20% Rule to keep your liver cool!

Before we get into foods and "rules" and "specifics" we need to take care of our liver by following the 80/20 rule. What you do 80% of the time is what makes or breaks you. That remaining 20% is where you allow life to occur! We are here to experience all of life. Food is a big part of life. Ensure that you allow room for life to happen. If your health can afford it (and you don't have an allergy, or religious beliefs around certain foods, etc.) DO engage with life and worry a little less. It will keep your liver much cooler than if you are following the food suggestions below and SVA diet to a tee.

We refer to digestive fire as Jatharagni (Agni). Agni is a concept or a phenomenon rather than something that we can see with our eyes. Agni loosely translates to fire. It is the heat in our bodies, it is the intelligence of the body to break the food down into particles that can be assimilated. 

Types of Agni: 

• Manda Agni: Agni is too weak. Food digests more slowly or just feels heavy. Food takes a long time to digest. You may feel tired after meals or just that your digestion is sluggish, or your hunger may not be very strong, you may not feel hungry when its time to eat. Kapha constitutions or imbalances can tend toward manda agni (in general) 

• Tikshna Agni: Agni is too strong. Food is processed very quickly, so quickly in fact that it may not have time to break down properly to release all the nutrients into the body. You may feel hungry all the time, you may have a really hard time maintaining a healthy weight. (Rarer, but associated with pitta constitutions, may be related to more serious conditions). 

• Vishma Agni (Variable): Agni goes from manda to tikshna, back and forth. Associated with vata imbalances. 

• Sama (Balanced) Agni: The individuals agni is balanced according to their constitution. A meal takes generally 4-6 hours to digest. Food digests fully and is able to be properly assimilated. Balanced agni is something we work toward daily. It is our responsibility to fuel our bodies to the best of our ability. 

In the context of digestion, you can think of agni like a campfire. Foods are what we place in the fire. (In a ritualistic sense, what we often place our offerings to the divine in fire, you can think of any food you eat as an offering to the your body temple to transform for the highest good.) You can think of the food itself like sticks or logs (depending on the food). Dry sticks and leaves tend to burn quickly, creating a larger flame, whereas if you place a heavy wet log on the flame it can snuff it out. We can use food to influence the flame toward a state of balance. A state of balance is when the food is able to process fully, at an appropriate speed without creating digestive disturbances.

A reminder here that it is more important HOW you are eating than WHAT you eat. In the section below, you will notice that even if you are eating the most "intelligent" and easily assimilable foods, they will lose their intelligence if you eat while distracted or stressed. 

3 primary types of food: 

• • Intelligent: As close to as mother nature intended. Organic, pesticide free, moderately cooked, not overly cooked. Teeming with life. Fresh, proper spices, loving positive environment, full of prana (not pasteurized), raw food like salad. 

    • Many foods require cooking, but cook moderately, not overly. 

      • Cook them so that we do not use our stomach as the cooking device. 

      • Then, the intelligence of the food will be intact. 

    • Pre-biotic foods. 

      • They have some intelligence already on how to digest. Fertilizer for the probiotics. Nourishes gut lining, makes it hospitable for the pro-biotics. When probiotics come in, they have nutrients to grow. 

  • Dumb: Same organic food, but over 4 hours old. Try not to eat what you had for breakfast for dinner. 

    • If you want to get more life out of your food, feel more alive, less tired, more relaxed, content, happy. 

    • The food becomes dumb when we are eating under stress. Or distracted eating. 

      • Starts to become acidic under these conditions, no matter the food. 

  • Dead: 

    • Canned, left for many days, chemicals, pre-packed. 

    • Devoid of prana, very acidic.

Certain food combinations are found to be more challenging to digest because of their energetics or effects on the agni. They can overpower our agni or they can have opposing energetics, differing speeds of digestion, etc. Food combining rules in ayurveda have been created and tested overtime by the wisdom of experience. From ancient times to now, people have themselves tested these food combinations by observing the effects they have on their own bodies. As such, you are recommended to not just take my word for it or anyone else's, but test these combinations out on your self. This is not at all an exhaustive list, but the most common and potentially most problematic. Through experimentation and self discovery, you will find out which of these affects you the most, and what you can "get away" with 😉

The simplest meals are easiest to digest. Exceptions can always occur, but in general, here are some user friendly food combining rules: 

• Avoid taking leftovers with freshly cooked foods, or foods cooked at different times together. 

  • • Example, eating leftovers from yesterday alongside a meal that was cooked today. 

• One "protein" source at a time.

  • • Example: What not to do = eggs + legumes, legumes + meat, legumes + cheese, eggs + cheese.

• One type of animal product at a time is easiest. Honors the sacrifice of the animal, and keeps you safe from potentially problematic food combinations. 

  • • Example: Egg + meat, Egg + Cheese, Milk + Meat(BIG NO) 

• Fruit on its own. Fruit can be more challenging to combine with other foods, so in general, keeping fruit on its own is the easiest course of action to support your agni. Especially melons, eat them alone always. 

• Starches: (Potato, Sweet potato, grains, cereals, even beans are starchy.)  Do not take with astringent foods like black or green tea, as they are astringent, which signals to the body that its time to wrap up digestion and the sweet taste is heavier, so this is not an ideal combination. Tapioca, fresh fruits, milk should also not be taken since they are heavy in their own way, and fruit can take a short time to digest, so its incompatible. Also meats and eggs and milk should ideally be avoided with starches because they tend to be heavier foods but may have different energetics.

Overall, the message is: Keep your food simple. This helps keeps you from getting overwhelmed with lots of different components, and your meals will bring you more peace. It also helps us savor each ingredient with gratitude. This supports us in reducing food waste. If your household is 1-2 people, you can pick 5 veggies for the week for example, and eat them over the course of that week, and buy more when all are gone. We can have 2-4 different animal components and have staples that we take regularly like beans, lentils, rice, root veggies, oats, barley, amaranth, quinoa, wheat. Those can be bought in bulk and become a staple, you can shift and change alongside the seasons. Changing your veggies with each meal and spices used can create interest and promote health if you change them based on what you might be needing each day or week (and of course they can change with the seasons). 

One pot rule: Cooking things together in one pot all together means that the enzymes in the food mix and begin to cook as one whole food. As everything is working on cooking together, it is easier to digest. One pot meals can be easier to digest in general and you may be able to digest the food better. 

We need to take a daily probiotic of takra, best taken alongside lunch. Takra is 1-2 Tablespoons of whole fresh (homemade is best), plain yogurt with 1/2-1 cup of water, blended with spices and salt to help it digest (I shake mine in a jar). Remove any bubbles that form on the surface with a spoon. You can reduce the yogurt at times when agni is challenged. Add more if you are feeling tikshna or a cooling effect is desired. You can do lassi alternatively, 1/2-1/2 yogurt and water if you want to take it as a mini meal when your not feeling like having a full meal or as a snack in between meals. The thinner consistency takra can be taken alongside your largest meal of the day (lunch) at room temperature. The probiotics in the yogurt are the most alive, fresh, wheras the supplements sold at the stores are most often "dead." The addition of the blending and the spices makes it so that the body does not have to digest it, it only has to assimilate and distribute the probiotics throughout the system. This is why we can take it alongside a meal of any kind. It does not necessarily combine badly because it is properly processed. Just this simple food taken daily and taken properly can support your health and longevity. 

One last reminder that this may vary with your agni availability = time of life, time of year and even day by day. Building your body wisdom is paramount. You can develop a relationship with your body where your cravings are your body telling you what you need to stay in balance. This occurs when you are in balance, with your constitutional needs, season of life, season of year. Each individual must learn for themselves which foods work the best for them. Each of us is different. 

"SVA Diet" assists us to keep the bodily channels clear and in my experience, help keep the energetic channels clear as a side effect. It is an alkalizing and peace promoting diet. It helps us avoid stress in the body by ensuring that everything we take in is easily digestible and our bodies can take in and utilize the nutrients without much work and turn the attention to healing on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. Before taking herbs, it is advisable to follow the SVA diet and food combining suggestions to ensure that your system can properly facilitate deeper healing. The foods outlined in the categories below are best avoided or antidoted. 

"Channel Inflamers"

• Vinegar (Causes instant amavisha) 

• Onions and Garlic (Sulphuric foods, act as antibiotic in the body and have medicinal purposes, they kill probiotics) 

• Alcohol 

• Chocolate

• Coffee 

• Flax Seeds (Use for medicinal purposes only) 

• Kombucha and heavily fermented foods (like pickles, etc)

• Peanuts (Contains neurotoxin that is best to avoid) 

• Leftovers (The longer you leave food, the more acidic it becomes. It is best to avoid leftovers when you are sick, or healing from something) 

"Channel Shrinkers"

• Nightshade (Solanaceae) Family: Tomato, Potato, Peppers (all peppers except Black Pepper, including Chili Peppers, Bell Peppers or Capsicum), Eggplant, Goji Berries. Note that some nightshades are used medicinally, like Ashwagandha.

• Tobacco

"Channel Blockers" 

• Processed foods (Think things with preservatives, etc. that our bodies may not know what to do with) 

• Large beans (Except mung and adzuki. Avoid when digestion is challenged) 

  • • Large beans can be antidoted: Eat them if constitutionally and seasonally appropriate. Cook them until they are soft enough to be crushed easily. Add spices to help digest them

    • Tofu and soy products are considered to be hard to digest and part of large bean category

• Fried food

• Large bananas (You can suck on a cardamom pod as an antidote to open up the lungs since the large bananas can cause congestion. Opt for small bananas instead) 

• Ice Cream

• Aged Cheese (Soft cheeses and homemade paneer are okay) 

• Winter squash 

• Nut butters

• Chia seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds (medicinal use only) 

• Butter: Opt for ghee instead 

More to think about: Improper food combining, like the combination of dairy and nightshades for example can cause channel inflammation and channel blockage together which can make the food even more difficult to digest. Think pizza. Or think of something like a potato chip, it is a nightshade and frying it can make it even more difficult to digest. Fried chips are so heavy and astringent that they are difficult in general. Are there any parallels that come to mind about foods that you commonly combine and times of difficult digestion, symtoms or illness that may be related?