The Original Health Query
I am eating a lot! Food that are not health at all: chocolates, candies, fast food, hamburger, and I am feeling this urge to eat all the time. I can’t tell you that this is making me feel bad, I am feeling so happy and realized when eating these things, specially chocolate. However, I do know that this will do me harm in the long term… That’s why I want to stop this habit and gradually move to a more healthy diet. But how do I start without feeling that I am depriving myself from the happiness derived from these foods? How to be effective but at the same time gentle with myself during this transition?
The Treatment Approach
basically, I feel that you are suffering from a mild compulsive eating disorder where you feel that you have to eat all these things. They make you happy especially chocolates and candies. In Ayurveda it is called Pragya Aparadha.
Pragya Aparadha
This word Pragya Aparadha is made up of two words – Pragya and Aparadha. Pragya means wisdom and aparadha means crime and what you are doing is a crime against wisdom.
You already know that it is not healthy for you. Every time you eat it you feel that this is not healthy for me but since the food makes you happy, the food makes you content you eat it but at the back of your mind you’re feeling that you should try to stop
Pragya Aparadha is said to be the the biggest cause for disease according to Ayurveda because your mind knows that what you’re doing is not right and yet when you keep on eating these candies and chocolates, you gradually build up a sense of guilt in your mind that you are doing something wrong.
And this guilt lowers the immunity overall immunity of the body and seeks punishment in the form of the disease where you’ll fall sick and then you learn.It will create a big impression on your mind that I ate all those things and I’m sick. Now I’m not going to eat these things. It propels a kind of learning in this way. But we don’t need to learn this way since there are other ways to learn the right way of living. Any treatment in Ayurveda starts with the first and the most fundamental step that is the removal of course.
The Cause
Let’s see what is the cause in this case. To most of us, the cause will be junk food chocolates, candies and all that but if you dig deeper, you will find that the the cause is not eating chocolates or junk food. This eating of all the unhealthy food is the result of the cause the cause might be much deeper inside the cause might be lack of happiness because when you lack happiness you lack a natural sense of satisfaction through your overall lifestyle and the things that you are doing.
Then, this lack of happiness leads you to find happiness elsewhere, all the food that we eat creates a kind of satisfaction in our brain and especially chocolates, because they are sweet.They create a sense of satisfaction. Even Ayurveda says that sweet food creates sense of satisfaction, sense of security and that’s why most of the people, when they’re stressed, like eating sweet things because sweet things help them to calm down, help them feel more safe and it is a natural instinct of the body.
When we are stressed, we are in that the emergency mode, we are in sympathetic mode and sympathetic mode needs a lot of energy because it triggers flight fright and freeze response in this response you have to be ready to fight or to run away, so you need a lot of sugar. So when you eat sugar, body feels prepared and feel secure. My assumption is that you lack general happiness which will make you feel happy and satisfied in your life and because you lack that you are eating all these things and this is a very common problem now.
Stress Hidden in Subconscious Mind
Why you are unhappy is a personal cause. Sometimes we don’t realize why we are not happy, for example, if you have a real personal need but that personal need. For example, you need to leave your job. For example, you need to change your house. These are big needs.
You somehow feel deep inside that, this is not what I want to do. But there is also a sense of insecurity a sense of deep fear that it will destabilize what you already have and this fear hides the need, it hides the need, it curtains the need so you don’t see the need but still, you are unhappy inside.
Stress Eating
So you need to fill this space with chocolates and candies and hamburgers and these things are kind of painkillers for your need. So even when that these things are not healthy, you keep on eating them because you need to feel that pleasure, you need to feel that satisfaction.
So this is what I feel that there is an internal lack of happiness which needs to be filled. When you feel happy and satisfied, gradually you will see that these needs of eating chocolates or candies will fade away. You will not even remember to eat chocolate or candy.
Two Pronged Treatment
There can be a two-pronged treatment for your disorder. I will say that essentially it’s a mental disorder and not a physical disorder so the treatment has to come from the mind, the permanent treatment has to come from the mind. So here we can have two-pronged treatment, in which one is the immediate treatment and other is the long-term permanent treatment.
The first prong treatment is yukti vyapashraya, treatment by herbs and medicines. This treatment cannot bring you happiness, because that is a personal problem. You will have to figure it out. But –
The primary treatment in yukti vypashraya starts with a basic body detox, which you can do by general fasting, intermittent fasting. You can do it by fruit fasting, milk fasting. There are many kinds of fasting and you can choose your type.
The second prong and the most important one is going to be satyavajay or controlling the mind. In controlling the mind, we can use several methods like counseling, meditation, mindfulness, art therapy. We can explore all these options together and find out what works best for you. So these two treatments will go together.
The first treatment will prevent your body from further damage, strengthen it, give it time and space to deal with the more permanent and long-lasting treatment, that is the mental treatment. And if we practice it successfully, if we are able to find out the real cause and remove it probably it should not take more than six months for you to get completely cured.
As for tonsillitis (you also have tonsilitis), this is going to be the primary foundation treatment because tonsilitis is nothing but a buildup of all the wrong thing, a wrong metabolic pattern that is developing in your body. So, first if we do not remove the unhealthy food and unhealthy lifestyle habits tonsillitis is going to be very difficult to get cured.
However at the same time we can we can proceed with certain treatment for tonsillitis so that you get it immediate relief but the permanent treatment is going to be satvavjay or mental treatment!
Thanks for reading!
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Kanika
Ritucharya 