IC and Toxic Load: Where Does It Come From? 5 Things To Do

In the energy science of Ayurveda there can be no disease without the presence of toxicity  In this discipline it’s called AMA(this doesn’t stand for the American Medical Association) which means undigested, unprocessed food  Hmmm, if I have unprocessed, undigested food hanging around in my GIT(GI tract) that must mean that my digestive capability is in some way impaired?  Bingo

Toxicity and Disease

So in the end the root cause of all disease is the presence of bodily AMA  And to heal any disease whether it be the IC(interstitial cystitis) bladder pain syndrome or CPPS(IC, IBS, GERD, chronic prostatitis, vulvodynia, fibromyalgia) or any other disease I must address AMA in the body

AMA physically is a substance that is thick(dense), sticky, heavy, slow to move, cold, slimy, and gross(meaning easy to spot in the body)  Think of a thick plaque in a vessel wall that obstructs blood flow and you have a good idea of what AMA is  And just like that plaque impairs flow of blood to the tissues that it supplies, energetically it impairs the flow of energy in the body

When there is energy stagnation in the physical or mental body there can be pain, either physical or emotional

So when you have pain from a bladder flare it implies that there is energetic stagnation and the free flow of energy has been disrupted

The Importance of Digestive Fire

So if all diseases have AMA and my digestive fire is weak, then if I want to clear the diseases such as IC then I should work on improving my digestive power or agni(the words fire, power, strength, and agni are all used interchangeably here)  This is a radical departure from current medical thinking since the models are so different  But then again that’s why the energy model can be successful since it understands the origin of disease from an energy science view

So the first item on the agenda in healing IC is to improve digestion, absorption, and assimilation of the GIT

1 CCF tea  Cumin, coriander and fennel tea is elemental to improve digestion because it stokes agni  That’s why sipping on this tea all day, everyday is helpful for clearing AMA

2 Stop putting wet logs on your digestion  When I entertain foods that don’t resonate with my energy makeup(Pitta diet or VP diet) or use IFC(incompatible food combinations) it’s like dampening my agni which is all the enzyme systems of the GIT from the mouth to lower rectum including the bacteria which are also part of agni

3 Using other agni enhancers  Fresh ginger tea with a dash of cayenne(agni tea), cardamon, vanilla, cinnamon, turmeric are all excellent agni enhancers that I can use in my cooking or beverages to enhance agni

4  Breathing techniques(pranayama)  Interestingly the yoga tradition has many different ways to physically enhance agni  These breathing techniques can change the course of IC due to the power of clearing AMA

5  Yoga postures  The digestive system is represented in the space of the abdomen and when you do postures that engage this area you literally engage agni and improve it  From a molecular point of view this cannot be understood but energetically it makes perfect sense

So there you have it  A starter sequence that can get you on your way to healing IC   Oh, BTW, people have AMA and because they feel OK, they don’t think they have toxic load  They’re only fooling themselves  Everybody has it, it just depends where it’s going to show up

Another thing  The AMA that occurs in the urinary tract channel has a good chance of getting cleared  When the AMA starts showing up in other places (like fibromyalgia) it’s more difficult, doable but harder

Saltwater or Freshwater Fish for IC?

IC with its associated inflammatory disease labels such as acid indigestion, GERD, chronic prostatitis, IBS, fibromyalgia, and vulvodynia all have one thing in common  Inflammation so it behoves those to stay away from inflammatory foods  To figure out which those are, the energy scince looks at tastes

In energy science nutrition there are six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent  Three of these are inflammatory  Can you guess which ones they are?

While the matter science nutritional format only sees four of these, the pungent and astringent tastes are important from an energy science perspective   And yes, you’re right the pungent taste is inflammatory, composed of the elements of fire and air  This makes sense since our experience is of the hot quality when we take  in hot chiles, horseradish, salsa, or cayenne

The other two tastes that are inflammatory because they are composed of the fire element are sour and salty  As you would expect if the taste is composed of the fire element it would necessarily carry the hot quality

The Inflammatory Nature of Saltwater Fish       

With this background we are lead to the conclusion that meat that has spent its life in the saltwater would not only be  inflammatory but would provoke IC if used consistently

I think the word “consistently” is important here  Many of our readers are from coastal areas such as Florida where seafood is abundant  For them with a steady diet of saltwater fish this  issue of seafood could be problematic

As I have talked about in the past any food can be an IC problem if the agni(digestive fire) is low  So eating occasional seafood once a month would not be a problem but “consistent” use of seafood would clearly lead to flares

Often a condiment that is served with saltwater fish is lemon  Of course the lemon is sour and from the above it carries the hot quality  A substitute is the immature lemon, the lime that can be used without a problem

But what about the omega fat value of seafood? How can we give that up?

Freshwater Fish

Molecular studies of freshwater fish show that they are as equally rich in the good omega fats as seafood  So no problem there

In the Midwest of the US , land locked so to speak, fresh water fish is relatively abundant  Trout, bass, perch, walleye and a particular favorite of mine, tilapia are available  for our palate

But again stay away from the lemon and use lime in moderation(3x per week)

Energy Science Nutrition

Some writers on the IC subject in the community have suggested that there is no specific diet for IC……that is, there is no specific  information that can give you guidelines as to what to eat  And that’s true if the recommendations are based on hearsay

This particular topic gives you just a small inkling as to the efficacy of the energy science nutritional approach It shows how choices of foods should be based on the disease process, such as in IC  Avoiding the hot quality avoids the foods that produce flares

Now I think that can be useful for the IC community

All the best in your healing journey  Love DB

Antiinflammatory Care for IC: 3 Things

The pain of IC is related to pelvic inflammation particularly of the bladder   The flares that occur are related to the episodic increase in intensity of this inflammation So it stands to reason that the treatment for such a chronic disease would be antiinflammatory(AIF)   This is not rocket science, folks!   And there is a wide host of naturally occurring AIF   For example, tumeric is commonly used in cooking and is a well understood AIF which when used with black pepper is potentiated even further in terms of its AIF effectNow the well respected National Institutes of Health(NIH) published a year ago(October of 2011) a review article on antiinflammatory therapies using the energy science Ayurvedic formulary   This article essentially says what I have been advocating for the last 5 years:  that we need to marry the matter science discipline of the West(so called matter science healing) with the energy sciences such as Ayurveda and the traditional Oriental Medicine(TOM)   An East meets West in healing traditions

Importance of the Study

In the health arena it is very normal and expected that the consumer with a painful bladder is timid about trying “new therapies” that can potentially help them because nobody in the medical establishment has condoned their value   Further the allopathic(matter science clinicians) tradition are reticent to support the use of such therapies since they are not “tried and true” and supported by evidence based medical(EBM)review Because of this there is a tendency in the current medical profession to stonewall articles that speak to the use of natural remedies to help with painful bladder syndrome because they are not consistent with the status quo and EBM

The AIF Nutritional Format

But what about just regular food?   Hippocrates, said to be the father of Western medicine, wrote that “Food is medicine and medicine is food”   We have been so ingrained traditionally to believe that food is just something we put in our mouths and takes care of our appetites that it doesn’t really have a medicinal effect to help a painful bladder But let’s rethink this  If you take in 3T of salt you know that there will direct and distinct physiologic consequences   You’ll pee more, require lots of water, maybe get acid indigestion, have tight feeling skin, have excess hot sensation in the body   All because you took in some food in this case salt The energy science perspective is that foods can be inflammatory and that’s why they lead to symptoms of pain   So a well delineated energy science nutritional format can be AIF with no grey areas   It won’t lead you astray   Coupled with the incompatible food combination list which is basically a group of foods that when joined together produce inflammation you have a way of using nutrition in a AIF way There are three things you can do right now to help yourself with IC pain 1 Go to the above links and begin following the nutritional formats 2 Begin using the AIF cocktail we spoke about in an earlier blog 3 Begin using cumin, coriander, fennel seeds, tumeric, and cardamon in your cooking   All are AIF Until next week                          Love DrBill