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Tag: Circadian rhythm

Fasting in Ayurveda: Beyond Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss

Fasting has become one of the biggest health trends in recent years. You have probably heard of intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, or 16:8 fasting.   Researchers have spent years studying these patterns, and studies suggest that giving your body regular breaks from food can improve metabolism and support overall health.   But before fasting even became popular, Ayurveda had already recognized its value. More than 2,000 years ago, Ayurveda described this approach as Langhana. Rather than viewing fasting simply as a way to lose weight, Ayurveda viewed it as a method to help the digestive system recover and function better.   In the Charaka Samhita, one of Ayurveda’s oldest and most fundamental texts, there are two approaches to treatment. One is Brimhana, which means nourishing and strengthening the body. The other is Langhana, which is to make the body lighter.   Langhana includes fasting, eating less, or taking lighter meals over a period of time to give your digestive system a chance to improve.   Both approaches are used for different situations. Someone who is weak and recovering from illness may need Brimhana to rebuild their strength, while someone who feels sluggish, heavy, and has poor digestion will benefit from Langhana.   There’s one important distinction we need to understand here. Langhana and fasting are not the same thing.   In Ayurveda, Langhana is the broader therapeutic principle of lightening the body and reducing the burden on digestion and metabolism. It is one of the two fundamental approaches to Chikitsa.   Fasting, or Upavasa, is simply one of the methods used to achieve Langhana.   In the Charaka Samhita, Langhana is described through Dashavidha Langhana, or ten methods of producing the lightening effect in the body. Upavasa (fasting) is one of them. Others include Atapa Sevana, therapeutic exposure to sunlight; Pipasa, controlled restriction of water intake in carefully selected situations; Vyayama, exercise; and Deepana-Pachana, therapies that stimulate digestion and help clear accumulated Ama.   The approach always depends on the person’s Agni, strength, disease, and overall constitution.   This is an important difference in how fasting should be discussed today. Ayurveda never treated fasting as something everyone should be doing. It was only recommended when the body needed it.   Digestion Comes First   In Ayurveda, digestion is the centre of health.   When Agni works well, food is broken down properly, nutrients are absorbed, and waste is eliminated. That is when the body stays healthy.   But if digestion is weak, it may result in the formation of Ama, leaving you with signs like bloating, sluggishness, and heaviness.   The underlying problem is very simple. A digestive system that is constantly overloaded with food might not work efficiently. Sometimes, instead of adding more food, you can benefit by consuming less or having less to process.   That is why the approach of Langhana exists. It gives the digestive system time to soothe, recover, and catch up, because your body also needs rest.   Where Modern Science Meets Ayurveda   While modern science and Ayurveda explain the body differently, they have arrived at similar conclusions about fasting.   In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his work on the mechanisms of autophagy.   Autophagy is the process where cells internally break down and recycle damaged components. His subsequent research showed that fasting can activate autophagy, essentially giving cells the chance to clear out accumulated waste that has been building up from continuous eating.   This is the cell’s self-cleaning process. At a conceptual level, this may appear similar to the Ayurvedic idea of clearing Ama, although the two come from very different frameworks.   There was also research led by neuroscientist Mark Mattson, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which described what is now called the metabolic switch.   You might have heard of this phrase. It is the shift that occurs roughly 12 hours or more into a fast, when your body moves from burning readily available glucose to burning stored fat and producing ketones.   This switch has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammatory markers, and improve stress resistance at the cellular level.   Separately, there was also research led by biologist Satchin Panda, who focused on time-restricted eating.   His studies commonly examined eating within an 8 to 12 hour window rather than eating across 14 to 16 hours. Trials in this area have linked consistent eating windows with improvements in blood sugar regulation, blood pressure, and body composition.   He also proposed that the digestive system and metabolic organs like the liver, pancreas, and gut all operate on their own daily rhythms. Giving them a predictable time to rest each day allows them to function more efficiently rather than processing food unpredictably around the clock.   This is interesting when viewed alongside the Ayurvedic concept of Dinacharya, which has long emphasized regularity and consistent meal timings. The emphasis Ayurveda has always placed on regular timing and regular intervals of food, combined with Langhana.   Ayurveda has never separated these pieces of advice. They were always treated as part of the same principle for supporting the digestive system.   The Real Takeaway   The point I’m trying to make is not that Ayurveda has been proven right by science.   No.   The more accurate and useful point is that two very different systems, despite being separated by thousands of years and built on completely different ways of understanding the body, have independently arrived at the same core insight. Our digestive system needs structured, deliberate breaks to recover and function well.   And this is not the same thing as simply eating less overall.   These few simple principles behind Langhana are worth holding on to.   Consistent meal timings matter just as much as what your meal contains. Leaving real gaps between meals is important because it gives the digestive system a chance to do its job.   Not everyone needs the same… Continue reading Fasting in Ayurveda: Beyond Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss

Ayurveda Does Not Need Modernization. It Needs to Be Understood.

Biology concept with retro science cartoon icons set vector illustration

People often ask me if Ayurveda is finally catching up with modern science. I understand why they ask this. But the question itself is backwards.   Ayurveda was never behind. It has always offered its own framework for understanding health. What has changed is the way we explain those principles today.   What we are seeing now, across nutrition science, sleep research, and gut health, is not Ayurveda catching up to modern medicine. It is modern research increasingly exploring ideas that Ayurveda has emphasized for centuries.   Ayurveda has spent generations being misunderstood, explained badly, or not explained at all, which left people assuming it was outdated. And that is really the whole problem.   Before going into the specifics, we need to understand why this has happened. Modern medicine, especially over the last century, has often focused on identifying specific biological mechanisms and treating individual disease processes.   This approach has led to remarkable advances. But it can sometimes overlook the broader interactions between systems that shape overall health.   When research focuses on one mechanism at a time, it can sometimes miss the larger patterns connecting multiple systems.   Ayurveda approached the body from the opposite direction.   Instead of isolating single mechanisms, it observed the whole person, their digestion, their sleep, their energy, their mood, and looked for patterns across all of it. This is why Ayurveda often sounds broad or general when compared to the extensive tests and diagnosis of modern medicine.   It was never trying to explain one molecule. It was trying to explain a whole living person.   Let’s start with food, for example, because this is where the pattern is easiest to see.   Personalized Nutrition Is Not a New Idea   Right now, precision nutrition is one of the fastest growing fields in medical research. Scientists have found that two people can eat the exact same meal and have completely different reactions to it.   This has led to a shift away from generic diet advice and toward plans built around a person’s genetics, metabolism, and gut bacteria.   One of the most important principles of Ayurveda is built on this very idea, and it is called Prakriti.   Prakriti describes a person’s unique constitution, the combination of physical and mental characteristics that influences how they respond to food, environment, and disease. And this is not just a philosophical idea.   Researchers have also explored possible biological correlates of Prakriti including genes associated with metabolism and immune function.   Much of this research is still developing. But it does show that the idea behind Prakriti reflects something real in human biology.   Circadian Rhythm and the Ayurvedic Daily Routine   Another area getting a lot of attention in medicine today is circadian rhythm, the internal body clock that controls sleep, digestion, hormone release, and energy levels throughout the day. Researchers have found that eating late at night, sleeping at irregular hours, or ignoring the body’s natural rhythm can affect metabolism and long term health.   Though this field of study is fairly young in modern medicine, Ayurveda addressed this through Dinacharya, a daily routine built around the sun, the seasons, and the body’s natural rhythm.   I think this is one of the easiest ideas for people to test in their own lives.   Most people already know, from personal experience, that eating dinner very late at night leaves them feeling heavier and sleeping worse than eating dinner a few hours earlier.   You can also notice how waking up at a different time every day affects your energy levels. You feel more tired than waking up at a consistent time, even if the total hours of sleep are the same.   Ayurveda took these everyday observations seriously enough to build them into a structured daily practice, long before modern science had language like circadian rhythm or clock genes to describe what was happening.   The value here is not that Ayurveda predicted modern chronobiology in exact scientific terms. It did not. But it recognized that timing matters just as much as what you eat or how you move.   Gut Health and the Concept of Agni   Gut health has become one of the most talked about topics in wellness and medicine today. Scientists are studying how the trillions of bacteria living in our digestive system affect everything from immunity to mood.   There is a lot we do not yet understand about how food interacts with the body at this level.   Ayurveda approached digestion differently, through the concept of Agni, often translated as digestive fire. Agni refers to the body’s ability to break down food, absorb nutrients, and convert them into energy. When Agni is weak, Ayurveda considers it a root cause of many health problems, not just digestive ones. This idea predates any understanding of gut bacteria or the microbiome. It came from observing how people responded to food, and how digestion connected to their overall health.   Where the Real Gap Actually Is   None of this means Ayurveda has all the answers or that it should replace modern medicine. It has its own limits. But it needs better understanding.   Ayurveda has always encouraged us to observe ourselves. It asks us to pay attention to how we eat, how we sleep, how we respond to the seasons, and how our daily choices shape our health over time. These are not complicated ideas. They are practical ones.   Ayurveda does not need to become modern. It needs to be understood.