Towards suryaharam

Following up on previous post, time for some status check on shift to suryaharam. Modern food system involves staggering amounts of intervention between the time food is produced (suryaharam stage) and when it ultimately reaches the mouth.  Yesterday, i made a list of the intervening steps.

Stage-1: Food production process itself

• Application of pesticides, herbicides etc, traces of which enter our bodies ultimately.
• Genetically modified foods.
• Treat cows with antibiotics, growth hormones etc, to boost up production.

Stage-2: post-production processing steps

• “Polish”. Remove almost all of nutrient rich husk from rice, wheat etc.
• Add preservatives, colors and other agents
• Pasteurize/homogenize milk
• Treat some foods with radiation
• Long term refrigeration for storage
• Apply wax for shine

Stage-3: Post-purchase processing at home

• Heat, pressure cook, oil fry etc
• Add salts, oils, refined sugar etc
• refrigerate

These are just off the top of my head. Iam sure there are many many more steps involved. We can imagine how much potency of the food is lost, during these steps. My goal is to consume foods which have gone through least number of intervening steps. There’s a limit on how many steps can be eliminated when one lives in an urban environment (for example, difficult to get fully organic food), but there’s a lot i can work on even within those limitations.

So far, following are the specific steps i have taken:

• Increased water intake. I’ve also been conscious of when to take that water (preferably on empty stomach, Atleast 2 hrs gap after meal etc)
• Breakfast is 100% suryaharam. hurray !! Mainly consisting of sprouts, based on MSR’s recommendation.
• Trying to avoid coffee. I used to drink coffee first thing in the morning, but now i almost got rid of that habit. May have small shot sometime mid-morning if needed. The goal is to make it very very occasional, if at all.
• No changes to lunch. Standard indian vegetarian food.
• Have early dinner, say around 7pm. The trick is to make it light and rest the system at night. Some days i just had fruits for dinner, some days fruits + curd rice. Still experimenting..

This is just the very beginning. Over the next few months, I plan to shift to a predominantly suryaharam diet. Lets see how it plays out ….

Listening to the body — two years later

In November 2007, i put up a post titled “listening to the body“. In that post, i referred to one Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju (MSR) and his natural life style ideas. Since then, even though i came across his programs on TV once in a while, i did not follow up and look into his ideas deeply. Big mistake !

Only recently, i happened to visit a store that promotes his ideas, and picked up couple of books written by him. He writes exclusively in Telugu, although some English translations are available. ( I picked up the Telugu versions, and it was great to read Telugu after long time ! Ancient wisdom is best read in a native language ! ).

What i now realize (two years late) is that his works are filled with great wisdom and common sense, and well grounded in science. As i read his works, iam stunned at how unnatural and messed up our modern eating practices are. Even normal Indian vegetarian diet (which i take, and which is normally considered “healthy”), does not appear healthy or natural anymore.

The core of MSR’s thesis is that cooked food is unnatural form of food for human body. He makes a fundamental distinction between “suryaharam” (food cooked by Sun), and food cooked on Fire. Suryaharam (Solar food) is grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts etc. This food is already “cooked” by Sun’s energy from elements of the Earth (water, air, minerals etc). MSR’s thesis is that this Solar food, taken directly, is the most natural food for a human body, and cooking this Solar food in fire makes it unnatural for consumption by human body. He says that most diseases have origin in this consumption of unnatural foods, and other unhealthy eating practices.

MSR gives a convincing defense of his thesis in his books, so i won’t reproduce it here. What he says makes great sense to me even from simple common sense point of view. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years, surviving directly on uncooked natural food. Fire is a relatively recent discovery compared to the evolutionary history of our bodies, and having a large percentage of our diet as cooked food is an even more recent phenomenon. So, it makes great sense to me that food cooked by Sun is the most appropriate and natural for our bodies. Also, Human being is the only species that cooks food on fire ! Another clear hint !

In food debates, we often hear about inorganic vs organic food, and GM vs non-GM food etc. We rarely hear about the impact of cooking foods. It now seems to me that this parameter is important too.

To start natural food life style, MSR recommends slowly adding more “solar food” in one’s diet. Solar food is nothing fancy. Just more sprouts, more fruits and more raw vegetables. Ofcourse, not just randomly adding, but there is a specific routine he recommends based on his observation of bodies needs and cycles. The eventual goal is to have say 75% solar food and rest cooked food. If one is totally in, one can shift to 100% solar food. Cooked vs Uncooked, is just one aspect of the debate. MSR’s system includes other aspects like avoiding salt, having more water, avoiding oils, time of eating, role of fasting etc etc. Iam just starting to incorporate each habit into my routine. I’ll blog every two weeks on the specific steps i’ve taken and how it’s going.

I feel that taking care of the environment of the body is an essential component of environmentally sustainable living. Activism starts at home.

Breath

Sometimes, a small paragraph can convey important message in clearest terms. These golden nuggets ought to be preserved. I came across one such paragraph today, while reading “Anatomy of Hatha Yoga” by H.David Coulter.

It’s about the importance of breath. First, Dr. Coulter gives an overview of how the two types of nervous system Somatic and Autonomic, interact with each other to regulate our breath. Now comes the kicker:

“All of our concerns so far have been with how the nervous system influences breathing. These are all widely recognized. What is not as well-known is that different methods of breathing can affect the autonomic nervous system and have an impact on the functions we ordinarily consider to be under unconscious control. Abnormal breathing patterns can stimulate autonomic reactions associated with panic attacks, and poor breathing habits in emphysema patients produce anxiety and chronic overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. By contrast, quiet breathing influences the autonomic circuits that slow the heartbeat and reduce blood pressure, producing calm and a sense of stability. Our ability to control respiration consciously gives us access to autonomic functions that no other system of the body can boast“. (emphasis mine)

Because breath is such a powerful force than what it appears to a casual observer, we also hear warnings that one should be careful in performing breathing exercises, and it is often advised that techniques (especially advanced exercises) should be learned from experts.

Listening to the body

(our body’ cells maintain a lesser concentration of sodium and greater concentration of potassium within the cells, relative to their concentration outside the cells. Sodium-potassium pumps numbering in thousands for each cell, do this active transport using energy from ATP. A simple animation is available here. Image sourced here)

Carrying a bit a motivation from the idea of human possibilities that i talked about in the previous post, i decided to embark on a self-designed “self-improvement” program What better place to start with, than our physical system itself ! As the cliche goes, a sound mind in a sound body. Our human body is ofcourse a mind-boggling-ly complex ecosystem of about one hundred trillion cells. phew ! To put things in perspective, a stack of one hundred trillion one-dollar bills measures 6,786,616 miles. That would be traversing earth to the moon and back, 14 times. (math here). Our bodies are really an “ecosystem” in the sense that all these cells are individual units of life in themselves (going by a broad definition of “life”), but co-operating with each other through chemical and electrical signals, to make the whole organism possible, and to keep the organism in homeostasis as much as possible. Ofcourse, if we take the body’s ability for rejuvenating and repairing itself for granted, and keep on badgering it with unhealthy life-style and food choices, it will show up one day as a disease.

Perhaps, there is a lesson here in terms of Earths ecology too, in that there is a limit to Earths ability to maintain homeostasis and life-as-we-know-it as well. I love this analogy of looking at Earth as an giant organism (romantically referred by some as Gaia). Species of the earth maybe taken as it’s cell’s. Forests, composed of tree-cells, are the lungs of the Earth. Rivers, it’s blood vessels, carrying life-giving water to various cells. Oceans, it’s heart, pumping water through the river vessels. Bacteria, its digestive system, recycling matter into elements… and so on, depending on how much you’d like to flex those imagination muscles. You might have already sensed where iam going with this. Imagine what might happen to our health, if we alter our body’s system, in the scale we are altering Earths system. We have to appreciate that Earth is maintaining homeostasis pretty ok .. so far. But we take it for granted, at our peril.

Anyway, as i decided to look for natural living ideas, i remembered one guy who comes on a local TV channel. I googled his name, and fortunately he has a decent website going. Dr.Raju’s Natural lifestyle. Check out the material in Ebooks section. We might find some of his recommendations to be extreme, but hey, “extreme” is relative. Fast-food lifestyle will look extreme to him Anyway, i picked some reco’s that i thought i’d be able to incorporate in my life right way. One of the things he talks about is salt, and he’s quite bearish on it. As i wanted to understand a bit of science behind it, i picked up a human physiology book, and looked for the effects of excess salt on our bodies. Boy, i was surprised ! Whoever thought too much of good old common salt could trigger so many changes in our body ! For starters, a bit of excess common salt will result in:

1. Water rushing out from intra-cellular fluid to interstitial fluid and blood plasma, because of osmosis.
2. This results in increased blood volume, due to increase in water content. And so, increased stretching of atria of the heart. (I suspect the well-known linkage between salt intake and high blood pressure comes in here).
3. Triggers following chemical / hormone changes: Increased release of atrial natriuretic peptide, decreased release of renin by kidneys, decreased formation of angiotensin-II and decreased release of aldosterone.
4. Now the above will result in decreased reabsorption of salt (NACL) by the kidneys, and so increased loss of salt and water in urine. Thus the body attempts to maintain homeostasis by ejecting extra salt from the body.

To me, learning about body’s workings is always an exercise in wonder of its complexity and intelligence. Although body’s workings may appear mechanical, i see it as work of innate intelligence. How do we tap into this intelligence ? From “language older than words”, i remember a quote of Derrick Jensen. I’ll paraphrase here .. “listen to the land. If you listen carefully, it will tell you exactly what to do”. We may as well apply this principle to tap into body’s intelligence — Listen to the body. It gives many signals when our lifestyle goes offtrack, but one has to be in tune to listen to those subtle signals. The signals range from gross physical .. as diseases, to subtler psychological .. as disturbed mental state. In general, i think this principle works very well to keep us in good health. But, there’s a catch. The body does “like” those deep fried fast foods and host of other unhealthy stuff ! Shouldn’t we be listening to the body then ? Clearly, there seems to be an aspect of the body that we should not listen to, but rather discipline it. I guess, we need the services of judicious mind afterall, to engage in the art of listening to the body but knowing when to discipline it.