| The Muncie Star, Sunday, December 1, 1985 |
Section B-Page 5
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Feeling Bad? Doshas Might Not Be Right
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For The Muncie Star Are your doshas in balance? If so, you could attain perfect health and add years to your life. According to Muncie physician Dr. John C. Peterson, everyone has doshas in varying degrees - we're born with them. They are the governing properties of movement, structure, and heat and metabolism for the building blocks in the body. The Harvard School of Public Health and Ayurveda experts have developed this holistic health service by combining western risk factor analysis approaches and eastern health and prevention approaches. Ayurveda, India's ancient system of medicine, Peterson said, is based on the belief that with balanced doshas humans will benefit by increased energy, improved sleep patterns, better appetite and digestion and enhanced mental, emotional and physical well-being. Peterson has added the Ayurvedic Prevention Center in his medical office to |
stress individualized
health prevention programs. The programs, Peterson said, are based upon the body type of the doshas, which are vata, pitta or kapha. Skin, hair color, pulse, tastes and joint size are among many parameters used to define the body type and then determine specific health prevention programs for diet, exercise and lifestyle, as well as susceptibility to disease, according to Peterson. He said Ayurveda emphasizes daily and seasonal routines. Because different routines and foods are needed in different seasons for dosha equilibrium, this new regimen might cause tossing out nuts for sunflower seeds or watching late night news early in the morning. Although the regime's recommendations do not restrict foods, it suggests reducing certain ones that might cause imbalance in the doshas. For example, tomatoes and hot spicy foods aggravate pitta through July to October; bananas and oily foods for kapha from March to June, and apples and bitter foods for vata through November to February. However, the diet should |
include a sampling
of the six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Peterson became interested in the diagnostic techniques after seeing patients periodically during late summer and early fall who complained of peptic ulcer flare-ups. He later learned this is pitta season and the patients were eating hot spicy foods, an aggravator for that time of year. He believes the diagnostic value of such service for physicians is unlimited since there are no incompatibilities between the western and eastern approaches; there are correlations with Type A personality and pitta person, hypertension and vata person, and elevated cholesterol and kapha person. The Ayurveda program deals with all aspects of life - body, mind, senses and environment. It is designed for the prevention of disease and the promotion of health and longevity. The center, through Peterson's medical office, will offer 1-day information workshops each month. For more information about the center, call 747-2955. |