The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #315 - Nidhi Pandya

TRANSCRIPT

Nidhi Pandya
The universe has this order of movement and we're all so connected and it's really learning how to live in these rhythms that really amounts to health. We've gone so far into the dark tunnel of our intellect that honestly intuition is rarely accessible to us unless we create a framework around it.

When you understand the rules of the universe, you basically also understand how and when you can bend them, how much can you play, when can you play.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics of lying here in. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Friends, I so enjoyed today's conversation with Nadeep Pandya for her incredible book, Your Body Already Knows. I had been dying to dive deep into the world of Ayurveda and Nadeep's book was the perfect introduction to it. A lot of this was really a paradigm shift for me, especially when it comes to the ideal inner climate.

As you guys know, I love my cold. So what does that mean when the ideal inner climate in Ayurveda is warm and moist? We talk about that in this episode. We also talk about the three different doshes. I was so impressed when only after talking to her for a few minutes, Nadeep nailed me. We dive deep into so many other topics in today's episode. Things like the role of dairy and ghee in health, oils and spices, the problems with raw food and why and how you should cook your food, the implications of what a refrigerator does to your food, the growth transformation decay cycle, an Ayurvedic practice that Nadeep says is basically one of the most fantastical, life-changing things you can do and so much more.

The show notes for today's episode will be at the end of the show. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, IF biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with Nadeep Pandya. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I am about to have. So the backstory on this conversation, I get pitches for this show all the time with different books and authors and topics and all the things. And sometimes I receive information about a book and I just intuitively am an immediate yes, which is perfect given the title of the book. But so basically I got this information about this book called Your Body Already Knows Intuitive Ayurveda 21 Days to Reset Your Gut Sleep Mood and Health. And I was so excited because I have been, I've been very interested in Ayurveda, but I had not done a deep dive into it at all. Like the most I had done probably was take those online quizzes where you try to figure out your dosha. Like that's kind of where my knowledge ended. So the idea of reading an entire book about it and learning this perspective and paradigm was so exciting to me.

Melanie Avalon
And then when I actually read the book, oh my goodness, it just blew my mind. It was the perfect approach to this world because, well, I'm here with the author, Nadeep Pandya.

And what she does in the book is she provides a very wonderful approachable understanding of the Ayurvedic approach to health and everything. So basically she even says in the beginning, this isn't going to be this diction, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but this long list of these Ayurvedic words that you're not going to know. She really focuses on key principles and makes it very approachable and relatable. And so you do learn about the dosha's and the different body states and this paradigm shift of looking at your inner climate. You learn about key principles, things like the role of circadian rhythm and the growth and development and decay cycle in life. And then what's super fun is I would say ends, but it's a huge part of the book. So it has a the 21 day guide and each day, and I really like how this introduces you to these different principles, but each day is a different principle that you can integrate into your life and just adopt this paradigm and see how it affects you. So thank you so much for all of your work and for all that you do and for being here.

Nidhi Pandya
Thank you so much for having me, Melanie. I feel like you could speak on this podcast alone because you did such a good job of introducing the book and my work.

Melanie Avalon
Thank you so much that that makes my day. Yeah, I really really enjoyed this book It's really exciting when there's a topic that I have been like had on the list To learn about and then I get to and it this like I said, this was the perfect way to do it So but to introduce you to listeners a little bit so Nadine.

She's really a figure in this Ayurvedic sphere She's a NAMA certified Ayurvedic doctor, but known for her modern approach. She's been all over the news She is the creator of the inner climate method. Like I said, she has this incredible book So maybe can you tell me a little bit about your background and your story and you talk about in the book You know your childhood how you were raised in these Ayurvedic principles and your grandfather, you know was a figure in the sphere What was that like growing up? Did you ever? Deviate from this paradigm because I know you make comments throughout how you kind of see everything through this principle Yeah, so what was that like growing up? How has it evolved and changed and and led to where you are today?

Nidhi Pandya
Love it, love it. So Melanie, I grew up in a large family. It was a joint family of 14 members in my family. So seven children, seven adults, which was three brothers living under one roof. And the patriarch of my family was my grandfather, who was also an Ayurvedic healer. And just the structure of the family such that traditions are passed on. And for me, it was an Ayurvedic tradition that was passed on. So I say that Ayurveda was my first language.

Like I didn't grow up with health principles as dogmas, but I actually grew up with health in built into how we lived, which basically means, let me give you an example, right? It wasn't the conversation. And back then, nobody talked about health that, you know, so much as we do today. But yet our conversations were more like, you know, it's sunny outside, it's such a great time to eat ice cream. Or, you know, do you are you sure you want to eat cheese at night? Isn't it hard to digest? Would it be harder it's easier to digest in the day. And as a little girl, when I'm hearing all of these dialogues, these comments being thrown around me, what I'm hearing is actually how nature works. So I get a message that, hey, cheese must be heavy to digest. And maybe nighttime is not the best time to digest food. At the same time, lunchtime is cheese is offered generously. So maybe lunch is a good time for me to eat the foods that I love and that are heavy and indulgent. So you're learning all of this subconsciously, right? Or for example, like the ice cream, it's sunny and you eat ice cream, you don't get sick while you're eating ice cream in the daytime. But also things like my mother would say that, hey, you know, come back from the playground when I was a young girl, before you see like when you see the bats, you know, weaving through the sky back then, yes, bats still would make it make their way during the evening. And so and then I also noticed, oh, my God, like these bats that are out during the winter months at 6.30. And in the summer months, not until eight o'clock. So I learned about the seasons, I learned about the rhythms of the day, I learned about the rhythms of a human being, even bio-individuality, each one of us, seven children in the house, each one of us was treated uniquely, as in if there was like one of my cousins, she was always and every time she went out in the sun, you know, she was asked to be extra careful or drink coconut water. And you know, brace herself because she would her body would overheat, she would become all red, and she would get a headache. And I had other problems. So I understood that how every person on the planet is different. I also understood that there's some rhythms out there seasonal rhythms, daily rhythms, and that the universe has this order of movement. And we're also connected. And it's really learning how to live in these rhythms that really amounts to health. But what happened, Melanie, as a result, you know, somebody could think that my upbringing was restrictive, and it was actually very, very liberating.

Nidhi Pandya
Because when you understand the rules of the universe, you basically also understand how and when you can bend them, how much can you play, when can you play. So I would say that growing up, health to me was and even today continues to be it is the freedom that comes from feeling well, it is not the fear of disease. Unfortunately, I see too many people look at health as a fear of disease. It's just the most liberating aspect of this human life when you can enjoy being well.

So that was a gift and the legacy that was passed on to me by my grandfather before I even got a formal education. And it made me very curious. And I was already a very sensitive child. And I my joke is the running joke is that I constantly asked myself this question, what makes people sick? And what makes people tick? But that's what I was looking around me and my family was my playground. It was my research laboratory. I was preoccupied by this 24 seven.

And then I had no choice, but I had to get a formal education. And I rather to take this even further.

Melanie Avalon
Wow, I love it so much. Actually, I had a flashback while you were saying that because when I read the part in the book about the bats, I was like, wait, bats? Like, I was like, this is such a different experience.

I think I remember in my life, the one time I saw a bat in the air and I freaked out.

Nidhi Pandya
so funny. And Melanie, I didn't grow up in a village or anything.

I grew up in a very urban city, Bombay, Mumbai, you know, and it's as urban as New York is. And believe it or not, like, even when I was growing up, there were bats weaving through the sky, like that happened regularly. And I think today that doesn't happen, right? Just because we've just urbanized our cities so much that there's no place for some of these species on the planet, you know, around where we live.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, it's wild. Oh my goodness.

Really random tangent question. Do animals as well experience these different states of being kind of like the doshas and then suffer with unbalance or do you think that's more a human thing that has come about because of civilization and modern life?

Nidhi Pandya
I think animals don't suffer or are not meant to suffer as much as humans because they are not living out of balance by choice. The reason why they're suffering is because what we're giving, how we've altered the environment, how their ecosystem has changed because of us, not because of their own personal choices.

In fact, Malini, this is such a great question that you've brought up because I talk about it all the time, that animals still have their instincts intact. Deer does not need scientific testing to know whether grass is better for the deer or eating a fruit in the morning is better. Deer wake up every day grazing on the same patch of land, grass, and then they know they don't need testing for it. Or for example, bears, and I've seen this myself in Alaska, before bears go into hibernation, they eat big, cabbage heads because they want to have a bowel movement once they're out of hibernation. You know, nursing mammals will pick galactical foods and plants because they want to nurse better. Or animals that are bruised will roll themselves in sulfur-rich soil, no experiments needed because they want to heal better. So animals really have their instincts in their natural state. They don't have an intellect. So they're not confused. They're not always deciding. But in that instinct that we've lost as humans, they are able to make the right decisions for themselves as long as their ecosystem is uncompromised. Now, unfortunately, that is not the case. Their ecosystem is compromised. And thus, they probably also suffer the way we do.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, yeah, that completely makes sense. So a question related to that, it relates a little bit to what you're saying because you mentioned how, you know, health is not just the absence of disease. And you say something in the book about how, something about how true balance is not, it's not just a lack of imbalance. There's something more than that.

And I'm perplexed or curious about the intuitive role of the quote, ideal state. And what I mean by that is you talk a lot in the book about how this ideal inner climate in Ayurveda is this warm, moist climate, and that people's inner climates can vary from that. So they could be hot and dry and cold and, you know, not, not that ideal state. So for me, the reason I'm so interested by this is I feel like I intuitively, like I love cold. So like I intuitively love like dry and cold. And I actually, like the idea of like warm and moist to me inside feels like it's not, I don't feel like it's something I'm intuitively seeking. So does that mean that I'm just coming from an unbalanced state? And so I'm seeking this other unbalanced state rather than seeking the true balance state. When we're born, are we balanced? And then we become unbalanced? I'm just really intrigued by the intuitiveness of this.

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, and you know, see, I thought your intuition, Melanie, is such a vague word in our times, because we are so far off from our intuition, right? We've gone so far into the dark tunnel of our intellect that, honestly, intuition is rarely accessible to us unless we create a framework around it. And I think part of the book, it does do that. It wants to give you that path back to our intuition. But just in empty space, it's hard to really know whether it's an intuition, whether it's a craving, whether it's a conditioned desire. We're not quite sure.

But when it comes back into some things very specific, like, hey, you're craving something cold and dry, it could mean many things. Firstly, you could be looking at cold and dry differently from what I am. But the truth is that, yeah, chances are, and most people are out of balance. And most people are out of balance at birth, right?

Because our parents had a certain environment, and the womb had a certain environment, and the egg and sperm had a certain quality. Because really, for the last 500 years, we really haven't lived in a place where just, you know, we were evolving to be a better species. In fact, we've just kind of been threatened, you know, after we've become this homo sapien, and we started using our intellect and modernizing everything. In a way, you know, health has suffered slowly and steadily. So what our parents also carry is weakened genetic blueprints, and then we carry them with us.

So it's rare that everybody is born with a whole, perfect, warm and moist homeostasis, or the homeostatic environment inside. We're often out of balance. And the chances are that if you're already on the hotter side, you might be craving more cooler things or cooler experiences, which, by the way, is almost everybody these days. People are burnt out or were caffeinated. And even if it's not from any of these things, even if it's not from the burnout or the caffeine or the high stress. But the truth is that the entire world is leaning towards what I call this global warming inside. And therefore, they seek, you know, those who are in tune might actually seek cooler experiences, not necessarily cold, but that cooler would then bring them to warm and moist, right? Because if you're hot, and you bring in something that feels cooling, you come back to warm.

Melanie Avalon
How, because you mentioned like factors there, like caffeine, which would be a physical factor and stress, which is a mental-emotional experience, is one more powerful than the other as far as the stress, the mindset, the pursuit of goals, those types of, quote, solar activities that you talk about in the book, compared to like the physical aspects, like the diet, the sleep, the exercise, are they all, like is there a hierarchy of how these things affect us?

Nidhi Pandya
the hierarchy is in terms of who you are and how often you're engaging in any of that. For example, I could very well say, hey, look, caffeine is the worst. But the truth is if you're drinking caffeine, and by the way, it's not the worst, but just as an example. But if you're drinking caffeine once in a week, but you're chronically stressed the entire time, they're all seven days, that stress is a higher factor for you than the caffeine. But if there's somebody who's completely chilling and is not stressed at all, or just this stress, let's say one out of seven days something happens and experiences that stress, that stress is not a high factor for them. So it depends on the frequency.

It depends on the intensity of engagement. And it also depends on where you're starting from. For example, Melanie, there could be somebody who's highly stressed, highly rung, super busy, and one cup of caffeine could just get them really on that edge and all shaky and aggravate how they're already feeling versus somebody who's super lethargic, sluggish, stuck in bed, just so depressed, cannot get their eyes open. Actually, they could drink one cup of caffeine and it'll actually bring them a little bit towards the center, get them a little stimulated. So it depends on who you are and the frequency of your interaction with any of these things, whether it's stress or caffeine or alcohol. So it's like you have to look at the picture, it's an entire holistic picture and understanding of who you are and what you're interacting with.

Melanie Avalon
That completely makes sense. So I actually, last night I was getting on chat GPT and I was like, can you help me find my dosa? And it was asking me all these questions and then I was telling it my answers.

Can I guess? Yes, yes. Pita vata.

Nidhi Pandya
Yes, exactly. So it's the hot and dry, right, Malini? It's the hot and dry inner climate. And then the hot and dry inner climate would keep you craving cooler things.

Melanie Avalon
Because it would ask me questions, and oftentimes it was two of the answers, so I would give it my hybrid answer. And it was often, it was this combination of pitavata, like together. So for listeners, so that they can have a general idea, and listeners get the book because, you know, all the information is in there, and we can only briefly touch on things now.

But the three different doshas, can you give a brief overview of them so people can hear them and feel what they might most identify with?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, and you know what, Melanie? I'm going to actually do this a little bit differently because those shots are very often misunderstood in the world out there, okay? So the thing is that our body is this massive system where things are always happening. I mean, imagine the complexity of this machinery called the human body with digestion and hormones and sleep and I mean, blood transportation and plasma and live, all these things that happen, right? So for this body to actually exist in its function, there are three unique functions that are happening at all given points. One is there is growth and building, right? Because you're building new cells and you have all these kind of protective growth mechanisms in the body like your synovial fluid in your joints, your mucosal lining, your saliva. These are all these protective fluids that are kind of filling cavities and they're more like building substances, right? But then also with these metabolic beings, right? Like there's mitochondria in the cell that's kind of this powerhouse of energy and there's hormones and digestion. And if you look at all of these activities, they're kind of like warm activities. They're metabolic, they're like metabolic and they allow some kind of transformation to happen. So our body also needs this massive transformation function which is usually heat-led. And then the third thing is, you know, what's not used needs to be evacuated in the body, substances need to move, thrown be thrown out, cells need to be atrophy, like cells start atrophy, what you don't use, get flushed out of your body. So there's this whole movement and evacuation function in the body. So all our bodies experience this at all points. There's some building and protective functions that are happening. There's transformation functions that are happening. And then there's movement and decay, evacuation function that is happening. And that's what really keeps our body moving in this perfect way that it does.

Now, each one of these three is supported by something called a dosha. And let's just, for lack of a better word, this is what the Ayurvedic sages or scientists used. So, all building functions in the body are supported by kapha dosha. And kapha dosha allows for your joints to have sinus fluids, your lining to have mucus, the cytoplasm of any cell, the saliva, good fat, fat in your body, anything that's kind of, you know, padded and white and slimy and just like really cushioning your system. And they all look like, they all basically, my visual imagination of kapha is aloe vera, whether it's your plasma, it's your lymph, it's your sinus fluid, it's your mucosal lining, saliva, they all are kind of, you know, that same consistency. And these are amazing building elements, right? And then, so that's kapha dosha. And we all need kapha dosha to continue to build. The second is pitta dosha, which allows the heat-led transformation to happen in the body, which means digestion, hormones, thinking, cuts, all the other heat-led conception, reproduction, your menstruation, any time, you know, just the interaction of you with the sun,

Nidhi Pandya
so when you have melanin in your skin, those are all transformative metabolic processes dominated by pitta. They allow for us to keep moving forward. And then the third, you know, think of it like the wind, like your blood can go anti-gravity and then bowels can be evacuated, you can push a baby out, things dry up in the body and they're flushed. And that is governed by vata. And this creates this perfect order in the human body. However, if they're all functioning appropriately, you're gold, your body is doing really well.

Most of us are imbalanced in these functions. So those who have an exaggerated kapha function, exaggerated building function, they might notice that their body likes to just build more. They may be more sluggish, they may be more like dense in their bodies, may have plaque, cholesterol, obesity, they may be pre-diabetic or diabetic, they may be bigger framed. So they're suffering from what we can call a kapha imbalance, a building imbalance. That there are people that have this kind of excessive heat, more pitta in their system. Those who have increased pitta, you know, so kapha is anabolic, pitta is metabolic. You know, they have more metabolic activities. They may be hot in their heads, they may be sharper, maybe more focused, they may have more burning in their digestion, maybe even acidity. And they may eat something and they may burn it out very quickly. But they may also experience burnout in their mind, they may be sensitive to the sun, they may have like rash, they may break into rashes easily. So they have that kind of heat, all symptoms say heat, even low grade inflammation or just regular inflammation. So those, you can say that, you know, people who are like that have a pitta imbalance.

People who have a vata imbalance, think of just like wind all over their bodies. They could be more depleted, more frail, dry, anxious, bloated, dry hair, dry skin, and they could have a vata imbalance.

All of these states, when any of these three have an exaggerated function, whether it's the growth and building or it's the metabolic activity or the catabolic vata, it means you've basically gone off balance and you need to come back to all of these three working in perfect harmony.

Melanie Avalon
This is so amazing. I'm so impressed that you nailed me so quickly in your life. Do you tend to oscillate towards one or the other when you go out of balance?

Nidhi Pandya
I do, I would say, definitely for me as well. It is easier for me to get overheated, to have a pitta imbalance.

That is my natural tendency, which means your natural tendency is something that you're basically born with, the imbalance kind of what you're born with, that your womb gifted you just genetically, or through your experience of being in your mother's uterus for nine months. And I'd say for me, I can see that I can get overheated rather quickly, or dry sometimes rather quickly. And knowing that allows me to stay in the center, allows me to brace myself when any of those things are happening.

Melanie Avalon
Is there a reason, because you're mentioning this nourishing role of fats and something I'm interested by or curious about is, because when I think fats, I would think like the kapha state, like the dense and you know, like the, I don't know, it just seems like it would be that sort of thing. But it seems like fats, the quote good fats like ghee and dairy and sesame seed oil and things that those exist in this inner balanced state.

Is there a reason for that? Like this focus on fats?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, somebody who has a lot of building going on, who's in a very kafas state, you're absolutely right.

They can't, for them, they cannot afford the same amount of good fats that somebody who's, you know, experiencing a pitta or a vata imbalance. And I like to use the word inner climate. So I'm just, just because it becomes more comprehensible. So somebody in the kafas state has a cold and sluggish body. And if you have a cold and sluggish body, fat might make you a little bit more sluggish. But if you have a hot body, hot or hot and dry body, you need those good fats as cushion. I mean, think about it, like if you have a bruise, right, like on the outside, if it's a hot bruise, and if you put like something like ghee, something that's like nice and padded, it's almost going to help support it, you know, it's going to, it's going to lessen the feeling of heat on that bruise when you apply something that's very gentle and nourishing, even like a Neosporin has that same aspect, that same quality, even Aloe Vera has that similar quality. And good fats are extremely important. They are our fuel. You know, I say that, especially for women, we can see this very drastically, right? When we're young in adolescence, we kind of have this like dot skin, and we just everything is stretched out. And then when we hit, you know, our postmenopausal perimenopausal years, it's like we go this journey is from a grape to a raisin, right? We lose all of that we lose and we don't lose water really, right? We lose all that good protein and fat in our body and we become dry. And really like drying, I always say this, drying is dying, you know, autumn is dry. Like anytime things happen, like if a fruit is like coming to its, you know, it's just kept outside forever, it starts to dry up before it decays fully. So drying is really dying for everything on this planet. Like if you have if you have flowers at home, something gives you flowers, you'll see that when before they die, they start to dry. So it is very important the role of fats and it doesn't always mean through oral administration and not everybody can digest the same level of fats, but including fats in some manner or the other, whether it's through oil application on your skin, whether it's through other oiling rituals, whether it's through good fats in your foods that you can you're able to break down effectively. Fats become very, very important when it comes to longevity, youth, maintaining our vitality.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, so I guess we could kind of say that like when the whole low-fat zeitgeist was in that the dietary culture was going more vada than, would that be right? Like a low-fat type paradigm?

Nidhi Pandya
completely dry and you know, and that drying leads to anxiety, lack of sleep. You don't have like all the good juices that you need to repair and rebuild your body.

What I call lunar juices, they all are, they all require that good fat. And when people go very dry, it's like they're dehydrated from, you know, just the sun dehydrates us, dehydrates us like your body feels dehydrated. And then in that state, you can't achieve full rest, like your eyes are red and your throat feels like, ah, painful almost, you know, just dry all the time. Your ears, you cannot even tolerate noise, excessive noise. And it starts there, but it can become a deeper imbalance very quickly. Your microbiome starts to shift in your gut, you get constipated, bloated, all of those things happen.

Melanie Avalon
It was just so interesting to see just how integrated oil was into all these different practices and you have a section where you go through different Ayurvedic rituals and a lot of them involve oil. I was interested to see like which ones I was already doing. The ones I was already doing were like I scrape my tongue every morning and then I do the oil swishing. I've been doing that since, oh my goodness, for so long. I literally can't imagine my life without it.

Basically, once I wake up and I put a lot of oil in my mouth and I use MCT oil and then I like take a shower and like do things and yeah, it's amazing for me. But the other ones, the foot massage and like the hair oil massage and like the nose oil. So these different practices, do you do all of them?

Nidhi Pandya
I don't do all of them. I actually do the nose oiling. I do the body oiling. That's kind of non-negotiable for me.

But the oil pulling, I don't do every single day. I'll be honest with you. And I'm also very kind and gentle to people I work with. I'm like, meet yourself where you're at, and gradually build up. So I'm better about oil pulling than I was in the past. But the body oiling, I do abhyanga, I do all the time. And the nasiya, I do quite often as well. The oil pulling, I'm getting better with. Hair oiling, I do twice a week minimum. And I love that, my favorite practice. There's lots of others. There's oil enemas, and there's vaginal oiling, which has not even made it to the book. But I love those practices as well.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, wow. So I'm so, I guess happy to hear you say that because I think people can get overwhelmed, you know, like, there's all these things that you have to do. And so hearing from you who like, you're at the top of this sphere, that, you know, not even you are doing all these things every day. I think that's really empowering for people to find what works for them, you know, go slow, like you said, and work it into their life in a way that's sustainable.

So that's amazing to hear. Yeah, I have no experience with this hair oiling situation. I was like, what is what is this? So can you tell listeners a little? I think there's a few of them that are more foreign to some of us. So yeah, the hair oiling and I would love to hear more about that because you said the non wait, the non-negotiables for you were the body oiling and the hair oiling.

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, yeah, hair rolling is a divine practice. It, it moves your life from an ordinary life to an extraordinary life.

Melanie Avalon
it. Big statement. Okay, I'm excited.

Nidhi Pandya
So basically, I'll say that what hair oiling does, it's extremely nourishing for a nervous system. You basically oil the scalp. And I would highly recommend that, if this was a video podcast, I'd show you how to do it. But I would recommend that you want to go on YouTube, find somebody of my ethnicity, find somebody who's in the field for a while, and showing your video on hair oiling. I actually have something on my Instagram as well. And the way you do this is you kind of warm hair oil, and now it's become a trend in the West as well. So there's a lot of hair oils, even though I prefer traditional ones. I don't like the hair oils, which have like 100 ingredients. You can just get plain sesame oil, and that's enough. And there's some other aromatic hair oils, which are just herbal oils. Nothing, nothing should be added to it. There should be no ingredient which is not botanical on that bottle. And you just warm up the oil by just putting the bottle in warm water if you can. And if you can't, you don't have to warm it. And then you use a dropper, and you apply it, you part your hair, and you apply drops of oil everywhere, and then you rub it in. And then you claw your fingers, and then you massage your scalp. And it is so relaxing. I'll be honest, in our tradition, you do this for each other. So mothers, grandmothers did it for grandchildren, there were helpers in the house who did it for us. And sometimes I have this lady who comes to cook food for us, and she's the one who will do it for me. And so you basically say it's something that you pass on. I will do this for my daughters. I will oil their hair. And it's so nourishing, not only for your nervous system.

It basically is the food for your hair. It depends on the oil you use. It can prevent graying of hair, like I'm 43. I don't have any gray hair yet. I have one strand that came about sometime, and it's just that one strand so far. And it does a lot for your hair, it does a lot for your scalp, for your nervous system, for all of it. People don't realize that really the life of your hair is not on the hair. It's actually inside the hair follicle, the sebum that holds the hair in place, that nourishes everything. And then as we age and all the drying that happens as a result of stress, staying up, or exposure to the sun, that sebum starts to dry out. So you want to actually go and replenish it, and hair oiling is that divine practice.

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Okay. And then you wash it off.

Nidhi Pandya
And then, yeah, so you can keep it on for 20 minutes. You can keep it on for two hours. If you're seasoned like me, you can even keep it overnight sometimes, right? I mean, just be prepared to have an extra pillow cover, pillow case for your pillow so that you're not staining on them.

And you don't have to put a ton of oil. You could just put very little. You can just start with like one teaspoon or one tablespoon. Somebody like me now probably does three tablespoons. And I have a little pillow shoulder length hair. I'm used to that. So I can deal with three tablespoons of oil. But you can start small. You can keep it for 20 minutes, then move to two hours, and then move to maybe overnight if you like.

Melanie Avalon
And you said this is a cultural tradition that happens growing up for boys and girls?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, everybody.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, wow. What if you're bald? Should you oil your head?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, it's still it's such a nourishing practice for your scalp, and just your nervous system and all of that you should still you can still do it if you're bald, great.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, I'm this is exciting. I need to I need to try this.

Nidhi Pandya
He calls them Melanie.

Melanie Avalon
And then, so, ghee. There's a lot in the book about ghee. And I think the reason this is really intriguing is dairy is so debated, like controversial. You know, some diets eschew it completely.

Some, obviously, Ayurvedic, you know, ghee is amazing. So this role of ghee in particular, why is it this ideal fat?

Nidhi Pandya
So it's one of the ideal fats. And you're right, right? I mean dairy is very controversial. It's very controversial because certain traditions like Ayurveda, when they talked about dairy, they were talking about a different cow. They were talking about this cow. If you look at like a traditional Indian gyr cow that we call G-I-A-R, they had a little hump. And it was a very skinny cow. It was just exclusively grass-fed and gave A2 milk. And it was lighter milk with a different type of protein composition. And that's great, right?

Like that's great. And plus milk was never, I mean, in my, when I was growing up, I would not even imagine that somebody would drink milk cold from the refrigerator. I mean, whether it's from the breast or it's from the other, it's meant to be warm. And if it's not warm, then you warm it up. Because you know that warmth is important. Unless it's warm, how can it transform? So that warmth is important for the milk fats to start breaking down. So growing up, we drank spiced milk, spiced and hot milk. Or if it was not spiced, then it was at least boiled and then slightly cooled so we could just drink it without burning our throat. But he is a whole other level, right? Because dairy can be tricky for a lot of people. It can feel explosive. But what he does, right, he basically changes the composition of the milk. So you, you know, it's like even lactose intolerant people can actually have. And the casein is also very different. It's very low in casein. So the two substances that make milk so difficult to digest are basically absent, pretty much absent in the ghee. So it can be tolerated much better.

But also ghee is fermented. When it's done right, it's cultured. I shouldn't say fermented, it's cultured, which means the culture is added in the making of the process of ghee. And the minute you culture something, you make it more digestible. You're giving it this kind of warm and moist bacteria, probiotic experience. That's why it's the only fat that Mayo Clinic has called it the gut butter. How can a fat be good for your gut? Because it has this cultured aspect of it.

But not only that, right? Like, look, yes, we're not like other mammals. No other mammal drinks milk from another mammal. But no other mammal is on the phone and on the computer and walking on cool legs like that. So we're unique. And what makes us unique is how we eat is actually what led to our evolution. And we've relied upon a mammal's milk. Like, our body knows how to use a mother's milk to break it down and to create new tissue. So our body has the memory. Cow's milk comes kind of close to that. And cow's milk, because it can be heavy because of the lactose indication, you create ghee out of it. So you still get some of the benefits of that. It's coming from a mammal that your body understands how to break it down. But you kind of modify it. And you make it into ghee, which is further more digestible.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. Yeah, yeah, that is often the argument that's used is that we didn't or that no other animal, you know consumes milk Okay, and okay So while we're in this world of food and cooking and things So you have you have two core principles about cooking one involves the the warm moist state of the food and one involves cooking versus raw and so here's another another thing where You know, there are so many very conflicting ideas out there because there are people on raw diets who they say that that's the most cleansing thing ever and then people who say you should have you know fruit all the time or fruit for breakfast and You talk a lot about this in the book like the importance of cooking and you know How raw can actually potentially be detrimental to our digestive state and how we you know should not have a breakfast of fruit So some questions there, I guess one would be people who experience Seemingly health benefits on like a all raw diet or a heavy fruit diet Like what do you think's happening there?

Are they coming from a state of imbalance and that's why it's helping them It's.

Nidhi Pandya
So I would say for a certain period of time, especially if your body is sluggish and you've had a lot of cheesy foods, fatty foods, you've had a sedentary lifestyle, and you have like think about your body just having all this goo and slime and it needs soaking up. And then when you have some raw foods and raw salads or raw green juices even, for some amount of time you can feel like it kind of goes into your system and these are drier, they don't have so much, they don't have inherent fats in them. And these foods, it can feel a little better. People can see lowered cholesterol, people can see lowered sugar, blood sugar, and they can see all of that for a short period of time.

Long period, they start to notice that their microbiome has changed and their gut is not as comfortable. And I've seen plenty of people who felt like they were doing great on juicing, for example, and now are suffering tremendously. And I did a post and you had to see how many people felt validated saying that, yes, we felt better for a short period of time, but then we felt like it was just the worst thing for our gut. So, you know, in Ayurveda, you would just not even do something that can have a long-term impact.

You just wouldn't. I mean, design did not have these side effects at all. And then many other ways of achieving the same results. But I would say that it's also a matter of simple research, right? I mean, today it's so easy to do research. If anybody just even does a simple Google search of what led to our evolution. You know, 300,000 years ago, when man started using fire to cook their foods, we just changed. That's when we became this exact species that we are today, where we got on our two feet and our gut became smaller, our brains became bigger, we developed what's called the intellect because digestion didn't take so much energy.

To digest, to break down raw foods, I mean, we all eat foods. Whatever you eat, whether it's raw or cooked, it needs to come out of your system looking like the same thing. Like everybody's feces, you know, falls in the same, like in a range. The amount of work your gut has to do to break down something raw. Cooking activates life, right? So for example, if you cook something, you'll see that it almost starts decaying much quicker. You have a zucchini that's raw, you keep it outside, it's not going to decay that quickly. But the minute it's cooked, like you cannot even eat it next day because you've activated life.

Like it's almost like you've given birth to that food. Like it's the prana or the life force is now active and it's ready to be received. So everything, right, whether it's the understanding of the prana or the life force, or it's even just a matter of simple research to see how human beings started cooking their foods and how their bodies changed as a result. And then also imagining, right, if you were stuck in a forest or on an island which had amazing vegetables and fruits, I mean, after day six, would you really feel that nourished or comforted? You probably wouldn't, right?

Nidhi Pandya
Like for a short period of time, you can imagine that comfort. But human beings, we need those other nourishing foods. And if you also look back at cultures that did eat raw salads, they always paired it with fermented vinegar or olive oil and both, combination of both, you know, some sort of olive oil and lemon juice, which is again warm and moist, and I'm not going to give it all away in the podcast. I mean, if you want me to, I will, but just I don't want to go into the explanation of warm and moist in this answer, this particular answer.

But basically, people added things that already started the breakdown of that raw substance so that when they ate it, it wasn't that hard to digest. And salads were usually eaten as a side. So there is a lot of evidence pointing to it. The last part I'll say to this is if you look at what people ate in the blue zones, almost none of the blue zones ate just raw food, fruit for breakfast. In fact, most blue zones didn't even eat fruit for breakfast. And some ate some berries and a little bit here and there, always paired with something else. So this whole idea of raw fruit is quite like raw fruit first thing in the morning. You can eat raw fruit second thing in the morning and that's fine. But as first thing in the morning is just fairly new, actually, maybe a few, maybe about 50, 60 years old. And it's great as a replacement for what America had started to eat in terms of, you know, once industrialization happened, like raw cereals and Pop-Tarts and all of those things and started being, you know, be experienced this epidemic of metabolic syndrome. And that's when, you know, it's definitely better than any of those foods. But if you have to just look at in the ideal world, it's not.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, yeah, this is so, so fascinating. And speaking of cooking, you have a section on the refrigerator.

So when we put food into the refrigerator, how does that affect? Does it pause the state of the food? Does it get rid of the benefits of the food? What happens with that preservation method?

Nidhi Pandya
I love these questions. They're being so deep and specific to love it.

So we want to remember that refrigeration is fairly new. And we also want to remember that chronic disease is also in the last, since the 1930s and 1940s, suddenly we've had this crazy rise in chronic disease and much more so in the last 50 years. And we also want to remember that, so chronic disease electricity was also urbanized in homes in that exact same time, 1930, 1940s, when electricity came into urban homes, eventually we had refrigeration. And something happened and suddenly things went downhill.

So refrigeration is quite new. Listen, I have a refrigerator and it's full of things. So let me give you a disclaimer that I'm not suggesting you throw away your refrigerator.

But what is it that you keep inside your refrigerator? Because it temporarily pauses, it holds. It's like a morgue for your foods, you know? Think about it like a morgue or like a life support system where you kind of like are saying, hey, life, you know, you stop functioning for a little bit. Let's just like put you in this morgue and freeze you, make you a fossil and then reactivate you. The reactivation is not quite the same, especially for cooked foods. The refrigerator can be a great place for condiments, for fresh foods that you haven't yet used and cooked, you know, just because unfortunately out of convenience you would keep it. But the minute you cook it and you've already activated that entire life force in the food and you put it back in the refrigerator, it's going to lose its vitality.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, that is so interesting. It's interesting to me, especially because I never thought about in that way before. The reason I historically did not like the idea of like cooking meat, for example, and then putting in the refrigerator, and then having it later, it was because it would accumulate excess histamine. That was like my focus.

It's so interesting this, yeah, this idea of what happens to it when it's cooked. So it sounds like I am okay with like I have a lot of frozen uncooked like seafood and meat in a in a chest freezer. Is that is that okay? And then like it's uncooked and then I thought and cook it.

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, I see. Look, at some point, everything is OK. And you do like, look, ideally, Melanie, you and I and everybody should be living on farms and, you know, look, that is not what's happening. So we all pick our evils.

We all pick how far do we want to go. And for me, my recommendation is like your vegetables and fruits and, you know, while they're uncooked, you can keep it like vegetables more so in the refrigerator meets your right, right, like with histamines. And it's the same thing. It's basically losing the way, losing the vitality of life. And, you know, chemically, they can sometimes look like, you know, added histamines or it can look like another, like it can look like bacteria or mold or whatever that is. So I would I would say that it depends from, you know, food to food. And if your seafood is packaged, kept in such a way that it kind of preserves its life force, that's fine. But once it's cooked, I would I would highly recommend then discarding it if there's extra.

Melanie Avalon
Well, something that's interesting is so even though I like I said, I have a lot of frozen meat and seafood and still I intuitively, I just feel the need. I have to go to the grocery store every single day. Like every day I have to go.

I don't want to deliver it. I want to go because there's something about I want to go. It just feels evolutionarily right for me to go procure or secure or like hunter gather my food even if it's just going to the grocery store. But yeah, and my dad has the same habit. So I'm like, did I inherit that from him?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, love it.

Melanie Avalon
While we're also speaking about meal timing, or meals, and meal timing and composition, so I was very interested to read about the different amount and timing of different meals because I'm also the host of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. So we talk a lot about eating windows and something I've become super aware of in my own life, other people's lives, and listeners' lives is some people really seem to gravitate towards eating earlier. Some people gravitate towards just eating consistently throughout the day, some people gravitate towards eating later. I'm such a night girl.

In the book you say that we are meant to be more supper people than dinner people, and the thing that made me happy was that breakfast like a king, you kind of say how that might not intuitively be the way we're supposed to be eating, so that lined up with me. But then I do tend to eat a very big feast meal every night. So my questions here are, well, one, earlier you were saying about how fire and cooked foods helped make us human. Does that mean with fire and cooked foods though, were we cooking around fire at night and eating, you know, I'm just trying to like justify what I do. Basically, in our beta, what is the quote ideal meal timing and literal amount of the meals? How does that line up ancestrally? Were we cooking around the fire at night? What are your thoughts there?

Nidhi Pandya
And sure, in the winter, we were cooking around fires at once it became dark, which is 3, 4, 5. And if you were in Iceland, it would still, at 3 o'clock, be lighting a fire and cooking probably. But I mean, before we go even into Ayurveda, Malini, I just always like, and he probably read this in the book, right? But I always like to remind ourselves that we are dire in El Matmas, right? We wake up with the sun, and we sleep with the sun.

And tremendous research is being done now to see what is the biochemistry of the body through the day. And so many of our biochemicals and neurotransmitters, they actually align with the sun. So if we work with the sun and we see that nocturnal mammals, like a tiger can eat at night and digest it perfectly, for example, but the deer will wake up in the morning to eat, we also have that similar clock. And when the sun is at its peak, so lunchtime is when we will digest our best. And like the research has been done now to show that our insulin sensitivity is the highest during noon, which means we are like, you can break down sugars the best. But also gastrin, which is your digestive, strong digestive enzyme is the highest during noon. The other thing is that your cortisol is high in the morning and then it's kind of gradually going down. Your body starts to relax, great time to eat food because your body is not in that fight or flight mode. Cortisol is typically a little bit higher first thing in the morning just because it needs, your body needs you to be up and like concerned about the day. So it's very natural for that to happen. So if you, you know, I've matched this out and I look at all the neurotransmitters and the enzymes that exist in our body that support digestion. And you will find that window between 12 and two to be a beautiful time with maximum support to break down your sugar, your hunger hormone ghrelin is just on its rise. So you're not, if it's very high, like at nighttime, ghrelin becomes much higher. So you crave starchy foods. The hunger hormone loves starchy foods and heavy foods and denser foods the higher it is. But mid-afternoon, it's just in that right level. So you eat the food that you can break down easily. The same quantity of food eaten at night cannot be broken down as effectively because at night we become more insulin resistant. Rather than sensitive. Now the good news is if you're used to doing something for a long period of times, time, your body probably has evolved. You know, like our bodies love to support us. You got to just give it consistency. I'm sure, I don't know if you've heard of these stories, Melanie, but I've heard of stories where people smoked for 50 years, they quit and then they died the year right after. Because the body kind of adjusted to that smoking. Well, I mean, you only want to keep a limited number of vices and then let your body adjust to them and keep everything else very consistent. But if you are really used to eating dinner and that's what you feel good about, then maybe it's not hurting your body that much.

Nidhi Pandya
But otherwise, the universal law is that we're diurnal mammals. The scientific law is that every chemical, biochemical that helps you to digest better is at its best during noon.

And ancestrally, without electricity, people were not having big dinner parties. The whole idea of eat your soup. We started eating our soup because it felt like dinner or stews and out of these stone pots. That's what most of our, and sometimes there was bone broths in the winter. That's how our ancestors ate. That's how, unless it was a feast, dinner was not a main meal for anybody.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I'm so fascinated by this entire topic, and I have been for years and years, and I remember I actually did a really long blog post a few years ago, and I went and I tried to research every single food-related hormone, similar to what you were just talking about, and when is insulin pink, when is ghrelin pinking, all these different things, and what does it objectively seem to say is the best time to eat, and what I walked away from doing it then was that the morning does not seem to be the time to eat. Cortisol's high, it's breaking down endogenous fuel in our body so we can go out and find the food, and I walked away with late afternoon, early evening hormones seemed to work well, but definitely when the sun was up, not when the sun was down.

It's interesting also, I also read a study, it was interesting to hear you say about the body adapting, but we don't wanna have all the vices and then adapting to all of them, but I did read a study, and I've been looking for it ever since because I reference it a lot, but it looked at people who ate at night and whether or not they had digestive distress from it, and basically it was an adaption thing, so if people who had been doing it didn't report having GI issues, but if people switched to it, they did, so, but then again, we don't necessarily wanna be forcing our body into something that it is maybe not, quote, supposed to be doing ideally. This is just so interesting to me. Have you been, so for you, did you ever identify, like were you like a breakfast person, a dinner person, like what were you like growing up?

Nidhi Pandya
Honestly, Melanie, I pretty much live like this, so I always ate lunch. It was always my biggest meal.

Melanie Avalon
So intuitively, you were in the thing.

Nidhi Pandya
Because I do know with this, I grew up with this science, right? Also, I do want to say that, you know, when I see women hit perimenopause and menopause, and then their bodies change drastically, just by like dropping that dinner to like a soup, down to a soup or some side of veggie.

My God, their life changes. Miracles happen.

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Also, while we're talking about food, a myth that was dismantled a bit, that you dismantled a bit in the book was raising kids and diet.

And you talk about how I think there's often this idea out there that we need to like feed kids all the things all the time and they need to eat everything. And so how, from an Ayurvedic approach, how would diet and food work with kids? And if a kid doesn't like a bitter food, for example, like they don't want to eat their broccoli, what does that mean?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, the kids are in the building stage, the growth stage of their life, and they need foods, they are attracted to foods which bring growth. So good, complex carbohydrates, grains, rice, good fats, sweet potatoes, all of these are like those nice, heavy, dense building foods. So you and I both know that they do have to build tissue. Of course, we're not talking about unhealthy fats, we're not human margarine, processed fats, we're not talking about sugar, even though kids are attracted to that because they offer a similar taste. But they are going to be attracted to all these other foods as well.

And if you offer a child spicy foods, they'll reject it almost right away. And I know in certain traditions, they want to encourage children to eat that, but their palates cannot take it. And they're meant to reject it because those spicy foods will speed up their metabolic activity. It's something that they're not ready for. They need metabolic metabolism to be at a certain pace so that they can hold on to that food and build more. But you and I eat the same meal that a little child does for the entire year, if we just match our meals, we will see for sure that the child grows twice in size than you and I don't. So because their bodies are meant to be building, spicy foods are not building, they're breaking down. A bit of foods are also drying in the body and that doesn't help them, it doesn't help their cause. So they'll naturally gravitate towards the nourishing three tastes, which is sweet. When I say sweet, it's like sweet as in almonds, sweet as in coconut, sweet as in sweet potatoes, not sweet as in sugar, but sweet taste. And then sour taste and salty taste. Those are the two nourishing tastes. And they'll naturally gravitate towards those three tastes because it'll help them to build their digestive enzymes and eat well and nourish their bodies.

Melanie Avalon
Well, speaking of spices, so I actually, I eat so much ginger and turmeric and cumin. It's kind of crazy how much I eat. I just love that stuff.

So spices, I've always been a little bit conflicted by as far as their warming versus cooling nature because I had read that people in hot climates actually take in spices because it cools down the body because it makes you sweat. So what is the level of spices and this idea of them being warming or cooling and oh, and does any food in or do foods in Ayurvedic medicine ever? Because TCM, traditional Chinese medicine also kind of looks at food this way. Are there any that conflict that they see differently?

Nidhi Pandya
it's actually remarkably similar, very, very similar. I mean, it's just, yeah, because it's, it's the wisdom of life. It's the same. You know, Hippocrates had stuff that was the same because anybody who looked at life like that and even on the planet may have different names, but understood the same things.

So I will say that most spices are warming. They can have a cooling impact on your body. So if something is warming and you, you, you consume it and it makes you sweat, now you've had a reaction, which feels cooling, right? So I think cool down your system as a result of you breaking into a sweat because the heat is trapped inside. So you've kind of now opened a window and that can happen, right? So you give it like this warm wind, which kind of opens a vent out. So it's, there's, you know, there's an exhaust right there, but otherwise spices will always support your digestive environment, but they can, it can hurt your, if it's overly heating, it can burn your mucosal lining. So I want to tell everybody spice with caution, spice your foods. Don't do spices by themselves. There are certain spices like fennel seeds, for example, or cumin once it's soaked in water, that it changes its property once that happens and it can have, then it can have somewhat more of a cooling impact or like fennel has the fiber of the fennel of the fennel seed for functions differently than the pulp inside the fennel seed. One is a little cooling. One is a little warming because it is a spice after all. And because of that cooling fiber outside, it's overall impact can be cooling.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. Yeah.

I know I'm thinking about my meal composition and well, it's not, it's not, it's definitely not the ideal Ayurvedic meal. It's not a warm, moist meal, but I think I have a lot of spices, but then I have a lot of like pureed cucumber. So it's kind of like not canceling each other out, but I'm assuming that those interact on two different sides of the spectrum.

Nidhi Pandya
No, beautifully. They actually don't cancel each other.

They support each other because if you come with some cooling and you're using a spice for it, then you're coming to warm and moist. You're actually coming to a warm place.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, well, okay, maybe I am doing, exciting. I have a really, really random question, but it was bothering me.

So we're talking about these different stages of growth and transformation and decay. That's three, there's like three stages, three dosas, but there are four seasons. I like mathematically couldn't wrap my head around this. How did those line up?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, so the spring is your building season. It's the kapha season, right? Everything is building suddenly. The earth is more wet and moist and everything is in growth stage.

And the summer is transformation, right? Like there's fruits and flowers and the full-blown, like it's the full-blown opposite of autumn and winter. Autumn and winter can be clubbed into one because it is a long transition from this budding life to all the way that third decay. So the decline, like think about autumn like your forties and fifties, you know, where you're just like in perimenopause and menopause and you're just like holding on to a little bit of youth and a little bit of decay and like your body is going to somewhat of depreciation.

And then think of winter like you're in your seventies.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. No, the math works.

And something I found fascinating in the book was because you talk about the role of these cycles and the growth transformation decay and how it repeats and we see it in nature and we just see it as this cycle. And that's, you know, naturally the way it happens. And then you make a comment about how the, I think I'm paraphrasing, but something about how the repetition of the cycle isn't mandated, that it actually can continue on if it's not tied to, like, human things. But you use the example of, like, relationships and your career. So what is the role of this cycle and whether or not it repeats and then how that relates to, like, your relationships and career and things like that?

Nidhi Pandya
So basically, I'm going to say what the principle is first and then how it differs for things that are not tangible and more subtle aspects, right? So everything in life, right? So the seasons, for example, spring is building, summer is transforming, autumn and winter, everything dries and dies. If you get a fruit, you'll see the fruit is building to, it's beginning to grow. Like on the tree, it grows, it ripens. Then it enters its transformation stage. And then if you don't eat it, it's going to decay dry and then just be destroyed completely. And we see this with every cell, right? Like a cell comes into its emergence and it does its metabolic, whatever activity and then the mitochondria finishes its role, the cell can die. So we see this everywhere, right? We see this with human life. We're born, we grow, we become reproductive beings and then we decay and then we die. And this is great, right? Just as we wouldn't want our old cells to be hanging around, cells that have stopped functioning to be hanging around in the body, the universe doesn't want us after, long after our reproductive age to actually be hanging around on the planet, right?

We need to go for the sake of the planet. But there are areas where this principle is doesn't, you know, is we are free of this principle. We're liberated from it. We're not tied to this principle. And those are subtle areas, intangible areas. For example, relationships, right? If you meet somebody and you're initially in the growth stage and if there's enough growth and you've met enough times and there's excitement, then it's things start to heat up. And then it becomes like a transformation of sorts, right? If it's friendship, it becomes a ripe friendship. If it's a romantic relationship, you may decide to like get married, move in, have a child, any of those things, right? So you hit the transformation stage. And then very often people start taking things for granted at that point, right? They're like, okay, fine. And then the relationship goes into decay. But what if, you know, what if you were to think that you need to continue to grow in this relationship, you need to continue to build and do what you did in the initial days of the relationship so it continues to transform into something new every day. And I think that's one of the biggest problems that I see in marriages with couples as well, right? Like they kind of, they had that great time once upon time. And then they decided to do something with it and they transformed it into something beautiful. And then they just let it go. And the natural order of things will take it into decay if you don't continue to build and grow.

And the same thing happens with our careers, right? Like we're building, we're all exciting. And then we hit a mark and we do something great with it. But if you don't, you know, we see organizations larger organizations that they don't continue to innovate, grow, build, then they kind of go into decline and then they go.

Nidhi Pandya
So, you know, with all intangible aspects of life, you want to continue to stay in the growth stage so that you can naturally keep transforming. So it's very, very important.

And I do say that there's just one, one place where this principle just does not apply at all. And that is self growth and spiritual growth. Because in that area, you grow, right? Like you grow, you transform, of course you transform. If let's say you're doing therapy or doing any kind of spiritual practice, you grow, you transform. And then you continue your practice and you had this endless transformation. And after that endless transformation, you keep on that endless transformation. But what happens is dissolution of ego. You dissolve your ego. You kind of just are, you know, you're one with the universe at that point. So that's, you know, that's a very promising purpose of human life. If everything I have here is going to go into these cycles of growth, transformation, decline, and everything physical at least, like my parents will die. My kids will get older. I will die. All of those things will happen. But what is that area which continues to increase returns on my effort? And that is self growth and in a spiritual world.

Melanie Avalon
So fascinating. I love it. Yeah, I was really excited to read that section, especially because I'm so career driven and love pursuing my passion. So it was nice to hear I can keep, not can, not that I need permission, but that it can be beneficial to stay in that growth state.

Another topic we haven't touched on yet, I don't think, is exercise. And this was an, okay, so an exciting part about reading this part of the book is, I mean, exercise comes up on this show all the time, like all the time. It's a really big topic, and I'm very accustomed to reading a lot of, you know, similar advice and guidance and perspectives. And the two core principles that you highlight with exercise, like the two rules, quote, rules, I don't, I mean, I don't think I've, I don't think these have come up in any other book or show or interview, you know, they're just so, so different. So one was exercising to half of your capacity. And the other was the role of having oily, good fats to support. So could you talk about these two rules, which are just so new to me?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Melanie, now they're talking more about like how especially with women to exercise in the zone two, you know, where you're not completely where you can, I forget what it is, where you can hum, but not sing or something like that. But you're not that breathless, that you don't have, you know, words coming out of your mouth. So, so I love that.

It's the same thing as zone two. I just love that. How are you whether I knew all of this before science, modern school. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So it's kind of in that zone two area that you don't overdo it. Because the truth is that when you do and you lose, you lose good soft tissue, you lose your lunar tissue in the body. You don't burn evenly when you're exercising, you burn all of it, you burn the good and the bad. And you burn your mucus lining and you burn, you know, some of what keeps you in repair stage. So it is important to not overdo it.

And I've seen people who've done long term hot yoga, getting room with a arthritis, et cetera, and not eating well, especially. So the second piece becomes that, you know, while you are depleting your body of all these lunar juices, and you're you're breaking down your fats, but you're also breaking down some of the good stuff, you want to make sure that you are consuming good nourishing foods to replenish your body. And, you know, so many times I'll see people who've gone on the sudden exercise regimen, and they've lost their period suddenly, you know, like periods just absolutely like estrogen, which is the most juiciest, which is what makes us juicy as women, gives us breasts and amniotic fluid and all of those good things. People see a decline in their estrogen, and then they don't ovulate or they don't menstruate. And it's exactly this what is happening, your juices kind of dry out. So it's very important to continue to consume good fats when you're working out.

Melanie Avalon
And what is the role specifically on fats on the skin while exercising? Can that actually fuel the exercise?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, absolutely. It can fuel the exercise very, very well. It can help recovery. It can nourish your tissues.

And the fat that Ayurveda talks about, the massage, the oil you use on your body, it's sesame. And by the way, right now, research is still bending on this. But the one thing that we know even here in the Western world in modern science is that sesame can help you balance your progesterone as well as estrogen. And estrogen is also anti-inflammatory as a hormone. And when you're using that sesame oil, even a little bit, you can wipe it down a little bit before you exercise, but you put it on your body, you change, you know, massage it in for five minutes, put on your exercise clothes. If it's too oily, you just wipe it down and you'll still have some of it stay on. But you're actually supporting your body. You're supporting your body with that potential of estrogen, which is an anti-inflammatory, which helps recovery tremendously. But it also settles like the nervous system and gives you a much better workout.

Melanie Avalon
Does that mean that if you put oil on your body while exercising that you're going to be like burning that oil and not burning your own body fat?

Nidhi Pandya
No, not at all. You'll still be running your body fat, but your joints will be protected.

Your body will like, your nervous system will be more grounded. You'll have better flow, better circulation. It's gonna give you more of your exercise, not less.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome, and then I'm sure you've been asked this before, but there's all this idea there about the problems with seed oils. Is sesame oil, does it fall into any of the potential issues of, quote, seed oils?

Nidhi Pandya
If it's refined, anything that is refined is like a fossil fuel in your body. It's going to create inflammation, global warming inside.

But if it's unrefined, it's cold pressed, it's expeller pressed, any of these things, you're fine. You do nothing to worry about.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. And then just some last questions about your book in general. So I have it in front of me right now. It's it's so beautiful.

I'm always really intrigued with like design and stuff for the image on the cover with the colors and everything. Did you have a lot of options for the cover? Did you intuitively know what you wanted it to look like? Or I'm just always fascinated by the design process.

Nidhi Pandya
Can I just tell you, Melanie, the book wrote itself? The book, you know, I will say that I was in perfect, like I heard people's stories of writing books and they were like, it took the life out of them. For me, my daughters are like, well, when did you write the book? You were doing everything else, right?

Because I was teaching this, I was teaching a program, which is a 21 day program. I was doing this, I was living this, I was writing for a few hours every day. And when the cover was proposed to me by my publishers, honestly, I didn't like a single cover. And then I have a niece who is a graphic designer and she won India her, India its first con. Like she's very talented, globally recognized. And I didn't really want to bother her because she has such a busy job. I didn't want to bother her with like, hey, can you make my, you know, can you design my cover for me? But what it just so happened that she ended up telling her mom that I wish that he could design my cover. Like, I wish I could design that he's the cover. And I normally wouldn't meet her mom in years, right? I mean, I live in separate parts of the world. And, but it just, again, so happened that freak accident that I met, I met her mother somewhere and she was like, hey, you know, by the way, my daughter really wants to design your book cover. And like, I couldn't have done it better myself. Like, I just, she just knew there was alignment. There was so much alignment in this book. I cannot even tell you. Like, that's why I say the book wrote itself, the universe conspired to make it happen in every possible way.

Melanie Avalon
I love the cover, so she nailed it. So also in the book writing process, so the 21-day program, did you develop that specifically for the book or did you have that already within your work?

Nidhi Pandya
I worked something like that with my clients, with my existing clients, that I didn't bring it into 21 days. I would do it over a period of time.

And I think then I started a coaching program around the same time that I wrote the outline for the book. And so I was doing both. I have a 21-day radical transformation program that I run where women go through, but that's a little bit of more mind and body both. And the book is more body. So the program looks a little bit different because it really has a deep dive into all the habit patterns and mental and emotional patterns that we hold. And so I would say that they supported and they fueled each other at the time I was writing the book.

But before that, I worked only one-on-one with clients and I introduced all these principles, but not in the exact same way.

Melanie Avalon
okay awesome well so you were saying that the book you know essentially kind of wrote itself for the 21 days was there because 21 you know that's 21 different things were there more that you wanted to include was it did it immediately come to you like the 21 things yeah i'm just wondering if there was some like like once it didn't make the cut no you don't know

Nidhi Pandya
not much right Melanie because I was also teaching a program so I was getting active feedback into what was helping people, what was not helping people, what was really working out and I have to say that it is I would say 90% of it is what because of the previous practice that I've had I've been 10 years practicing you know with clients one-on-one and I have seen you know what are the smallest shifts which creates the biggest impact first hand I've seen with my clients so when it came to writing the book I felt like I already knew and somehow it was just you know 21 just worked out and that was the number and then I tried it again with coaching groups and so I had a lot of feedback so I would say certain things certain explanations I have to give a lot of credit to all the women that were in my coaching programs because their feedback their questions they really enriched my understanding and what went into the book.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. And working with those women, because I know at one point in the book, you say, you know, if you if you only were to take away one thing from the book, it's this role of, which we didn't even talk, we didn't talk about the word.

Is it pronounced Agni? Agni. Agni. Okay, Agni. And you talk about how it, you know, it rises at sunrise, it's highest midday, and it wanes in the evening. And, and, you know, that relates to your digestifier. And it's what we talked about earlier. So I'm curious, were there, because you just mentioned how, you know, like one thing can so radically change somebody's life. Are there certain principles? Like when a person gets your book, and they and there's the program, should they just go through each day, do it, you know, how they feel and see if it sticks or not? Can you go out of order? Like, how should somebody just approach all of this?

Nidhi Pandya
I would say that you must you know there's a lot of people who want to go directly to part three because they're like like give me the action right and I will say that to any of those people you cannot there's no sustainability in that because tomorrow you you'll take the action I prescribe and then day after somebody else you know somebody else's prescription of action so I usually am non-prescriptive so I tell people stay with part one stay with part two like which is non-action right which really allows you to connect with these rhythms of the universe and stay in awe and wonder of that like really stay in wonder of wow look at these species like I recently had somebody from one of my coaching groups go to South Africa for a safari and she sent me like so many videos and she was like my mind is blown because I'm constantly thinking of all the principles and how these animals live for example right and like my clients and people I work with do this all the time so I say part one is very important because it allows you to live in awe and wonder and when you live in awe and wonder and make changes as a result of that awe and wonder the change is internal you don't it's not action it's effortless like you're just like it's like wearing a sweater on a cold day you're not like it doesn't feel like you have to check a box for it because you're so connected with the experience so I'd say part one and then part two allows you to map out what you might be doing and then come to part three in terms of picking what you'll do I would say the first 10 days you want to do and you want to do the first 10 days in order you can take 20 days to do the 10 days which means you do it a little bit slower and then or you give justice to all the 21 days you keep stacking practices one after the other they're all to be stacked and they're very easy and simple and doable and then after 21 days you can actually decide which ones you want to drop I give you an option there's a mastery section which allows you to like unselect some practices do some practices create that little plan sustainability plan for yourself that what you're going to do and how many days on the week days on how many times on the weekend how many times on vacation but allows you to plan it and map it out so that you're not stuck or you're not feeling compromised on what you want to do

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. The hardest thing maybe for my audience specifically when they read the book, which I agree, I'm such a fan of always reading the entire book because it's so important to get, you know, the foundation of everything and the information and the knowledge and the science so you can really understand the why behind the protocol.

You make a suggestion during this program to not consume other like health-related information and just, you know, trust the process and do the program. And I mean, the nature of this show is people listening to podcasts to constantly try to find new information. So what is the reasoning behind that? And what do you say to people who want to constantly be, you know, I mean, like learning new things. Where's the balance between committing to a program, trying it versus, you know, still seeking knowledge elsewhere?

Nidhi Pandya
And I'd say that what most people are seeking, Malini, is information and not knowledge. The word knowledge also has a knowing in it. Like wisdom, there's a very strong internal part that's also very active. I think what we do mostly today is like, give me more information, give me more information. And honestly, the more information we have, the less insight we have.

We start disconnecting from what we already know. Like, for example, a baby. Malini, we are born, and we just find the mother's breast. The baby knows how to suckle. The baby knows that to eat, it needs to eat from the mother's breast. I mean, no nutrition needed, no expert needed, right? And yet we begin to forget as we start overintellectualizing things and getting more and more information. So I'm not saying that information from the outside world is not good. But I think if you look at how everything was studied and written in the past, especially the Vedic wisdom, which is where Ayurveda and yoga come from, it was first experienced and then validated through existing information. So you have the experience, and then you would go to a teacher or a master and say, I had this experience. This is what I'm thinking. And then you would refer to maybe a text. And then you would say, oh, this makes sense or not. We're doing the reverse today. We're getting information first, and then we're bringing it into existence. The truth is we all know, like animals know. If you're the most intelligent species, how did we forget? I mean, like, if animals can pick specific plants and herbs when they're sick, and they understand what sulfur-rich soil is without having to take it into a laboratory. And I'm not discounting science or the role of research, but I'm saying there's a lot that we already know. And that's why the book is called Yarpa. We already knows. We want to start trusting that so that when we're looking at information from the outside world, we already know which one doesn't work for us. For example, Melanie, I'm going to give one last example. If you and I were sitting in a really cold room, and you're feeling really, really cold, and if I gave you the advice that, hey, why don't you take off this one little sweater you have? It's going to make you feel warmer. You're not going to trust that advice, because you already know. You've experienced it. You're like, taking the sweater out is going to make me feel even more cold, because you know, right? That's the appearance you had. And it's possible to have that same experience with what we consume internally, and to understand exactly, not vaguely, exactly what's happening in our body. So we just need to come back to that wisdom. And the book kind of provides a framework to start doing that.

Melanie Avalon
I love that. Perfect. And that's like a perfect way to bring everything full circle. Well, thank you so much, Nadeed.

This has been, like I said, amazing. I so enjoyed reading the book. I learned so much. It's really opened my eyes and given me a paradigm shift. So how can people best get the book, follow your work? Can they, because you mentioned, you know, your program, which has even more of the mental emotional aspect to things. Can people sign up for that? Where should people go?

Nidhi Pandya
Yeah, thank you for asking. So if you want to just snippet of mine every day, I am on Instagram under my underscore Ayurvedic underscore life, or you can just look for my name, Nidhi Pandya, and you'll be able to find it. And if, Melanie, you have show notes, I'd love for you to link it.

You can go to my website, nidhi pandya.com. That's my first name, lastname.com. And right now, I'm not running the 21-day radical transformation program anymore in two groups, because I've gone back to one-on-one work, and the book has kept me really, really busy. But in 2026, I will be restarting those group coaching and offerings. I am, however, teaching a nutrition, a very deep, very comprehensive Ayurvedic nutrition program that starts end of October. And it is for people who want to understand how to live in this manner for themselves. And you can eat any cuisine, so it's not a restrictive program. Or you can do the program to become a less certified Ayurvedic nutritionist. So these are a few things that are on my plate right now, but you can find me, and you can find all of this information on my website, as well as my Instagram.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. That's okay. This is so great because I think this will be airing in the fall. So I think a lot of my audience will be really interested in that nutrition program for sure and all the other stuff.

So we will put links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so so much. Are you writing another book?

Nidhi Pandya
want to just when I settle down a little bit with this one and book contracts are designed in a funny way that for two years I can't have anything else out but I am waiting for that end of two years for it to happen.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. Awesome, awesome.

And then the last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and actually, because I'm pulling up your list of the days, so it relates to the last day of your 21 days. So that works out well. It's the role of gratitude, which I just think is so, so important in life. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Nidhi Pandya
Oh, that's a lot of things. I think what I'm most grateful for, honestly, is the chance, like the way I found my ikigai in this life.

And to have a life which has a purpose beyond just the mundanities of what everyday life brings. To be so deeply connected to my purpose, I'm so grateful for everything that has happened, how I was born into the family, for all the things I chanced upon, for being able to see my children grow with this philosophy, and just constantly be in it all the time. Love it.

Melanie Avalon
I love that so much. I feel the same way, just the gratitude for having life's purpose because I see all this content out there about people who are struggling to find a purpose and how do you find your, your passion and your, yeah, your purpose and I, I've just, I've never had that experience. I've always been like very purpose driven and it's, it's, it's like, like you said, I'm so grateful because I know not everybody has that experience.

Well, thank you so much, Nadine. This was amazing. I am so grateful and appreciative for all you do. And yes, if you have another book in the future, I would love to have you back on.

Nidhi Pandya
Thank you so much for having me, Melanie. I've really enjoyed all the deep and such relevant questions that you've asked. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon
Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.

You too. Take care. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit Melanie Avalon dot com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at Melanie Avalon dot com. And always remember, you got this.