive care is the magic pill.
Unless we change our Health Attitudes, any health care reform changes we make to the health care system in United States will not work. Let me explain:
Let us suppose we have the following health care options under the health care insurance plans:
- Alternative medicine- natural preventive health care, for example Ayurveda, Acupuncture, Yoga, Meditation etc.
- Integrative approach- alternative combined with current medical model.
- Conventional medicine- current medical model
Without changing our health attitudes, we will continue to live as we live today and after becoming sick expect the medical system to “fix” us. This means we will continue to use the last option#3. Perhaps it is too late to use preventive care options 1 or 2. Note the costs are significantly less when we use options 1 & 2.
So it seems, even if we offer preventive care options under health insurance, people will not use it till we educate them to shift their health attitudes. So we need to do both: offer all 3 options under the health insurance plans and also change our health attitudes.
Let us also clarify on what is true preventive care?
Most of us think that having regular physicals, mammograms, & other check-ups is a preventive care. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG. These are just screening tools to see, if your preventive care practice is working or not. Preventive care is a step before this step.
Preventive care is selecting right foods, life style, exercising according to your unique mind-body constitution. We are all unique and one size does not fit all. So we must discover what foods & type of life style is more suitable for us. If we think of food as medicine, we perhaps will not need any other medicine.
Our current system catches people as they are just about to fall off a cliff and cost is just too high to “save” people at this juncture.
Place preventive care (included under health insurance) at the front end and we will have fewer people falling off the cliff. Savings will be tremendous to our medical system. It is our, for profit, health care system that will realize tremendous economic benefits. But I do not see them making big strides in this direction. Well, it is my health and I not going to wait for them while I pay with my health. I need to make my own health care reform by shifting my health attitudes today. This shift in personal health attitudes is an absolutely necessary step along with health care reform and preventive care to fix health care system in United States.
You can be an instrument of change. Share this article with others. This is our chance to change how we approach our health with combining true health care reform and preventive care. Contact me with your questions & feedback.
Be Well!
Rakesh Sethi
PS: First step in your health care reform and preventive care is to start Eating Right Foods as per your unique Mind-Body constitution. Learn this know-how in FREE “simple secrets to good health with right eating” mini course.
What Do You Think? Feel Free to Speak Your Mind
Share your comments, thoughts and suggestions below. I appreciate your time & will take the time to read every single one!
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Right Eating and Herbs Help You Lose Weight Naturally and Fast
You will discover here how to lose weight naturally and fast using natural and less expensive remedies you can practice at home. Before discussing the usual diet & exercise for losing weight, I want to introduce the term Body Constitution. This is an important intelligence that will help you understand what are your weight gain and weight loss tendencies and work with them.
You and everyone else is put together with their own unique body constitution. For our purpose, we need to discuss 3 different body constitution types but focus on the one that has the highest probability of gaining and trouble losing weight:
- One body constitution type typically light weight if gains weight can loose it quickly.
- The second body constitution typically medium weight, good muscles but does not gain weight easily.
- The third body constitution type typically large gains weight quickly in pounds but looses slowly in ounces.
It is the third body constitution type that has inherent tendency to be bigger & heavier than the other two types. The standard medical height & weight guidelines do not apply to this third body type. However, if you fall in the third type, no worries; this in itself does not place you at higher health risk. But because of the inherent body tendencies, you will need to be more vigilant about weight gain, especially as you get up in the years. Typical health risks for this body type are diabetes, high BP, and high Cholesterol.
How to Lose Weight Naturally and Fast Techniques?
Before starting, I want you to ask yourself at what weight you feel full of energy, vivacious, and good about yourself. This is the optimum weight for you and you should try to maintain yourself within + or – 4 pounds of this weight. Follow the do’s & don’t’s of lose weight naturally and fast guidelines that can be easily used at home.
1. Don’t’s- what to avoid?
- Ice cold drinks with or before meal (No sodas)
- Raw vegetables, salads etc. as a meal or in large proportions
- Heavy fried foods and red meats (do not eat anything doesn’t come out in 24 hours or less)
- Cheese, Sweets, ice cream, & sugary temptations
- Alcohol (If you must small glass of wine 1-2 times a week)
- Overeating
2. Do’s- what to eat?
- Warm cooked foods
- Oats, Barley, Quinoa, Basmati Rice, & Millets (No other grains)
- Fish, Chicken in moderation, substitute legumes (rich in protein) for meat
- All vegetables especially include Bitter Guard (Bitter Melon) 2-3 times per week. Download recipes from internet for cooking Bitter Guard. Add ginger in almost every meal to your taste. Add pinch of red pepper to your taste, if you can tolerate.
- Only sunflower seeds (avoid all other nuts)
- Berries, grapefruit, pomegranate, apples
- Use light oils like sunflower
- Drink 2-3 cups of Ginger tea per day
- Do mindful eating & listen to your body when full. Make the middle meal your biggest meal of the day.
- Keep Fast once per week with only one light meal in the middle of the day
3. Yoga Postures (optional but will additionally help you lose weight naturally and fast)
Pranayama, Sun Salutation, Most forward or backward bend poses, Cobra, Downward Dog, Upward Dog, and Shoulder Stand poses. Start slowly if you are not doing any exercises then increase frequency & intensity. If you are doing some other form of exercise, just continue that. Do exercise 3 to 4 times per week.
4. Herbal Supplements
After dinner & lunch take 1000mg of Triphala and 1000mg of Guggulu.
Imagine in 4 short weeks you would lose weight naturally and fast, improve your health, appearance, live at your suitable weight, and cleanse your body of toxins.
NOTE: After reaching your suitable weight, continue maintaining with taking Triphala but stop taking Guggulu.
Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this article then biggest compliment you can give is by sharing it with others. Be Well!
PS: To maintain your right weight, learn to Eat Right Foods suitable to your unique Mind-Body constitution, subscribe FREE to “simple secrets to good health with right eating” mini course.
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What is Meditation and It’s Purpose? Part 1
Every day the bombardment of life’s responsibilities crowd our daily thoughts. Constant conversation about what we “have to do” and “should be doing” plague our minds. The chatter seems endless as does all the required activity of daily living. As we have transitioned into “technology-based, information-loaded“ lifestyle, it seems as if there is no restful moment for a quiet mind. People look towards meditation to quiet the chatter, calm the mind, and develop single pointed concentration. However, there is more to meditation. Before we answer what is meditation, take a look at how we have entangled ourselves into the outside world?
What Are We Part of?
We live in a fast paced stressful environment. Whether it is conscious or unconscious choice, we have become part of it. In the spirit of competition & winning, we are trying to “keep up” or “out-perform” our fellow co-workers or neighbors. Our American culture, up through 2008, has been based on acquisition of “stuff” to validate our success and worth in society. The more we have the more we think the world says to us, “Atta boy, good job!” This outside recognition keeps us running on that economic wheel.
There is no end to this race. We strive for years chasing the false illusion that when we make the next goal, the next promotion, the bigger house, the faster car we will feel that level of satisfaction. And every goal we accomplish, the feeling is satisfying momentarily. Then once that feeling fades away, the dissidence begins again, and we start striving to next goal see if we can attain that momentary feeling of satisfaction. Unfortunately, the race continues month after month, year after year. Without self-reflection, the race usually ends for a person when he is physically or mentally unable to carry on. We have created ourselves a never ending “pressure cooker” and live in it with stress.
Why Meditate?
To find relief, some of us jumped on to meditation to relieve stress. Meditation, among other things, does reduce stress, calms the nerves, & relax the body systems, which leaves us feeling refreshed after this exercise. Could the purpose of meditation be to reduce stress?
Keep in mind meditation has not removed the causes of stress which continue to agitate the mind. So the underlying problem is never resolved- thus an agitated mind cannot take to meditation and draw lasting benefits from the meditation, benefits are only temporary. So we go in cycle from stress to meditation – meditation to stress. Meditation is then reduced to forcing yourself to sit in a quiet place and focusing on an object, place, person, or mantra and it no longer provides the same refreshing feeling that it used too. One day the effect of stress catches up resulting in some sort of a disease and we render the meditation as a useless maddening practice.
How did we miss the very purpose of meditation? Are we practicing meditation after the fact? How can we turn this around?
What is meditation and its ultimate purpose?
Meditation is to practice our intellect to keep our mind on exclusively one & one thing alone. Our intellect must always keep strict observation over our mind & prevent the mind from wandering off into past or future or flowing into multiple thought streams. The best time to practice meditation is at sunrise and sunset. This is when outside nature is calm and supports calmness in you.
However, the practice of meditation just doesn’t end there. Now we bring this practice and apply it all day long at work, at home, with relationships, and in any other situations. It is just like an athlete, who practices & improves his skill on his own, and come game time, he puts his practice to work. So it is with meditation. You must put it to work in the field; the purpose of meditation is not just sitting alone practicing in a room at home. Discover benefits of meditation in part 2 of the meditation series.
If you liked the benefits of this article then the biggest service you can give is by sharing its benefits with others.
Be Well!
Rakesh Sethi
Share your comments, thoughts and suggestions below. I appreciate your time & will take the time to read every single one!
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Health Is Wealth: Realign Before its Too Late
When asked, what is your most important asset? Almost everyone often responds a house, a business, a car, or some other form of property or some say a relationship. Most responses revolve around money & material possessions. But truly, when mentioned, almost everyone agrees the most important asset we have is our health. The importance placed on these material forms of assets symbolizes that we have somewhere along line forgotten our true wealth, and unconsciously, we are spending our biggest asset, health, to gain wealth.
“Health Is Wealth” Cannot Be Taken for Granted
For many of us, we take our health for granted and have forgotten about our body. Keeping this body healthy is our first and foremost responsibility. The old proverb- “Health is Wealth” is so true. A body without health cannot function at its best to produce good relationships, wealth, and happiness.
Your Body is Your Primary “Vehicle” Not Your Car
We only get this one body for a lifetime- cars, houses, and things can be replaced. Our body is an irreplaceable “vehicle” for our lifetime. Let’s take good care of its health and well being. Keep your body fit to go through life’s journey. We are not machines. Our body is warm, alive, and natural. Then what can we expect from our body when we stuff it with frozen, dead, and synthetically processed food?
Time to Shift Health Fundamentals is Now
Take a look around you. The results are more than visible in our society with increase in chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, anxiety disorders, depression, and fatal illness like cancer. Is the picture becoming clear? I hope it inspires you to shift your health attitudes.
How much more evidence we need to change our health fundamentals before it is too late? It is time to look from a different perspective and return to the health basics. The fundamental change is to treat and nurture our body with love and patience.
First step in changing health fundamentals is to start Eating Right Foods as per your unique Mind-Body constitution. Learn this know-how in FREE “simple secrets to good health” mini course. Subscribe here:
