Open main menu

Changes

Good Humour, Good Health: How They Do It in Asia

1 byte removed, 09:17, 25 October 2021
[[File:Butterschmalz-3.jpg|thumb|upright|Ghee, the traditional Indian butter, clarified and slightly caramelised, is perfect for balancing the excess of bile (''pitta'') and wind (''vata'').]]
But it's not as simple as that. The amount of each ''dosha'' in your body depends on daily and seasonal cycles. Let's take a look at the seasonal one as an example. The Indian climate has not four, but six seasons ([[Packages_of_Goodness#cite_note-1|kinda like in Poland]]). Winter is cold and damp, and people tend to be listless and sluggish, so their organisms develop an excess of ''kapha'', which is evident by the build-up of thick phlegm. Cold winds blow at the same time, which makes the air filled with bitterness. When the spring comes, the air becomes astringent, while the phlegm melts down and spreads throughout your body, causing the aggravation of ''kapha''. Aggravation of any ''dosha'' is dangerous, so it needs to be mitigated with an appropriate diet to stem the onset of disease. In the summertime it's dry and windy, everything tastes sharper than usually and your body begins to accumulate ''vata''. Then comes the rainy season, which brings strong monsoon winds, heavy rains, slightly lower temperatures and a sour taste permeating the air. In these circumstances, ''vata'' has absolutely no idea what's going on and gets aggravated. What's more, ''pitta'' begins to build up. Autumn, which is dry, warm and salty, pacifies ''vata'', but aggravates ''pitta''. It's only in the sweet early winter that ''pitta'' becomes pacified, but this is also when ''kapha'' is slowly starting to accumulatedaccumulate. And so on and so forth.
Therefore, your diet should not only match your own ''dosha'' constitution, but also the current season. For example, a ''kapha''-type person in winter should avoid the build-up of phlegm, which is natural for them anyway, by eating foods that are astringent and pungent, warm and slightly unctuous, and – in lesser quantities – sour, bitter, salty and dry. In any case, they shouldn't eat anything sweet, maybe except honey, which is not only sweet, but also astringent and drying. By contrast, a ''vata''-type person, in the same season, should eat things which are sour, salty and oily, and – to a lesser extent – sweet (for example, lots of sesame oil and ghee).