The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #353 - Shivani Gupta 

TRANSCRIPT

Shivani Gupta
I grew up sick as a dog every day of my whole life and this one spice could have saved me. This doesn't make sense.

And so my advisor was like, if you're so interested in it, let's do the PhD that I want you to do on turmeric. What I say is it's anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-viral, antibacterial, anti-fungal, and it functions like this janitor, like this ultimate janitor goes in the body and it clears out malignant cells, senescent cells, which are zombie cells, it clears out what doesn't belong, bad bacteria, but leaves the good.

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 lying herein. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Oh my goodness, friends. I had so much fun in today's conversation with Dr. Shivani Gupta. I cannot recommend her book, the inflammation code enough. It is everything you could ever want to know about Ayurvedic medicine and how it applies to your life today.

And when I say that we only barely scratched the surface of the topics in today's conversation, I mean, we only barely scratched the surface of the topics in today's conversation. So many more things I could have talked about. I could have talked about turmeric for another hour. I really wanted to go through the morning and evening rituals and so much more. So definitely check out that book. And if after listening, you would like to get Dr. Shivani supplements, definitely check those out. You can get 20% off with the coupon code Melanie Avalon at fusionaryformulas.com. So that's fusionaryformulas, F U S I O N A R Y formulas.com with the coupon code Melanie Avalon for 20% off.

And then in these show notes, there will be a full transcript and we will actually include there a seven day inflammation detox challenge completely free, as well as Dr. Shivani's free anti-inflammatory e-cookbook. So definitely grab those resources and definitely take her quiz to figure out your dosha type. You can do that at ShivaniGupta.com. In today's episode, we talk about so many things. We talk extensively about the three dosha's. So Pitta, Bhatta, and Kapha. What those look like so that you can figure out what you may be, what combination you may be. We talk about where they come from, how they change throughout life, whether or not you get them from your mother. We talk about how to eat for your dosha, hacks for travel anxiety, the overwhelming magic of turmeric, and so much more.

The show notes for today's episode will be at Melanie Avalon.com slash inflammation code. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting, plus real foods, plus life comments, 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, comments there to enter to win something that I love.

All right. I think that's all the things as a brief reminder, you can get 20% off Dr.

Melanie Avalon
Shivani's supplement line at fusionaryformulas.com with the coupon code Melanie Avalon, and now please enjoy this fabulous conversation with Dr. Shivani Gupta. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I am about to have. So the backstory on today's conversation, when I first came across the work of this fabulous woman and her upcoming book, I absolutely knew that I had to have her on, so the book is called The Inflammation Code, Unlock Your True Healing Potential with a Power of Ayurvedic, Super Spices and Elemental Design, and friends, I am personally, well, okay, two hot topic keywords in that title, Inflammation, of course, I am a little bit obsessed with, we talk about the role of it all the time on the show. I've had a lot of therapy sessions because I'm in like perpetual fear of inflammation, so that speaks to me. And then Ayurvedic medicine and that lifestyle I am so fascinated by. And in the entirety of this show, like hundreds of episodes, I've actually only had one other episode on it. So I was really, really excited to dive even deeper into it.

The author herself, Dr. Shivani Gupta, she is incredible. So she is the host of the Fusionary Health Podcast, the creator and host of the Emmy-nominated TV show, Vibrant Health. She's a sought after educator for hormone health and metabolism. And she's been in Mind Body Green and different summits and TV and radio and all the things. And like I said, I was really looking forward to the book just based on the title and it comes from Hay House, which is one of my favorite publishers. So I was excited to dive in and oh my goodness, so many things in this book that I am so excited to talk about. So it goes so deep into what actually Ayurvedic medicine and I keep using the word medicine so we can talk about if I'm calling it the right thing, but what it actually is and why it is not more, I guess, adaptable or known in modern culture. And Dr. Shivani has her elemental design protocol, which is kind of like a modern approach to it that people can implement in their daily lives and, you know, really enhance everything. And so it includes so many topics. So, you know, how to cook, how to sleep, how to eat, supplements, spices, the incredible rituals to start your morning and evening. Just so many awesome things. I have so many questions. So Dr. Shivani, thank you so much for your work and thank you so much for being here. For sure. Thanks for having me. So yes, I have again, so, so many questions in the book. You do share quite a bit about your personal story, your relationship with your father, your epiphanies that you had about health and wellness. And, oh, and I would love to go on a tangent about your, like what you've done business wise with, you know, like non-toxic products and things like that. But to start things off, is this your first book?

Shivani Gupta
I wrote my first book when I was doing my Masters in Ayurvedic Sciences, and that book is called The Conscious Pregnancy. I was very obsessed with how do we approach pregnancy to create a truly healthy, happy Zen child.

So that was my first book a while back, and then this is my first book with Hay House that's teaching the entirety of what I teach from an Ayurvedic perspective and anti-inflammatory lifestyle all in one book.

Melanie Avalon
your personal story leading to this. I mean, what happened?

Again, like I said, you share some of it in your book, your relationship with your father and epiphanies that you had. I'm just really curious if you can share a little bit with listeners about that journey.

Shivani Gupta
I grew up living in two worlds. I lived in Houston, Texas, where my parents had just arrived from India and were setting out to live the American dream. So just grew up where in the United States, if I got sick, we'd go to the pediatrician. Pediatrician would give you an antibiotic script. You'd go fill it. And I feel like I took bubblegum tasting amoxicillin my entire childhood.

And then by the time I was five, we were going to India every year. My parents were successful. So we were able to do that and see my grandparents, my cousins, and family every summer. And when we'd live in India for a few months, of course, like anyone else who comes from the West and goes East into places like India, I would get Montezuma's Revenge, India style. And I'd be so sick and couldn't keep food down, sick in every way. And when I'd go to the doctors there, the traditional Western doctors would also give me antibiotics. And so by the time I got to high school, I was just taking antibiotics month after month. And no one asked the question of why is this kid sick every month? Why does she have a cold? And maybe antibiotics and upgrading her to Augmentin and these higher level antibiotics isn't the best plan, but no one was really watching that. And so it took until I got to college and I was sick once in India and the doctors in America had already said, you know, you have the flu, you have these different things. We can't give you an antibiotic this time because you destroyed your gut lining. And I looked at them like, what are you talking about? Gut lining? Like, that's a new idea. And they're like, no, yeah, you can harm yourself through antibiotics. And I didn't know that. No one had really said that to me to that point. And so we were in India yet again on a big trip for a big family wedding. And we take me to the doctor and my family doesn't know should they hospitalized me for how sick I am because I've always been like the sick kid who gets sick all the time. And the doctor says, here's your prescription. And some voice inside of me was like, no, no, no, we're not doing this again. I don't agree. I can't do this. And so the prescription he wrote was an antibiotic and then 12 medications for side effects. And so I told him, explain to me what you're giving me. And when he said that, I was like, you're going to give me 13 drugs. You really think that's appropriate. You haven't given me a probiotic. You need to dumb that antibiotic down a couple notches. Let's not explode my gut again, guys. And I'm not taking the other 12. I'm going to manage my side effects myself. And that was when I finally stepped up to what I now call sovereignty, like stepping up for myself. And I told my parents, you know what? We're in this land of yoga and Ayurveda. And I keep hearing about it. And I really think there's something there for me. And so we went on this quest and we went north, south, east, west throughout India.

Shivani Gupta
By then, my parents were very successful but burnt out entrepreneurs. And so I took advantage of that and was like, look, let's just go and heal ourselves. And they were down for it.

And so I sat at the feet of all these gurus and just kept asking, what can this system do for me? Can it fix me? Can we heal my gut? Can I kind of step into a new body? Because I'm over that old one that doesn't work. And that's what Ayurveda gifted me. And once it did, once I've realized the level of vibrant health and strength and immunity and vitality you can have, I was sold.

And I was like, okay, now I have to figure out how to change the rest of the world. Like if the rest of the world knew Ayurveda, we wouldn't have to suffer with death and devastation the way I was seeing it. Because every time I went to India growing up, I would see grandparents and family members struggle with quadruple bypasses and leg amputations, Parkinson's. Every after effect of diabetes is what I saw growing up. And I thought that solution to that exists in Ayurveda. And once I figured that out, I wanted to bring that back home to Texas and to the West, where I think we need these tools more than ever.

Melanie Avalon
So many directions and questions. I guess one place to start and because I think when people hear Ayurveda, at least what I thought originally when I would see the topic before diving into it is I thought, well, I know there's some sort of like cat organization of who you are, which I guess is the doshas. And then I think like the cuisine associated with it, like the spices and things like that. So something I have a broader question and then a more specific question.

One, I would definitely like to get an overview of the doshas. And it's really interesting because I do think I don't want to say perfectly, but I feel like I am a pitta on the inside and a vata on the outside. I feel like I have traits of both. So I'm curious about all of that. And then the broader question is, how do I say this? Because you dive deep into all the different aspects of it and it's very individualized and tailored to the individual. Like I just mentioned, there's a typing of the human person and the body and the soul and what they are and then how they live accordingly to that. So it's very individualized. How does that account for the fact that the, especially like the cuisine and the dietary practices and things like that were presumably created within a very specific culture? So how do they broadly apply to everybody everywhere? Or should they be modified? Because it's hard for me to think that something that was developed like in India would apply perfectly to somebody who's from like Norway.

Shivani Gupta
Yeah, no, these are beautiful questions. I mean, it's interesting, right? Ancient Ayurveda is a system of health, healing, and medicine that's over 5,000 years old. And people oftentimes wonder how does it apply in modern day times?

Like we have modern science, we have Western science, Western allopathic medicine, all of these are more valid, right? And that's the thing is the ancient wisdom, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine, and Ayurveda have stood the test of time. And they can very much be customized to where you're at and where you're located. You don't have to only eat the Ayurvedic diet or specific diets from Ayurveda because that's where it originated. We actually modify to exactly where the person is. And so when we're talking about the body types, Ayurveda teaches we each have our own individual mind-body constitution. And Ayurveda calls that your dosa. And when I was writing my book, The Inflammation Code, I thought if I throw 100 Sanskrit words at this audience, they are not going to read this book. It's going to be so complicated. And so I simplified it all. And I took my dosa wisdom and all the rest of what I teach. And I renamed it elemental design. And elemental design is kind of like human design, where in human design, you put in your birth date, birth time, and you get a lot of answers about yourself and a lot of understanding. Like I'm a projector. And it's fascinating how true human design resonates with my body type. And so in ancient Ayurveda, elemental design illuminated your primary and secondary elements. And your constitution is actually decided at birth. It's the combination of your parents and the environment you're born into. And that constitution sticks for the rest of your life.

We call that your prakruthi. And then over time, life happens. There's different tragedies, traumas, different things that happen to us that shape us or change us, or life shifts, even transitions. And that creates what we call vakruthi, or your state of your elemental design right now, which could be rather imbalanced from where you started. And so we teach that these body constitutions are built from the five elements, because the human body is built from the five elements. And it's not mystical. It's actually an elemental map that ties directly into our modern biology. And so when we talk about the five elements, we talk about air, ether, fire, water, and earth, and how those five elements tie into our different constitutions. And the first constitution is called vata, or here in the West, we call it vata. And so a vata person is someone who is all made up of air and ether. You can think of the traits of a beautiful breeze. That's a beautiful way to think of air. A more rambunctious or intense way is a tornado. An air and ether person could be like a tornado destroying everything in their path and being super out of balance. It could be like a moving. So it just depends. So vata people are all about movement. They're very quick and creative. They're enthusiastic. They're very light. They're very changeable, malleable. Physically, they tend to be lean.

Shivani Gupta
They have dry skin, cold hands and feet, irregular digestion, light sleep. And when a vata is a balanced person, they're very brilliant and intuitive and energetic and innovative. And when vata is out of balance, when that person who's kind of on the taller, leaner side or shorter petite side, when this person's out of balance, they tend to be anxious, scattered, exhausted, have insomnia, tend to get constipated and feel chronically depleted.

And so when we look at the modern equivalent of a vata imbalance, that's where we start talking about our HPA access dysregulation. We talk about cortisol dysregulation, having a sympathetic nervous system dominance, adrenal fatigue, the person who can't slow down until they completely crash. And so this is oftentimes that high performing biohacker who optimizes for everything, tracks every metric, who runs on four hours of sleep, but then wonders why their HRV keeps dropping. That's your vata that's running hot and going too fast. So the vata fix that the thing we need to do for vata is not more optimizing, it's actually grounding. The vata person needs warmth and routine and nourishment. We like to give them adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is very stabilizing to the HPA access. We like giving shatavari. These are beautiful adaptogens to replete their, to rebuild really their depleted reserves and their exhaustion. We like to use self-care tools like warm oil massages. We call that up yang to really lubricate the body and the skin, but also to gently support the nervous system. We ask them for earlier sleep, consistent meal times, healthy fat. So vata needs more rhythm than all the other constitutions. We need that rhythm in vata to get that energy more grounded. And so that's the first constitution. The second constitution is pitta. Pitta is fire and water. So pitta types are all about transformation. They are sharp, focused, driven, very precise and intense. Physically, pittas tend to run hot because they have warm skin, a strong appetite. They have very sharp digestion and they have a tendency towards inflammation, tendency towards being like reddish skin, reddish hair, having more heat-based condition. So like acne and things like that will show up for the pitta. And when a pitta person's balanced, they're actually brilliant leaders. They're very sharp thinkers. They're super highly productive, deeply passionate. But when a pitta gets out of balance, they are angry, inflamed, burnt out. Their body's literally on fire with skin rashes or acid reflux or autoimmune flares or heavy painful periods. They get joint inflammation. They get migraines, all these hot things coming out of the body. And so the modern equivalent of that pitta imbalance is that systemic inflammation that I teach so much about. So elevated CRP, elevated interleukin-6. This is that overachiever whose immune system is as intense as their personality. So they're gonna cause high stress, cause their own leaky gut and things like that. And this is also the biohacker who does everything right.

Shivani Gupta
So perfect diet, perfect training, perfect sleep, but still has inflammatory markers that won't budge because their fire isn't coming from their lifestyle. It's actually from their own constitution that's running too hot. And so the pitta fix that I give is always to cool down. So anti-inflammatory herbs like turmeric, brhammi helps, amla helps, shathavri, cooling foods, all the summer foods are cooling. So everything summer-wise, coconut water, all the fruit and fresh cooling fruits that exist, mango, watermelon. Reducing intensity and training, which is really hard for the pittas, building in true rest. So not like forcing rest by doing more and more recovery hacks, but really genuine stillness and quiet is what pittas need because they need the cooling to help reduce their fires. And I'm a pitta, so like everything I just said totally applies to me.

So if anyone else out there is a pitta, I feel ya. And then guffas are water and earth. And so a guffa type is all about structure. This is that earthy person. They're steady, they're loyal, they're so nurturing and so patient and strong. Physically, they tend towards being a heavier build. They have this excellent stamina. They have slow but strong digestion. They have thick hair and skin, tend to have like rounder feature, round face, round eyes. And they get the most deep sound sleep and slumber. And when a guffa person's balanced, they're actually the most resilient, grounded, loving humans in the room. They're very unshakable and they're deeply nourishing to everybody around them. They just love on and take care of everybody. But when guffaw gets out of balance, this group is sluggish. They tend to be congested, tend towards depression, feeling unmotivated, and get metabolically stuck. They have this weight that won't move, thyroid that's sluggish. They kind of get brain fog that won't lift. And they kind of feel heavy. The body starts to feel heavy in every way. And so the modern equivalent of guffaw imbalance is really this metabolic syndrome that we struggle with nowadays a lot. Insulin resistance, hypothyroidism, excess fat on the body, chronic low grade inflammation from stagnation rather than from heat. So it's like a different approach to the same issue. And so the guffaw homework I give is stimulation. We want to kindle that digestive fire in them. We want to move the body first thing in the morning and get them to move their energy. We want to give them warm cooked foods and even spicy foods to kind of ignite the system, eat lighter foods, not heavy dairy foods and things like that or oily, creamy foods. We encourage ginger and all the spices to kind of stoke their digestive fire. Turmeric and basoulia will clear what we call ama or toxin residue from their different body channels. And intermittent fasting is actually very big for guffaws because that's going to help them. It's one of the most powerful guffaw pacifying interventions that we have. And it does exactly what guffaw needs. It's going to clear your metabolic heat. It's going to clear stagnation, especially, and then restore the digestive fire.

Shivani Gupta
And so that's a pretty good summary of the three constitutions. We teach that we're all made up of all three. Everyone has a primary and a secondary. The majority of people have a primary and a secondary.

And then some small group of people are three doshik, which means balanced in all three. But when people take the quiz, you can usually see they have such strong primaries and secondaries. And then sometimes you're just living in this imbalance for so long. You identify it. You identify with it. And my job as a practitioner is always to show you, hey, take this quiz. It's on my website. My website's drshawani.com. And when they take the quiz, they always email me back. And they're like, oh my gosh, how did you know that I have all these traits from one simple quiz? And I'm like, this is ancient wisdom. It's been true for 5,000 years. And we just get to finally learn about this sandbox that comes to our health. And we get to finally play in it.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Okay. This is incredible. So many things. One, I would love to have you back in the future on the intermittent fasting podcast. And we could just do a whole episode on how to apply the dosha, like how to do intermittent fasting based on your dosha. That would be so incredible.

So a few things here. Yeah. So I, like when I said the beginning about the Pitta Vata, the reason I feel that with me is I identify, it's funny you're saying like hearing the description of the Pitta and people who identify and you know, you're that, that's what you are. Like energetically, like life wise, that is exactly how I am. I'm, I'm like driven and go, go, go and the goals and all the things. And I always feel like I said at the beginning, I have literally had off therapy sessions where I'm like talking about inflammation and my therapist will be like, Melanie, not everything is inflammation. And I'm like, but it is because I just like, I feel like I feel like my body tends toward it. I, if I were up to me, I would live somewhere where it's cold all the time. I love the winter. I do cryotherapy every day. Yeah. So I really didn't identify as that. I feel like on the outside, what I look like is a thought to like, I'm like very petite and thin. And a lot of those things that you mentioned as well, like the creativity and all of that, I do identify with that as well.

So that's why I feel like that blend, the kapha, I don't really feel much identity too. Do you think now, because you mentioned about that kapha, when it's out of balance, it often manifests more as like, like metabolic syndrome and, you know, the obesity epidemic and things like that. So I don't know if you know the like percentages of what populations, what people are. Do you think now though, there are way more, especially since you said we're born with a constitution and then with epigenetics and environment, we, you know, develop secondary constitutions. So now is there like a lot more kaphas than in the past?

Shivani Gupta
I think as a society, people are becoming more gaffa imbalanced than ever before. And that's actually the majority of the women who reach out to me. So I'll do a dosa quiz on them, or the elemental design quiz, as I call it now after writing the book. And it'll show their original constitution was pitavata. And if you do it for this current moment, they're sitting in gaffa. And that happened to me after I had kids. I've worked with women who all of a sudden, one of their parents needed caretaking. And they went and lived with their parent and started taking care of them. And your whole life slows down in a way. And gaffa's nature is to love and caretake. So if you're going to step into that mode, you're kind of going to have to slow down your life to a point where that is what you become and that's what you are.

So, for example, myself, after kids, I became very gaffa. I just wanted to love on and feed the kids and spend time. And I kind of kept that weight on for many years after having the kids. And finally, I had to step back into, I am a bita. And I had to walk myself back home to bita. And bitas love to work out and lift and push and move and do. And so it's almost like it takes time to align back to your original constitution. And I think part of it is also loving on your primary constitutions. Vatas are going to be a certain way. Gaffas are going to be a certain way. And we're living through a moment in society where we're rewarded for being bitas. We're not as rewarded for being a vata. And we're not as rewarded for being the gaffa-nurturing, loving person who's kind to everybody. And so we also have to tune into that and be really honest with, like, what is your primary? And how do you love that and live inside of that to the max?

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, to that part about the rewarding, I think, I think one of the bravest things I have done as a pitta, at least in part, has been rejecting the idea that either being busy is a badge of honor or lack of sleep is a badge of honor. Like, it's really hard for me to, I think I've done it now, but it was definitely hard to combat that and be like, you know what, maybe that's not the best all the time for me, for people.

Shivani Gupta
It's true. You know, writing a book, so many of my colleagues say writing a book is kind of one of the most insane things you can do because writing the book takes one personality. It takes the scientist, the researcher who loves to write and loves to impact and is perfectly happy being in a research mode and just locking yourself in a room and being an introvert and writing something. And then on the flip side a year later, you have to pull out a whole different person who wants to be extroverted, speak at every conference, do a huge media tour and push yourself to the absolute limit.

And when you're in the health and wellness space, like me and my friends are, we're like, this is so unhealthy. Like the sheer pace you work at for nine months to a year to get a book in the world kind of contradicts directly a healthy lifestyle. And be at every conference that's very vata and balancing. It's hard to eat healthy and clean and hold your routine on the road. Typically with flights, you're going to impact your sleep. And so I, as a bit the last year went so far, so fast. And I, I think I really hit my max max capacity. And this year I'm doing the opposite. I'm doing exactly what you're saying, which is, yes, I'm a bit and yes, I know how to be productive, but can I also really give myself space for deep rest, deep rejuvenation, bringing myself back to whole, living everything I teach in the book, like just practice my own Ayurvedic lifestyle so that I can be so recharged and bring back vitality and vibrancy. And then I'll call in the next book and do, I'm sure I'm going to do it all again, but always bringing that awareness of just cause you can push that hard because you have that Dosa doesn't mean you should and really paying attention to, to what is the lifestyle you're trying to build or what is the pace you're trying to build and ignoring what society says we should all be doing.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness, exactly. Especially with the travel piece. I'm talking about that a lot in this show because and that's definitely where you can probably see some of my bots in nature because I need my routine. And with the travel, it really stresses me out about like the, you know, the food and the sleep and how everything's out of whack. It's a bit distressing to me.

So I have to really work actively to even when I'm traveling, maintain some semblance of routine while traveling.

Shivani Gupta
Me too. I practiced it a lot last year. I've got all my own rituals around travel to balance the Vata. We call it Vata derangement, but like the Vata in balancing aspects of travel.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Yes. What are, what are some of those?

Shivani Gupta
gosh. I travel with everything I need. So I even travel with like a portable tea kettle now because I'm such a tea addict. My sister gave me her one off Amazon and it's phenomenal. So I have my tea time on time no matter where I am.

I carry my own raw organic honey and things like that. I have to take my supplements of course. I now order Uber Eats or DoorDash whatever into my hotel room and eat a grounding dinner at 6 p.m. before I go out for anyone else's dinners or networking events just so I'm grounded and ate for my time zone because a lot of times I would just show up to events and assume I could eat the food and I'm gluten-free vegetarian like I have a lot of my own food rules dairy-free most of the time so I just could not eat properly on my trip. So now I order in breakfast and dinner to my hotel room and that has been a game changer because at least I'm eating two warm grounding meals that fit my exact diet for what I need and then I feel more settled.

Melanie Avalon
Okay. We could be travel buddies. The recent epiphany I had was I need to be staying... Okay. Well, so here's the thing. I know people love like B&Bs and things like that, which are great because you get a kitchen and that would be really helpful for having your food. However, that brings in a chaotic element because you don't know what you're going to get.

So my happy medium is I just realized, oh, I need to be staying because I'm like a Marriott girl. I'm like, I need to only stay at like... Is it residence in? The one that have the full suites with the kitchens. I'm like, this is where I must say. Because then I get the consistency of the hotel. Things will feel not chaotic, but I have a kitchen. So I can... My routine is I plan the hotel around a Whole Foods. So I go to the store once I get there, get my food. I pack my own wine so that I know I'll have low alcohol organic wine. And then I... I don't know if I've said this before on the show. I don't know if I should say this. I will. I even bring an enema bucket just in case like in my suitcase, just in case like if bowels aren't moving.

Shivani Gupta
Yeah, I love this idea of staying near a whole foods genius. Mm hmm.

Melanie Avalon
Mm-hmm. So, so important. And same with you with, you know, packing your food and having a grounding meal. So, yeah, I could literally talk about this for hours.

One more question about the doshas. I was just thinking about this, and this is a super out there question. However, it is coming to me. So, you're mentioning that we're born with a certain dosha, and one of the words that you mentioned in your book, okay, and I apologize for all of the words I'm butchering, I'm sure, during this interview. How do you say it? It's the O-J-A-S, O-YAS, oh. O-JAS. O-JAS, okay. And so, I wrote down that that is the essence of vitality, the final product of complete digestion and assimilation, like the energy that you get from food. And I was thinking about it, and I was like, oh, this is kind of like in the biohacking world and the medical health world. We talk about the mitochondria and the powerhouses of ourselves and creating this energy, and so the energy you're getting from your food and digestion and assimilation into this vibe. I don't know if that's accurate. I guess that's my first question. The second question is, if that is accurate, we inherit our mitochondria from our mother. So, I'm really curious if doshas tend to reflect more the mother than the father.

Shivani Gupta
Oh my gosh, it's such a profound question. I was never taught if it came more from the mother or the father. I've never even heard it, so I'm going to assume for now that it's equal.

I have an example. My sister and I are both born to very bhitha parents. We're both our parents. We're pure bhithas, and we are both pure bhithas. We're so dominantly bhitha, and then our secondaries for both of us are kaffa. Our mother had a tendency to be a bhitha kaffa, maybe even a kaffa bhitha. No, she was bhitha kaffa. I think for now we'll call it equal because I've not read it that way, but yeah, it's so interesting that you bring up ojas with mitochondrial health because ojas is the closest Ayurvedic concept to mitochondrial health. Mitochondria is when we talk about the cellular power plants. We talk about it as our ATP and our energy. Ojas is a little bit broader than that. It's also like our immune intelligence. It's this reserve inside of us, that resilience we're looking for. That's kind of the backup plan of the body. It is our vitality, but it's also our reproductive vitality, and then it's also nervous system toning, so the nervous system tone that we have. Ojas as a concept is so important because it's really like a bridge. It's a bridge between so many different things. It's our digestive fire, which we call Agni. We can build ojas through foods and through herbs and through things like that, but what people don't realize is a lot of times when you get a surgery or you get sick and you take an antibiotic, when we knock out gut health and we kind of feel like something happened and we've been knocked off our pedestal, that thing that's missing is usually ojas because Ayurveda teaches us, when you eat your food, you have this digestive fire. When the digestive fire is strong and robust, that's kind of what we call digestive enzymes and having our butyrate and our ability to break down our foods well. When we have that, then the food's going to get fully transformed into the different layers of tissue and body parts that we need, and every layer of this transformation created leads to what we call ojas. Ojas is like this vitality, this nectar, this refined substance that's in our body that our body produces, and so we're always chasing immunity, vitality, consciousness, especially in the biohacking space. I love going to the biohacking conferences. In Ayurveda, this idea of ojas, when ojas is abundant, we have that robust immune function. We can fight off anything. We have this deep, high-quality sleep. We have this very stable energy that's really radiant without taking all of our stimulants and things like that. We have more emotional resilience. We have more mental clarity. We definitely have more strong libido, reproductive capacity, of course, because fertility is vibrancy anyways, but then we also have this glow, and so that's a lot of what I try to teach is Ayurveda's built around this entire science of how to build ojas,

Shivani Gupta
and I think that's also what we're chasing in biohacking. I'm a PEMF mat.

I have my infrared sauna. Circadian rhythm came from Ayurveda, and we teach it so beautifully and have so many tools for that in the biohacking space right now, and so I think as biohackers, we're moving around and kind of dancing around this idea of creating ojas, but sometimes we don't have the entire toolkit, and I think Ayurveda really highlights, let's really rebuild a digestive fire that's robust, and let's make sure we're giving the body these ojas foods that are nourishing so that we can have this end result of having amazing ojas in the system.

Melanie Avalon
It definitely sounds like the goal of biohacking, 100%. So speaking of, because you mentioned the food, speaking of the food, so many things I want to talk about here. One is, and for listeners, I will refer them, you must get the book because we are only briefly, barely skimming the surface of everything that's inside. So definitely get the inflammation code so that you can get all the things to briefly talk about it.

So you mentioned, you know, this Agni concept of the digestive fire and the importance of supporting it. You have a lot in the book about cooking practices and foods, and you do make it very clear that this does not necessitate Indian-style cooking. It's more cooking principles that anybody can apply. I'm fascinated because the way I eat, so first of all, I don't eat completely in the Ayurvedic style because you do talk about how there is a tendency to avoid extremes. I do intermittent fasting and I do the one meal a day pattern. So I do eat and I eat later. So I eat like a lot of food late at night and then I go to bed and it works for me though. But the one thing, especially like speaking early about the Bata nature, it's really helpful for me to have a very consistent routine with my meal. So I do that the same way every night, as far as like timing, and that's really, really grounding for me.

So some questions about the actual food practices. So you do have like a list of recommended foods that can be nourishing and helpful based on people's type. How should they adapt what they're eating? And like for me, what I will eat, and I definitely want to talk about turmeric, what I eat usually is I eat a very high protein diet. So I eat like a lot of fish, chicken, even lean steak. But then I add a ton of like cucumber, which I find cooling to the heating nature of the food. But also I know with food combining, I don't know if that's actually ideal. On the spices side, I am obsessed with ginger and turmeric to the extent that, and I have like tangent questions about turmeric as well. But to the extent that I will go through like an organic turmeric spice container, I will, I'll put like a quarter of that, like the whole bottle on my food. And for ginger the same, I'll go through like half a bottle and then I will grind up ginger. And I just realized I probably should be grinding up turmeric. So I'm curious about like fresh turmeric versus spice turmeric. That was all over the place.

Okay, so people eating for their constitution, where do they start? Where do they start?

Shivani Gupta
Okay, so yeah, that's a three part question. That's eating for your elemental design. Then it was food combining, food combination. And then it went into turmeric, which is a big old topic.

Okay, so let's start with food predosha. When we talk about Vata Pitankava people, we definitely always are going to have food recommendations. So when someone sits down with me, I do either 20 minute discovery calls with people for free, because I just love to understand like, what is the problem? And can I help you in 20 minutes? And if I can't, I'm like, either you need a full consultation, we need to dig deep. Or let me refer you to one of my favorite functional medicine friends, because I go to so many different functional medicine docs. And I'm lucky I have a supplement company that's carried by 1000s of doctors, I have vetted through 1000s and picked all my favorites. And I'm in South Florida. So here I'll be like, you need to go to this chiropractor, you need to go to that person. But it's interesting when you look at these elemental designs, a Vata person is of course meant to eat warm cooked foods. We want the foods to be warm, moist, because the Vata person is very dry, grounding, because the Vata person is so much air, and consistent because Vata energy is very erratic. So it makes sense that you're very consistent with your food.

Ayurveda would not recommend the level of intermittent fasting you're doing. I know. I read I was like, Oh,

Melanie Avalon
man.

Shivani Gupta
But I totally hear you, right? Like we're all on a path of discovery to figure out what works for us at different times in our lives. And we're meant to morph and transition with it as needed. So if you have found something that works for you, it works for you. And there's no rule that can go against that.

In the end, it's our body is bio-individual and IRV the honors that you have to figure out the best plan for your body. And so the best foods for a vata person are typically the warm cooked grains. So we would reach for rice or oats or quinoa, root vegetables, anything that's a fall food is a root vegetable usually. So you're talking sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, pumpkin, squash, all of those are super nourishing and comforting to the vata type. We always recommend healthy fats. So ghee, avocado, coconut oil, these things. We like warm spiced milk. So like a fall drink that's a latte would fit with what we'd recommend to a vata. We recommend dates, soaked almonds, all nuts are pretty much good for vatas because it's a warming food to the system. We like well cooked legumes, beans, lentils, all with spices. That's definitely a more Indian type of cooking, but you could cook lentils any which way. And we like those because it's a grounding warm nourishing food to a vata type. And then eggs, fish, chicken, all those things cooked warm are also good. And when it comes to vatas, we recommend avoiding raw salad, cold smoothies, frozen foods, anything cold basically.

We recommend avoiding crackers or dry foods or rice cakes, cause they're already so dry. We recommend reducing total caffeine. So no excessive caffeine since your vatas already gonna be kind of hyper and energetic. We recommend not skipping meals or doing the extended fasting like I said. And then we're also gonna talk about eating style. Like a lot of what I wrote about in the book is how you eat and when you eat and how that is as important or more important than what you eat. Here in the West, we're really obsessed with like what's your diet? Are you carnivore? Are you keto? Are you paleo? Cause whatever diet you're doing is like how we self identify. So I'm actually less worried about what people eat because we will keep morphing with what we eat usually. But how to eat is a big piece of Ayurveda because that decides will you digest and will you absorb nutrition from the food you're eating?

Whatever it is you're eating. So we talk about three warm meals a day at consistent times. That could be two meals a day. In your case, it is one meal a day. But we like, if it's a vata, our usual homework is three square meals a day, never skipping breakfast. I know in intermittent fasting nowadays, we usually push breakfast late, but I still usually eat like a small breakfast, lunch, and then dinner. Eating in a very calm environment. So like no screens, no rushing, really paying attention. We talk about small meals, like three square meals is really the homework for a vata. And then chewing slowly because we know the vata digestion is really irregular.

Shivani Gupta
So really like focus on your food, take a deep breath before you eat it, and really focus on that nourishment going into your body by being conscious of that meal time. So that's for vata. I went into vata in more detail because you are a vata. The bitha people, it's typically eat the cooling foods, eat an anti-inflammatory diet, be more moderate, eat so you're actually satisfied. If you're a bitha and you aren't satisfied for the level of stress and the way bithas push themselves, they will keep reaching for sugar. So I meet a lot of people who say, oh my God, I'm a chocoholic, I just can't help myself, I need sugar. Whenever we crave sugar or something that has a sugar like sweetness on the inside of us, it's because we're anxious or stressed and sugar cools us down. And that's a pretty powerful point to think about.

I'm a bitha and when I get stressed, I have specific little things I reach for. Dark chocolate almonds or these little treats and things I buy for myself. And every time I reach for one, I'm like, what is it? What is the problem today? Like, what is it? And I'm like, well, my team did this, my kid is this. So you can usually ascertain what is the reason why you're doing that and instead reach for a different bitha cooling food like cucumbers you mentioned or coconut water or things like that. So pitas should eat less spicy food, so less black pepper, hot sauce, and chili sauce, which pitas love. Less alcohol, because it aggravates pitas. Less fried, oily foods. Less red meat when possible, it's harder to digest. But of course, everyone's got their own diets right now. Less fermented foods for the pitas. And pitas are not meant to skip meals, because pitas get really hungry, and they are intense in their hunger.

And so it's just important to make sure you're eating your three meals within your time windows that matter for you. Largest meal at midday is important for pitas, because that's when our ugny, or our digestive fire is the strongest. So you're not meant to try to get by with a salad and something small. You're meant to eat your big, robust meal at lunch. And then pitas, we kind of need cool a room temperature water, no ice water. We tend to just run really hot. And so it's just about that regulation of the fire, and eating on time really helps with that. And then you can also use cooling herbs. So turmeric, mint, coriander, even fennel are very cooling herbs. And then finally with guffa. Guffa, we need to ignite the fire in the guffa. So they need foods that are lighter, warmer, spiced, or stimulating, or just really simple, easy to digest. And so with guffa, we avoid dairy, wheat, heavy grains, like cold foods, right out of the fridge, not eating big meals. Guffas might want those big, huge comfort meals. We don't want that. We want more moderate sized. And so guffas can eat, they can eat legumes. They can eat lighter proteins, like chicken, turkey, fish, eggs.

Shivani Gupta
All the warming spices are good for them. They can eat the lighter grains. They can eat pungent vegetables. So things like onion, garlic, Brussels sprouts, leafy greens, things like that. So they can eat a pretty robust diet, but it should just be one where, in guffa's case, two meals a day is more than fine because a big intermittent fast is amazing for them.

They're also a largest meal at midday group. We all are technically. Guffa's digestion is slowest in the morning. So light or no breakfast is actually good for them. And they should only eat when they're genuinely hungry. They shouldn't even eat because they think they should eat the meal. They should eat when they know they have their actual hunger cues. And they can actually use a lot of spices like the turmeric and ginger to heat up the aspects of the food and make it all digest better for them.

Melanie Avalon
I definitely, hearing the descriptions, yeah, I definitely feel like a combination of the vata pitta with the foods that I gravitate towards. And the mid-day is really interesting because a while ago, like a few years ago, I went and I tried to, as objectively as possible, literally just research the different hormones that are released throughout the day. So like insulin and ghrelin and leptin and like, when are these actually happening and when does it look like we should be eating? And I came to the conclusion that if I'm like as objective as possible, it looks like mid-day is about the time to eat.

So that makes sense. The quick question about the, oh, is the, so the fermented, the no fermented foods for the pitta or reducing them, is that because of the histamine?

Shivani Gupta
I think so. Now that we understand histamine, I think so because I have tried to eat fermented foods forever as a pitta, and they drive me nuts.

I don't feel good after, and I keep doing it because they're prebiotic rich foods, and my body every time says no. So yes, I think that is the reason.

Melanie Avalon
I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna check later. I found, because I'm the exact same way. And yet I do so many episodes on gut health. I'm like, I need to be doing fermented foods. I don't know why. I found this one brand that is amazing from Whole Foods. And I like tolerate it so well. So I'll tell you, maybe it's like, maybe it'll help you too.

But okay, so another question about, so the turmeric and the spices. So like I said, I put an exuberant amount, a shocking amount on my food. What are your thoughts on that? And in turmeric, when it's in its spice form, like powder form versus grinding it raw, is there a difference there? And with the pepper especially, it's interesting. So I know I hear over and over that, pepper with turmeric and curcumin, and I guess we can talk about the, well, the differences between those, that it massively increases the absorption level. And somebody had told me in the past on an episode that you actually shouldn't add pepper because of how it was inhibiting certain enzymes and it actually wasn't doing what you wanted it to be doing. I don't know, I took that to heart. So you can take this home with you. Reading your book, I finally was like, you know what? This is silly. There's only one person who ever said that and everybody else says, do the pepper.

So I actually started adding, after reading your book, I started adding pepper to my food, like grinding it at night. I got a red, green, white blend because I felt like that wouldn't be as hot for my slightly pitta nature. Spices and their dried form versus the raw form, is that important? And why is turmeric so great?

Shivani Gupta
Amazing term works my favorite topic so I was doing my master's in Ayurvedic sciences and my dream was I'm gonna write books and change the world because if we read these books will understand Ayurveda's the best and I've been teaching Ayurveda for about 20 years now and practicing it and When I did my master's in the herbology class the professor started going over the benefits of all the herbs from Ayurveda So ginger ashwagandha chathavri some of these I've mentioned but like we have so many others fennel It's a human coriander all the ones we cook with and then all the ones we give medicinally as solutions And when he got to turmeric, I was like, are you kidding me? Turmeric could have done all of this my whole life. Like do you know my whole family's diabetic? My whole family has heart disease. Everyone gets a stroke Like I grew up sick as a dog every day of my whole life and this one spice could have saved me This doesn't make sense.

And so my advisor was like if you're so interested in it Let's do the PhD that I want you to do on turmeric So my whole PhD dissertation was on the spice turmeric and so it's my favorite topic to talk about ever I think it's the best thing since sliced bread and so to answer your initial question When we talk about the turmeric plant in ancient Ayurveda They didn't really use fresh turmeric fresh turmeric is what you buy at the store. It looks like ginger It's just orange on the inside fresh turmeric is really warming and they used to pickle it They'd use it as a garnish, but they didn't really cook with fresh turmeric And nowadays a lot of people are doing turmeric ginger shots putting their fresh turmeric in their morning shake They tell me that all the time and I hear it. I Have a lot of the whole benefits of something so I understand the logic But I don't recommend fresh turmeric. That's like if you want to use it go for it. I don't touch fresh turmeric I don't think it's effective enough for what I need now when you take fresh turmeric and you dry it into the spice The spice turmeric that's like your kitchen culinary spice that we buy at the health food store. Yes cook with it It's beneficial when you cook with it. Make sure you're adding black pepper or a healthy fat The black pepper increases the absorption by 2,000% and then the healthy fat will help it cross the blood-brain barrier And it also increases the absorption.

Shivani Gupta
So there's a whole team black pepper out there and there's a whole team healthy fat There's actually no apples to apple studies comparing the two Yet, I hope to fund that one in this lifetime I have a lot of turmeric science I want to fund and that's one of them But for now, I'm team black pepper and I always say just take it with a healthy meal that has healthy fat and you'll get that other absorption benefit as well and Regular turmeric is beneficial the spice but out of the entire turmeric plant only three to five percent of it is the curcuminoids and the Curcuminoids are what we've studied to date as being the most effective part at reducing inflammation and so there's this big movement around turmeric being one of the most powerful natural anti-inflammatories that we have and That's why there's so much interest in it But when we start to look at the molecular Pharmacology aspects of turmeric we start to realize that it has so much benefit that we don't even recognize And what I find fascinating is we're talking about omega-3s all the time as like, oh my gosh you go to the doctor They say you're inflamed and they tell you to take omega-3s and I'm like turmeric actually approaches so many more inflammatory pathways So we know that those curcuminoids are the most effective part at helping to inhibit NF kappa B And when we talk about NF kappa B, that's a master genetic switch that controls your entire inflammatory cascade So when when NF kappa B is activated it turns on Cox to TNF alpha interleukin 1 beta and interleukin 6 simultaneously So curcumin and turmeric from mother nature Doesn't just address one problem. It addresses the entire system at once and Curcumin can kind of ship switch off the inflammation at the source It also activates nRF2, which is our master antioxidant pathway.

So when nRF2 is activated We know that your cells start producing their own glutathione Their own ability to fight against reactive oxidative species And what I love is curcumin goes in and prevents that pathway So it helps to reduce oxidative species and prevent them from starting in the first place And so curcumin is one of the most potent natural nRF2 activators known to science right now And then for all the biohackers in the room, curcumin also activates the AMPK pathway. And that's the same pathway that's activated by metformin, by exercise, and by fasting. And so AMPK is your cellular energy sensor, basically, in the body. And when it's on, your cells shift into repair mode. Your glucose production slows down, but your fat burning also accelerates. So when you take curcumin, you're getting this fasting-mimicking effect, but from a plant, which I think is so cool. And then the fourth thing, which I'm pretty obsessed with, is brain health. Curcumin can cross the blood-brain barrier. It can upregulate BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is literally our fertilizer for new neuron growth. And so we know that declining BDNF is one of those markers for cognitive aging.

Shivani Gupta
And I have been speaking on a lot of different Alzheimer's summits, brain health summits, and things like that. And I think the new world that I want to step into is how curcumin can help us when it comes to neurocognitive function, because just in Alzheimer's, you can nerd out on curcumin stopping amyloid plaques from forming tau tangles. It creates neurogenesis. It creates mitogenesis. And so because you have a more advanced audience, I shared that science. Typically on a podcast, what I say is it's anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. And it functions like this janitor, like this ultimate janitor. It goes in the body and it clears out malignant cells, senescent cells, which are zombie cells. It clears out what doesn't belong, bad bacteria, but leaves the good, while also helping to heal leaky gut and these things that we know most of us are struggling with. So that's my spiel on turmeric.

I could go on and on, because I do speak on lots of different summits on it. But I think turmeric has this allure because it's mother nature's creation. It has this plant intelligence to it. Our body knows how to receive that intelligence and use it the way it needs. And then for the last 11 years, I've had my own formula around it, because once I did the PhD, everyone was like, well, who should I take? And I was like, I don't know. And I went to the health food stores. I went to Whole Foods, Sprouts, all these places, and looked on the shelf and studied the labels. And honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails of whose is better. And I ended up partnering with a factory back then and creating my own. And my goal was, can I change all of orthopedic medicine? Because if curcumin is such an anti-inflammatory, why, when I go to ortho, do they put me on NSAIDs for 10 days back then? And that's what I've been able to prove to ortho, hand over fist is we can switch to turmeric. And then my dream is to shift every other subspecialty of Western medicine.

Melanie Avalon
Oh my goodness. Amazing. Okay.

So, and I, I know we're out of time. So just to quickly wrap that up. And the reason you made your supplement line is why I did mine. Like you got to, you got to create like the version you want of the thing. So if I, like, for example, I'm eating, you know, exuberant amount of dried turmeric, like my fingernails are perpetually yellow from it. It's actually a problem. Would I still benefit from taking a curcumin supplement?

Shivani Gupta
Yes, so we can use both. We can use the spice turmeric, which I mean, in my home, we eat it in all of our dinners every day. We eat Indian food and we cook with it even in our Mexican food.

We'll put it in the different dishes and you can take curcumin supplementation as well because when we reach for the supplement level, then we're going to get that therapeutic dosing to significantly reduce inflammation and get all these other benefits.

Melanie Avalon
Amazing. Okay.

So if listeners would like to get your curcumin supplements, which I haven't looked at your lineup, I'm assuming it's there and that you have a lot of options, they can use the coupon code Melanie Avalon. What's the website for?

Shivani Gupta
that. My website is FusionaryFormulas.com. F-U-S-I-O-N-A-R-Y. FusionaryFormulas.com. And then my website for the elemental design and the book and everything is DrShivani.com. S-H-I-V-A-N-I.

Melanie Avalon
Awesome. Well, we will put all of that in the show notes. Again, listeners go to fusionaryformulas.com use the coupon code Melanie Avalon.

And in the show notes, we'll put a link to Dr. Shivani's seven day inflammation detox challenge and her anti inflammatory e-cookbook. So thank you so much for this. We only barely scratched the surface. I could ask you 50 million more questions. I will not. So hopefully we can have you back in the future. And the last question I ask every single guest on the show, super easy, super brief. And it's just because I really appreciate gratitude. So what's something that you're grateful for.

Shivani Gupta
I am so grateful that I found Ayurveda and Ayurveda found me because I was so desperate to rebuild a body that was actually healthy, that actually felt great. And at this point in my life, I feel like I'm full of vitality and energy and I'm just so grateful that I get to spread this wisdom with the world.

Melanie Avalon
Well, you are definitely doing that. So thank you so much for all that you do. And can't wait to talk to you more in the future and just thank you so much. Thank you.

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 When Wine, as well as my supplement line Avalon X. Please visit Melanie Avalon.com to learn more about today's guests and always feel free to contact me at contact at Melanie Avalon.com.

And always remember, you got this.