Timestamps

 

(1:27) Dr. Bhattacharya’s background

(11:55) Combining her Phd in modern medicine with a traditional Eastern approach

(20:09) What exactly is Ayurveda?

(23:04) How your dosha changes with the weather/ seasons

(34:05) How do we incorporate cultural foods into an Ayurvedic eating pattern? 

(43:00) Dr. B’s perspective on the intuitive eating movement 

(1:00:24) Dr. B’s take on why chronic disease is so common now

 

Transcript 

 

I know I don’t have to tell you this but this episode is only for educational purposes. It is not nutrition or personalized medical advice. We want you to get the most from the episode but to keep that in mind as well and we really hope you enjoy it

 

Intro to Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Michelle Shapiro

We have a supremely special guest for you today. Our doctor who is on today Dr. Bhattacharya is exceptional for more reasons than just her long exhaustive list of degrees that I’m going to read to you before she comes on today. I wanted to bring Dr Bhattacharya on for a specific reason, which is that I think for a lot of people when we think of Eastern medicine modalities like Ayurvedic , traditional Chinese medicine, we in this country oftentimes brush it off as snake oil. And the idea that these ancient practices, which are deeply scientific have been written off kind of in our society as not real quote unquote science is frustrating at the least and and deeply troubling at its worst. And what I love about Dr. Bhattacharya is she can kind of speak in the language of Ayurveda. She can speak in the language of modern medicine as she is extensively trained in both and just to kind of talk about what kind of degrees she has.

She’s beyond academically exceptional. She serves as the Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell. She earned a BA in neuroscience psychology in South Asia studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s in neuropharmacology from Columbia University. She has an MPH from Harvard University and MD from Rush University of Chicago and a PhD in ancient Indian chemistry from Banaras Hindu University in India, given the fact that Dr. Bhattacharya is trained in so many different disciplines, given the fact that she has spent so many years gathering knowledge and education I think that the fact that she practices Ayurveda mainly in her business, her practice stands out to me as something that’s truly exceptional.

And when we think about functional medicine doctors we often think, or people think of naturopathic physicians and functional medicine doctors as snake oil salesmen or as quacks. And I often think of them as being even more educated because, frankly, to be a functional medicine doctor, most of them have completed their regular boards and RMDs and then go on for additional education. So when I see someone who is so highly trained, and again, can stand her ground in an either community and has experienced, I think backlash from from both sides. She’s just the right guest for this podcast because we always try to be as rebellious as possible but also as Science-based as possible.

 And it’s funny that hear something like Ayurveda is again seen as woo-woo or outlandish when it’s been practice for a lot longer than modern modern medicine. So I wanted to bring on someone who had all these amazing degrees all this amazing knowledge and chooses to practice Ayurveda because she sees the deeply scientific aspects of it. So I am just so excited for you to meet the amazing Dr. B. Enjoy this episode. I know I enjoyed making it

Michelle Shapiro

I am elated to be sitting down with my friend colleague, Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

, we are going to cover a lot about iron beta, a lot about the dichotomy of healing and a western medicine model and just Learn from this exquisite and amazing person. I’m so excited to have you here today.

 

Dr. Bhattacharya’s Educational Background

Michelle Shapiro

So I’m going to jump into topics and everything. But of course, I first want to have a little bit of an introduction. And the way we’re going to do this introduction is, I’m going to just be pulling a little information from you about your past and your history. The reason I was so jazzed about having you on the podcast is not only because of your experience and who you are, but because your specific career path led you in a very unique way that I think is not that common.

So I definitely want to go over how your path and your career has been brought back to some of your roots in a really beautiful way. And just talk a little bit about your career. So I want to talk first about just from an education perspective. I know you have many degrees that are fantastic. And I want to talk about this unconventional pathway you took where your undergraduate degree versus your medical degree, there was a little bit of a time lapse in between. Can you tell me about that?

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah. So I started out at Princeton University. My dad wanted me to be a doctor, like, you can see, I’m Indian. So I’m parents, you know, it’s like you’re a doctor or an engineer, or you’re married off. And so I started at Princeton, and then we realized there’s no medical school, you know, on the campus. And so, my dad was at Hahnemann at the time. He’s a he’s a doctor, but he was a researcher in infertility. So I was like, Okay, well, you could go to Penn.

So I took my credits and went to Penn and studied what was a new major in neuroscience, it was the called the biological basis of behavior. So it was psychology and the social sciences, neuroscience in the kind of hard sciences. And then the humanities was Eastern philosophy. And so I did all these different interesting courses. And they they really worked well for pre med courses.

So I was determined that I was going to be a really great scientist, MD, PhD. And somewhere in there, I started in the philosophy courses, I started asking questions about what makes a person heal, how do we heal? What keeps people from healing, because in West Philadelphia, there are a lot of people that had all kinds of, you know, there was a lot of walking homeless people and a lot of mentally wounded people.

There’s a big clash between white and black people in Philly at that time, and I didn’t when I was working, I have a very sorted undergraduate history. But basically, I had to do work study and I was working in a laboratory instead of working in an easy place, like the gym or a cafeteria or something. I worked in like a library. Yeah. Because then you can study while you know, while you work and you get paid to study. I was like listening to music. Yeah, it’s totally different. Yeah, it’s totally different.

But I was working in a lab. So I was the tissue culture queen and my chairman of the department, who was the head of the lab said, why don’t you help me write this grant? And I did. And then he called me in one day and said, Hey, we got this grant. So the good news is that we got it. The bad news is that you need to double up on courses and subjects related to a PhD. So in my junior year of college, I started my PhD and worked through that I finished my undergraduate degree, wow.

And then there was a magnet program at Columbia University. And they were trying to get the best minds in neuroscience. And so I came over, I was working with amazing people like Eric Kandel, Tom just saw Michael Szalinski, Dan Goldman, really, really great researchers and scientists, and was totally in love with neuroscience. So I was very happy to be what we call the lab rat. So working at the bench, 14 hours a day.

And so I also didn’t have money for medical school, my parents did not finance my education. In fact, I was sold off to an arranged marriage that’s kind of part of the sorted undergraduate story. So when I came back, and I was independent, I didn’t have any money. And I actually was homeless for a while. I’m live like on people’s sofas and took my showers and gimbal gym and did the things one needs to do. So when I got to Colombia on a full scholarship to do a PhD, I took it because it meant I could rest and just live and just study.

And while I was doing that, I realized all my other friends went to medical school and I couldn’t, but I learned a lot. So the PhD was in the center, there was a center for neuroscience and not a department where my department was pharmacology so I specialized in drugs.

And I learned drugs and how they affect the body better than the MDS did because they only got one semester of pharmacology and I got exactly right years of biochemistry, chemistry, pharmacology, cell biology, and it was a fantastic education. I’m so lucky to have been at Columbia.

And then I was working and I met a Columbia professor who needed a research assistant to go with him to the mountains of Tibet. So lab research mountains of Tibet lab research for the mountains of Tibet. I chose the mountains, and we went and worked on bringing back some of the documents on the fifth arm of Tibetan Buddhism, which at that time was not known and That work was quite seminal in Tibetan Buddhism.

And I learned a lot about what was happening to the Tibetan people. And when I came back, I also had been working in the Tibetan Medicine Hospital, which is called the men say calm, which is like an E shaped. So there was Tibetan Medicine, Chinese medicine and modern medicine, and they were integrated.

And I really was fascinated that you could have authentic, not, like melded together, like, you know, like a stew, but separate, absolute authentic medical systems

Michelle Shapiro

that are all accepted for their truths. And their, you know, correctness and efficacy. And, and that’s really, that is really powerful. Yeah.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

And so that was a model for me very early on. And when I came back, you know, to Colombia, and so the mecca of American medicine, I was thinking, Well, why don’t they use the same things that they use in Tibet? Because they seem to work? Okay, they’re not white, shiny, standardized, and medically validated by an age, but they do work? And how come? Nobody pays attention to them? Is it because we’re up in the mountains? And or is it because they’re not I couldn’t I didn’t connect the financial part of it at that time,

Michelle Shapiro

I’m making a hand motion. I’m like, I think I know the reason.

 

The Downsides of Modern Medicine and Pharmacology

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

So when I came back, I was in New York in the summer, and I met a man who had started the UN AIDS program, I was very vehement that access to health is about human rights. And he was starting a new program on health and human rights. And he was moving up from Johns Hopkins up toward Harvard. And he said, Come with me. And so even though the program is only for physicians, I was accepted into that program.

And of course, I was able to spend a year studying and actually I started another doctorate there on population health and the right to what should we say indigenous medicines as part of good public health. So I was there with him. And I got the degree and actually ended up being the first Indian to give the graduation speech at Harvard. A neat thing.

So when I walked out, my advisor said, no, no, no, no, no, you’re not, you’re not going to do a PhD, you need to go get a medical degree in modern medicine, like, Look, I’m not interested in modern medicine. Now, I already know from the drugs, story of pharmacology, that there’s something wrong with this picture.

Because there’s a lot of people that are getting sick, that get side effects from these drugs, and they continue taking them because a doctor, you know, they put their faith in the doctors hands, and the doctors here, take this medicine, and they take it painstakingly and correctly, and they get used religiously. And it doesn’t work, first of all, and then they get those side effects.

They say, Dr. Doctor, can you please help me that, oh, let’s just change the dose. And they continue to get more side effects, and it’s not working. And so that low efficacy, high side effects start to make me a little crazy. Why did the patients not speak out and say, Hey, this is not working? Why are you giving me these side effects and pretending like this medicine works just because it works in like, 30% of people.

And remember, I’d studied pharmacology, so I knew, I knew that most of the time those medicines, it’s like, a third of the time, it works a third time, it doesn’t work. And a third time, it doesn’t work. And it harms people. So that 1/3 of the time, they’re waiting for you to see if you’re one of the 66% or that 33%. It’s kind of a scam.

And so I was like, Wait a second, if you just look at the way clinical studies are done, they’re not really done in favor of the patient. And how do I say that to people, but modern medicine is a very seductive, very Vogue thing. Sure. And so my, my mentor professor said, You better go to medical school. So I applied to medical school. And then you know, that’s why there’s such a long gap between because I had to work on those other degrees and travel and do all kinds of other stuff. And finally, it was actually kind of by force that he said, You have to go to medical school. Otherwise, I think I probably wouldn’t,

Michelle Shapiro

you’re forced into medical school. Exactly. You have to go to medical school. Again, this is another time you’ve been told you have to go to medical school.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

But you can’t change the system from the outside patients, you can listen to me today can hear someone else who knows even more than I do, but won’t listen to them because they think he’s a snake oil salesman, because he practices, some other kind of medicine. And that’s not true, this person is a real healer, but they won’t listen to that person because that person doesn’t have the degree.

Whereas if you get the degree and you say the same thing as this person, they listened to you because they feel that you’ve had a chance to evaluate it more scientifically. And then if you’re still going to say it must have some value. And so I think that’s one of the things that my education has allowed me to do is I’ve invested that time so that I can say, look, these things work with these caveats. And these things work with these caveats.

But these things, for the most part, don’t work. And by the way, while I was in training, the studies came out that show that modern medicine is a third largest cause of death in this country. When I read it, I was like, Okay, do we need to do a journal club on this? Because if it’s a third leading cause, shouldn’t we be more urgently examining

Michelle Shapiro

shouldn’t be the only thing we’re also talking about all the time. Like, that’s what it makes me I’m like, shouldn’t we be screaming about So let’s toss it under the rug, because that’s it, let’s do the opposite.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Exactly. There are some amazing epidemiologists that are doing these studies, there was a whole group of physicians for a basically for universal health care. And it was an amazing group of people that wanted a national health insurance. And one of the big speakers of it was actually a man at Cornell. And so when I joined the Cornell faculty, he was one of my mentors, Dr. Oliver, fine, and Olli is an amazing person who’s just so grounded in both being a regular medical doctor.

But also understanding that there are many reasons we need a national health plan, and one of them is to get away from the money that is fueling the decisions, it needs to be fueled by good medicine. And he trained in a time when people made decisions based on what the patient needed, and not what the patient, you know, had insurance to afford. And, and so he really influenced my way of staying in medicine, but also kind of moving toward the frontiers of what else is possible? And how do we be scientific and pay attention to the data that say that it’s a third leading cause of death?

Michelle Shapiro

And that’s like, not a good thing. And why are we, you know, why are we ignoring it, as you said, and they say the solution can’t be worse than the problem. Basically, it’s also the, you know, a big quote we hear, and please finish your story, because I’m gonna hit you so hard with a million questions following up.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

So that’s the answer to why it took me so long between undergraduate and graduate but in a being really formative for my patients, because I remember in residency, so I was at Columbia again, I came back from Chicago. And by the way, I was in Chicago because I chose it, because it was a program that was right next door to this very famous medicinal chemist named Norman’s Farnsworth who became my mentor. And he’s just an amazing medic was amazing medic, medicinal chemists. And he hired me as part of the who, Collaborating Center on traditional medicines, to work on the monographs of how to describe medicinal herbs, and put that information into the mainstream, beautiful.

 As I worked on that monograph, what was interesting is that all of these chemists wanted me to take out anything that was ethnobotanical ethnopharmacol, like basically the human side of it. Wow. And because it’s not proven, there’s no proof for it. And so but you can’t prove that a molecule, your all your molecule stuff is really tentative putative supposition. And how do you call that evidence? You know, a docking study is a chemical calculation.

It’s not real, why not put the clinical stuff in them, like, oh, but those people, they just work on traditional and indigenous practices, that’s, again, the snake oil, that’s not real medicine. Why is 1000s of years of someone practicing something and handing it down? Who been handed down handed down handed out over 100 generations? Why is that less true than someone that did something on a rat and says,

Well, if it worked in the rat than it works in the human this way, that kind of calculation, to me is less scientific. But that’s what we have been taught to believe. And if you listen to many of these science, you know, pro science people be able to talk about evidence. And I just say you wanted to talk evidence, let’s sit down and talk about evidence. Do you know what percentage of the, let’s say 3200 top recommendations in modern medicine that doctors use? What percentage of that is actual real high quality evidence based medicine?

So there’s a guy named Ian on this, epidemiologists and he’s found that it’s like 16%, is only evidence base. And the rest of it is just doctors who do what they do, because they do it, because their doctor mentors taught them to do it. And so they just just like, just like the healer handed down to his or her student, these guys are getting handed down stuff. And this is not evidence based, but they do it in the name of modern medicine and claim that it’s, like more scientific, whereas when these guys are doing, it’s claimed to be unscientific, there’s so many parallels, but then these guys make it look like it’s real. And they conveniently BLINDSIGHT themselves to some of the real big dangers. So I grew up in that kind of milieu.

 

What is Ayurveda?

Michelle Shapiro

So this podcast episode is very interesting, because we did around one and in one episode, we’re getting round two with Dr. B. So we’re gonna see how this flows beautifully. But what we realized is we talked on this really high level, an incredible way about Dr. B, your journey, talked about your education talked about you as a person and we need that basis. The other basis we need is let’s talk about the basics of AI or beta and AI or Vedic medicine, on the highest level you can possibly conjure, can you just define your Vedic medicine for us? So for an American or an American translate?

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah, because Americans have a backdrop of modern medicine and maybe a little bit about those people that used to live here before we took the Lamb who are called Native Americans, and they tend to be on The land and do stuff that’s not evidence based, it’s very ritualistic. So there’s a lot of different biases. And then there’s this whole bias about evidence, right? Evidence based medicine.

 

The 4 Main Concepts of Ayurveda

So Ayurveda is a system of medicine that’s been around for at least 10,000 years, oldest humans that have recorded history have talked about this form of medicine where we basically take the human being, and realign her with the environment, because we are animals part of the ecosystem of the environment. And if we’re isolated, we are not going to get back into balance.

So just as we know that the Earth has this huge set of forces and chemicals and biological phenomenon, so you know, the chemistry, biology and physics of the world, I obey the says, Follow those and put the human in context of that ecosystems. So the way that we do that is by looking at the weather, and the water. And the, the way the land is how dry it is, or moist it is.

And we use something called doshas, which is a principle. And we use the properties which are called gunas.

And then we look at the body as a series of channels. And those channels are called stroke this and then we have an ability to transform, which in modern English was translated as fire, it’s not really a perfect translation. Agni is the Sanskrit word.

And so if you just understand those four concepts, you can then just lay everything else on top of that, whether it’s food, and food is different from diets, because food can be used in small amounts as medicine, it can be used in larger context of meals, which is your diet, and your lifestyle, as well as herbal formulations that you put not only through your mouth, but on your skin and up your nose, and on your eyes and in your ears and everywhere, it can go up your backside. And all of that is called medicine. Because in contrast to the FDA, which as you know, it has to be ingestible through the mouth that I read, it says it just needs to affect your ecosystem

Michelle Shapiro

and your environment internally somehow.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah. How’s that for a quick and dirty definition of Ayurveda?

Michelle Shapiro

That was pretty good of summarizing, you know, one of the most ancient and long standing medicine, medical practices and a couple words, I think it did a very good job. I think that’s pretty awesome.

 

What are Doshas?

When you say the word doshas breakdown for us the three main doshas? And what again, what I hear doshas, what I mean is it’s almost like in an English translation, a type of body, maybe someone would say or the way a certain body is, you can define it much better than me. But tell us about the different doshas and what even the word dosha would be translated to for you.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah, so those just have a lot of different contexts. So as you said, there are body constitutions. And we have to look at the body constitution in, in reference to our in, in alignment with the environment around it. So first, let’s talk about doshas in terms of the universe. So the universe has all these things going on. We talked about biology, chemistry, and physics. So there are forces in the universe, what are we talking about, you know, weak forces and strong forces and hydrogen bonds between different chemicals or gravity as a force or electromagnetic force? That’s all basic, classic physics. I read this as Okay, yeah, that’s there. But how does that affect the world? What’s the net effect.

And so it says, all kinds of movements that are caused by those forces, I just named movement, whether it’s a bird flying, or a cloud, floating across the sky, or river raging, or any kind of flow, that is called Vata. And that’s biological systems, that’s also chemical systems, where two molecules are very attracted to each other, and they come together or they repelled by each other, and they they move apart, either using heat or in water, whatever the medium is, they flow apart, they flow. So that is vata, which is about transformation.

So the theme of transformation, whether it’s your enzymes, or hormones that are catalyzing one molecule to become another, or whether it’s food that’s taken into the body and digested down into its building blocks and forms, and then that’s not all it has to get across the gut and get into the tissues and then it build the tissues. And when it successfully builds the tissues, then that transformation is real, it’s complete, because it’s a product of use. And that is called pitha.

So it’s all transformations that happen and the physical body staying together not like kind of like floating apart. You know, like if you put several pencils on a table and they just start floating apart or marbles For our bodies stays together. So that stability of staying together, you know, the organs that are set up right next to each other, or the channels that are set up right next to each other, all of that stability, and what keeps them sitting next to each other and not chasing each others that lubrication. So that stability lubrication together, it’s called kappa.

So, Vata is about movement, better is about transformation. And kappa is about lubrication, instability, and that is a basic of the functions of the doshas. Now, we can go deeper. So, when we get into the practical side, when you say, Oh, well, what’s my body constitution, people have, obviously, all three movement and transformation and stability going on in their body, but which one does prompt which one predominates, the one that predominates are the two that predominate, tend to be how we define your body because if you have a, let’s say, a cup, you have two or three cups, one has water in it, it’s going to flow differently than the one that has air in it, and the one that has mud in it, right, so different elements will tend to have different now it’s not that the mud doesn’t have any water in it, of course it does.

 And it does have a little bit of air and mixed in with it, but it tends to have a different way of being. So people who have more of that tendency for lubrication and stability are going to have more of a GPA type of being Kappa, way of being in the universe, both. It is true that they can handle more, you know, mud being put on top of mud. But they also have a stability and lubrication, quality, that just makes them move differently around the universe, they tend to be more comfortable being a couch potato, they tend to rest more like kind of just sitting and being still and they like that stillness because it goes in the Jive of the way that their predominant state is whereas a person that has a lot of fire, it’s like how can you just sit still? Come on? Let’s, you know, let’s do something, let’s go change the world. How can you sit still when the world needs us to do this work?

And the vodka person says how can you sit still, let’s go ride a bike, no aim, nothing just need to go for a hike, need to go out. Let’s go shopping, nothing to buy. Let’s just move moving and moving is the theme. Because while there is movement, people, yes, there are different times of day different seasons that you’re going to do different things. But overall, if you see how you are in, let’s say, contrast your sisters and brothers up, I tend to move around more. That’s my baseline, oh, maybe I’m more vata. And it’s not just your bodies, also your mind because the dosha is not just your constitution, overall, it’s kind of your structural constitution, your mental Constitution can be different, your mental constant, you may be very movement oriented. But when you think you’re very grounded, and very still, or you’re very, very goal oriented. So that means you have a vata body.

But then you have a bitter, you know, goal oriented mind or very still kappa mind. And you will meet people that have that, you know, there are people who are great film directors, they move all the time, they love moving athletic bodies, very, very prone to you know, morning walks, and you know, long bicycle rides, and then they get down to work and they’re very still and they come up with brilliant ideas. And they’re very focused, they have great memories. And that’s very copper mind with the body.

 So people have to understand that their ways of being and then correlate that with these themes. And that’s the really easy way to understand it. The details. Yeah, you can take a quiz and ask, okay, is my hair more fine? And, and seeing not sure, but you know, what will we say, like thinned out on the scalp? Or do I have very thick, heavy, you know, not matted hair, but just very thick hair. But people with thick hair are obviously more copper because that’s more about grounding and stability, right?

And the ones have very thin hair are more thin and frail. And that’s more Vata is one right or wrong. That’s the other question I get. Which one is good? Which one is right? That’s a very Christian way of looking at the world, right? The good and bad, the right and wrong. I read this as everything is right, because it’s all in the ecosystem. It’s all been created by the universe for a purpose. And so you have your Botha body that is great. That means you have certain things you can do in your life and in the universe.

You have a couple body great because there are certain things that you are also going to be able to do and be human have a predilection for them you’ll have a certain desire to move towards certain areas and if people are allowed to choose their own careers, and their own ways of living without other pressures, they tend to gravitate toward the things that their doshas would support, because that’s just how their molecules want other molecules around them. So the chemistry of it is yeah, there are molecules, we can talk about molecules and you know, the evidence in molecules. But either way that is so beyond molecules, because it’s not just about that carbohydrate, or that, you know, serotonin hormone, or that new, whatever inhibitor we just discovered, it’s so far beyond that by looking at the themes of how the universe works, and what your place is within that.

Michelle Shapiro

And it seems like there’s a level of acceptance to what your kind of predominant dosha is, and and like you said, there’s an acceptance in that beauty. What, what can happen if maybe you lean too much into one dosha for a season or something like that? And are there certain kind of earthly elements that can influence? Which dosha? is kind of more predominant for you at that time? Or is it always the same?

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

It’s never the same. So that’s what buddy nama it’s the ever changing. And as the seasons change, you need to change with it. So when people get a prescription in December, and they say, Oh, well, I didn’t end up doing it. Because I went out, I was out of the country. And then I got back. So I started in March. And I say, well, the weather in March is very different. And it’s going from hot from the very cold winter, let’s say in the northeast of the US into this warmer climb. Whereas December, you’re moving from the windy November, December, in autumn into the winter months, it’s a very different time.

So whatever was prescribed for you and Ayurveda shifts, it changes and your body is going to change. So people that have a lot of lubrication stability, if they exercise and they get foods or just enough to feed them, but not too much. They don’t overeat, they don’t over sleep, then they will be very healthy and strong. If they do those excesses, they will tend to accumulate more kappa because they’re already kappa so they will get extra water in their body. And that water is not clean water. It’s got all kinds of molecules in it.

So that’s called clay that or they will get Flemmi stuff. So that’s called Slayer schema. And they have all these words that are like Kappa, imbalanced, right, kappa interrupted. And those are the ones that create the post nasal drip and the respiratory congestion. And the mucus in the gut that creates like very heavy digestion, or heavy stools. Sometimes a stool doesn’t move because it’s so heavy, but it’s heavy, and then it becomes dry. So then it does move forward. Just like a car on a train track. You know how the wheels need to be lubricated. If your poop is not lubricated, because it’s too dry, because you suddenly decide you want to do a bra food cleanse, your poops not gonna move and then but I wonder why I’m constipated. So there are things that you need to change in every season and is particular to you.

And some people say Oh, that’s too difficult, but it’s not too difficult. It’s absolutely personalized. Just like you know how to wear different clothes and different times of the year. You know how to wear different shoes for different weather, right, you’re not going to put on your rubber boots. If you know, let’s say when it’s raining, it’s perfect. But if you wear it in the hot summer, you’re gonna sweat so you know that instinctively, I read the does the exact same thing, but in relation to your diet, your lifestyle, and what herbs you should be taking. It’s very straightforward if you just think about how you already respond with your actions and your clothing.

I won’t say food because a lot of people are very illogical about food, but 100 years ago, you could use food as an example because people were very logical about what to eat in which season. First of all, it was local and it was growing. But second it was the the properties of it. You know, when you are drying out, you need more juicy, more naturally wet foods. So you know having a cucumber in summer is very logical. Having a cucumber in the rainy season is not or in the very, very like it’s cold in one winter. Yeah, exactly. So if it snows outside, and you had cucumber puree in your in your menu, take it off the menu because that’s not going to help anyone really.

 

How Can we Include Other Cultural Foods into an Ayurvedic Diet?

Michelle Shapiro

I was recently talking to one of my best friends and she is Italian American and her basically Pitzer has been like completely out of balance recently like she’s been all fire recently. And she smoked cigarettes, which I was like very hot. I was like it’s very, very hot. And we were talking about different foods for her and yet very drying too. And we were talking about how you know different the different on foods that she was consuming, you know, basically in the time before her period, she was getting like migraines and a lot of reflux and a lot of these symptoms. And she is Italian American.

So a lot of the foods that they eat are very spicy and very, like, you know, a lot of that heat. How do we kind of incorporate in America especially, which is an amazingly diverse place these cultural foods? At the same time, we’re considering also our own constitution.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah. So in Italy, look at the great foods they have. So obviously, there are different cultures within Italy. Right? So Milan was very different from Rome or Sicily, or Cecilia, if you look at the pit, overdrive person, so I’m a bitter and I notice, when am I bitter gets out of balance. So in October, November, a few months ago, I decide, oh, I want to get all this stuff done, I want to get cleaned out.

So I added in a 20 minute, clean off one shelf of my library every day, and put it back together. And within you know, six days, I had six shelves cleaned out, I was like, oh, goal oriented, so good, I got this done, then I just had to clean out my clothes closet before the winter.

So I was taking out the next six days one, you know shelf of my closet every day taking everything out, folding it perfectly putting it back in, there’s that, that not OCD. But perfectionism, there’s that specific goal oriented attention, you’re using your five senses, very particular, very, very sharp. The words that describe the transformation are sharp, transformative, hot, the heat of action and reaction. And you have some a little bit of flow in there to move things along.

But you have a lot of heat, a lot of you know there’s a flow and fire as well, a lot of heat. So to calm that down, you need things that are sweet. To combat that acidic, you need things that are more dull to combat that sharpness, but you don’t want to become overdose. So the way that I work with Italians, because you know, living in New York, I also have a lot of Italian staunch Italian patients, and one of my friends is a very well known oceanographer who’s very good that goes off on two expeditions on the ocean.

And it’s bit aggravated, and absolutely pathetic. Iran has all of the migraine and the, you know, the pains and aches of too much inflammation in the body, and all the bowel movement changes of that. So what we do is say, Okay, first thing is, early in the morning, when it’s cool, go for a walk, not a run, which is too perfectionistic just go for a walk 20 minutes long, that’s going to get you moving.

And that’s going to clear out some of the stuff that you know that just doing basic movement clears out that what we call lactic acid or the stuff that’s accumulated food wise, I don’t have them drink a lot of hot foods, you know, people say, Well, I really says you should start out every morning with hot water warm foods. Yeah, that’s great for people that need it. But if you happen to be very bitter, it’s okay for you to find Italian recipes that have a little less tomato, right? You have Margherita pizzas, as well as tomato base pizzas, you have pasta dishes that have, you know, different kinds of sauces around them.

The things that I read this is eat fresh, eat, cooling foods, not cooling temperature, but cooling to your body on the inside and eat foods that have a little bit of sweetness to them naturally. So if you take cold pressed olive oil instead of the stuff that’s usually made, right, which is actually press through metals and metals increase the heat of that oil coming out from the olive. So go invest in there’s a olive oil called Fandango out in California, it’s a very, very good olive oil, and they’re very much paying attention to the processing. Go to a little bit of cheese because a cheese is going to cool down your body it’s going to slow down your body but not too much.

You know put this tend to do access because they think more is better, more is more perfect. And maybe in the middle of winter, you might not make want to make a constant K but have a nice, light vegetable minestrone without all that meat in it and have that as your beginning dish and that will fill you up enough that you won’t want to have a big pasta course or a big meat course and a big dessert course.

Another thing they hire witnesses is for pizza people like me and like your friends start out with something that is sweet. First to get the liver transformation not like the hostess Eclair that was made six months ago. But you know in factory made but something that’s fresh made so for those who are perfectionistic I say Have you ever tried cooking in the kitchen? You know Divya alters this chef that teaches people how to cook right so she’s so tall, make your food fresh and eat it fresh. Don’t eat it. Don’t say I made this nice. So I’m going to parse it out for seven different days and put it in the freezer and take it out and And he did it, you know, and reheat it, make it and eat it that day. Does it take extra time? Absolutely, it does.

So that’s why you team up to cook. That’s why it’s great to have two or three people cook together or, you know, as my mom used to do, she would cook one night. And then her friend would invite everyone over and cook the next night and then another friend the next night. So they would be able to relax, they would work hard one day and then you know, relax and have fresh foods. So the point is, foods that are cooling foods that are fresh, and starting out with a sweet, so I tell people to have their dessert in the beginning.

Having beet root is really good. It’s got lots of protein in it, it’s got all those minerals in it, that’s from the modern side. From the IRA. I’m excited to root sitting in the ground, it’s cooling, it’s going to slow you down a little bit but a crowd natural sweetness to it. The grounding but it’s also sweet. And it’s going to counter a lot of that bad stuff going on with the pitha for the migraines. Your blood is too hot.

That’s why it’s pulsing and creating the problems that is I was like you’re you’re just pooling and building up that heat. Yeah, yeah, foods that clean out the liver greens that clean up the liver. There’s such an amazing variety of lettuces that one can eat. Generally, it’s good to eat them in the summer and not in the winter.

But in the winter you can take cabbages and cook them and make them you know, very nice you can take greens and use them spin itches and use them and create dishes that are going to cool you down. And then you’ll see the migraine go away the pool, you know get better the skin sometimes people have like bursts bursting out because the heat is trying to get out. They get infections due to the inflammation already there that makes the immunity a little bit more vulnerable to you know, outside critters critters are always out there, but your body being able to host it changes.

 

Why Vata Doshas Have a Higher Rate of Disease

Michelle Shapiro

So Dr. B I’ve heard this phrase before that while Kapha and Pita have I think it was like 40 diseases Vata has like 140 diseases. Can you speak to that why and why that is I’m vata. So let’s talk about it. Okay. I selfishly want to talk to you about this.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Yeah, this is a really important thing for many people in New York, number one, because some people do have a basic constitution that is bought that either in their mind or in their body. But more importantly, because when people get imbalanced in a place like New York, where there’s such a fast pace, they will get vata imbalance, even if their body type is bitter or kappa. So, what do we need to do?

We need to first write down the words I’m just gonna say them in English, cold, dry, light, mobile, rough, maybe make a t shirt that says it or tattoo it across your and you know, write it down. I have my students write it down. I say, okay, so what is cold and dry? What are you eating? That’s cold, dry light, mobile rough, too. Oh, well, I had some notes, some popcorn that it cooled off. Right, that’s dry. It’s cooled off. It’s it’s you know, it’s light it like flies away with with flaky, strong wind? Yeah. It’s flake Yes. So don’t have that, oh, well, I only have popcorn on then heat it haven’t warm and put some butter on it.

Michelle Shapiro

You want to put some ghee or butter on that? Exactly. So there’s a lot of solutions. And in New York, especially I think we’re very inclined to do health trends that are like salads and smoothies. And California to I think it’s a very like metropolitan thing, which is a place of high stress, which can be very vata aggravating, I’m assuming and no. And also, we tend towards these prepared foods, we tend towards these, you know, cold foods, I think the idea that not only can we be eating things that are certain calories, or minerals, or vitamin status, but that the temperature or the theoretical heat of the food can influence our health is a huge thing for people.

 

Does Intuitive Eating work with Ancient Practices?

So I just want to let you know that it’s a foreign concept for people. So this podcast, right is partly because I’m trying to bridge the worlds for people between intuitive eating and functional nutrition. Can you believe that there are dietitians? Dietitians, who now frequently say that consumption of things like you’re saying hostess cupcakes or Oreos? are okay, because we don’t want to restrict foods? Can you like give me insight into that? I’ve always wanted to ask you about this and how that makes you how that sits with you. I would say,

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

I have I love this question. Because I have been thinking about this for years. I was watching mammoth Oz’s show. And he was lauding the use of microwaves and things that are going to save you time. And I was thinking you are a doctor and you’re saying this, why and I sat but I mean, I thought about that episode, obviously because I still remember it. And I realized that what we do what we’re taught is how We perform in the world.

So if you are grown up in a house where your mother worked, your dad worked, your grandmother was not around, there was no one else to take care of you. And so when you got home from school, there was a plastic container of two cookies, and a juicy juice carton on the counter. And that was your after school snack, you grew up thinking that’s normal. And I talked to a lot of people who are either vegetarian or vegan who talked about how they don’t know how to cook, because their mother never showed them. So that’s their like, first, you know, 1015 20 years, then they go off to college. And I remember how bad the food was. Now I went to Penn.

So we had stowford Dining Hall, which is it was freshly cooked gourmet food every day. And so you had to trek over to that part of campus to eat at that hall versus the other two or three dining halls, but you could have very good freshly cooked food. And then somehow, right after I finished college, they few years later, they changed it over to what was more profitable for them less costly for them.

So when you have those kinds of food priorities in college, and then after four years that you go to medical school, like all of us doctors did, and we eat off of plastic plates with plastic spoons, and you know, Styrofoam, and then off of a plastic tray. And you do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you’re eating out of like plastic wrappers, and your coffee is in a plastic cup. And this is what you know, as being normal and you’re doing fine. You’re you know, you’re working 18 hours a day, and you’ve got lots of energy.

So that person feels that, okay, this is normal. So when they go to counsel their patients, their recommendations are going to come from that worldview, that they have that oh, this is a normal thing. But they don’t realize is that there is a phase, there’s a latent phase in which they are getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And they’re not going to notice it until they’re 45 years old. And suddenly, they’re fat, female, fertile.

And suddenly they have a gallbladder problems. And they have to have the gallbladder taken out, and they can’t stop because they’ve got kids and a mortgage and a job. And so they just get their gallbladder taken out and they don’t think twice what did I do? That created that sludge that turned into stones or that turned into clogged channels between my liver and my gallbladder that caused me to have this gallbladder problem that I had to actually have it surgically removed. Right?

So gallbladder is a needed Oregon Chinese medicines is the IRB that says, so what happened, they don’t think about it. So when you’re talking about people who think that those foods are normal, it’s because the person that they think is the the source of information, sorry to say this, but people still think, Oh, well, the doctor told me and everyone will defer Oh, well, the doctor told you so that’s correct. And that deferring to the doctor is actually in today’s world, it is wrong.

It is wrong, because most doctors are not well, I don’t know a single person from my medical school cohort that’s not on pharmaceuticals, either because of they’ve had their first heart attack, or they’ve had thyroid problems, or they have, you know, diabetes, or they have some kind of severe arthritis, they have all kinds of, you know, they’ve had their first stroke, they had an incident of multiple sclerosis they had, and they just think that these autoimmune diseases and these metabolic diseases are all part of aging.

And when some scientific in when some scientific study comes out that says, Actually, we’ve realized that people don’t need to age, all they need to do is keep their cells clean and healthy. And it’s that stuff that builds up that creates aging. Oh, this is a new discovery. Well, hello iarraidh has been saying clean yourself out regularly eat foods that are going to be slightly chafing, like we were talking about, you know, once a week, not more, having millets because they tend to scrape out the body once a week have honey or more than once a week have honey in your food but not heated Honey, have foods that have natural scraping like the pineapple, you know, there are certain foods that nature has given us that have that cleansing, do those and you’re not going to have all that preservative build up and then eat less preservative, you’re not going to have that preservative buildup. So when you’re saying that people have this tendency to eat these foods, it’s because the doctors who ate poorly do not understand how to eat and thus they cannot teach how to.

 

There’s More than Our Relationship to Food

Michelle Shapiro

I’m more and I’m taking it a step further to speak specifically about a leg or a brand of dietitians who truly speak only about one’s relationship to food being the most important component of their health, where it’s just factually Not true. And this is kind of even more so where of course, you know this, the whole point of this podcast is to have a nuanced, nuanced view where of course, and to I do believe in some principles of intuitive eating and all this and body positivity is in every person’s body should be treated with respect, and every person should be treated with respect.

But this idea that all foods kind of get metabolized the same way. And as long as you’re not restricting yourself, that’s the most important thing. It is so counter to the knowledge that is the truth. And that’s the word I want to say there is an objective truth and what I love so much about Ayurveda and not that I am a credentialed practitioner, and I Rita, but whatever I’ve learned about functional nutrition about the basic human biochemistry is it’s so lines up with anything I’ve learned in Ayurveda, where I’ll even be talking to someone and I’m, like, you know, an initial session, I’m like, Oh, your liver, like, oh, we gotta, you know, we got to support that, like, I can almost feel and understand what’s going on in their body.

Because it’s replicatable. And you’re listening. So for me to dismiss the nutrition element of it from a dietitian, it’s so outlandish and so wild, especially having these conversations with you, because it’s so truthful. And so it’s not arguable, this is the way that the world operates.

 

Expanding the Modern Definition of Evidence-Based

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

You know, advertising is malleable, because they have a message and we have become so accustomed to thinking that what we learned on those commercials during our childhood, our truth, and that’s why you’re saying, Oh, well, you know, the one person says it so one person that coffee is good, and other person’s coffee is bad. If some person says milk is good, five years later, milk is bad. That kind of verb variability is not there. And I have a that because I really, that is based on really strong scientist, observer observers who are watching the universe and then made conclusions and tested them out with each other among their patients in their own lives with their families, and then said, Wait, this is the way things work. Let me go check it out with my friend. Yeah, he says it’s the same thing. This is the way things work. And then they wrote it down.

So there’s been a lot of experimental you know, experimentalism and testing and evidence creation, not creation, sorry, evidence, observation. And then they said, Okay, this is how the world works. And the doshas just happen to be a construct that really works. Well. When you see those dietitians that are not talking about real food, it’s because they’ve not learned what real food is, there are two words in Sanskrit one is a Hara and once another, so the meal is called Bucha. And the meal is what you put together at the end, which is what you do after you’ve listened to the patient and figured out what is practical in their, you know, where they acquire food, what’s available, what they can afford, what they can make, and then how they eat it, how many people they’re feeding, that’s all Bhojan but Anana, Hara are these very clear concepts Hara means to lose.

So as far as that what you don’t lose what you take in, and anything you take into your being, in your holistic sense of being is a horror. So the food you put in your mouth is a horror, but the cigarette smoke that you’re inhaling secondhand is also your something you’re taking in. And the sound that you’re listening to as you’re eating is part of what you’re taking in. And the law of loud noise on the highway in front of you that you’re seeing and hearing is also what you’re taking in. And the screaming waitress is what you’re taking in the loud relative that sitting at the table with you is what you’re taking in.

And then there’s the food that you’re taking in all the ways it’s been prepared, whether it’s preserved, or old, or microwave or freshly made with the aroma, all of that is a horror because you’re taking it in, of that there’s unknown unknown is that which is nutritious, that is what your body is calling for. So if the nutriments in that particular package of food are not nutritious, because they’re filled with 50% preservatives and binders and colors and fillers, and then 50% of carbohydrate, fat and protein, which is some experimental number that then they put, you know, a thing to, that doesn’t really have any life energy, and it doesn’t really have any coordination and the ecosystem of the plates, the dish that you’re making, if that pasta dish, you know, imagine some of those Iron Chef or, you know, those chef shows where they say,

Okay, here’s your basket, you have chocolate and you have shrimp and you have, you know, some kind of cracker made of some bizarre grain. And then they put like some, you know, strawberry jelly on it, and they make a beautiful dish out of this. They’re not compatible foods. They’re not things that your body inherently says these go together, but you’re talking about intuitive eating, and when it’s intuitive, aligned with your intuitive center in your center, that’s really Intuit If eating, when it’s craving, and you’re not aligned and you’re not settled, that’s not intuitive that is, you know, mask on blinded. I want something like an immature kid, I want this, I want this. Now, that is not intuitive, right? That is based, immature, good greed or desire for food, right?

So if you have that lack of intuition going on in your body, because you never aligned with it, your parents didn’t teach you how to eat, you just never got it. You’re not going to be able to do intuitive eating. And so when you find a preparation that’s not made, well, you’re not going to know. And the advertisers that made you buy it, Snickers better than a dinner, just have your Snickers bar. You know, there are things there brands, I’m saying, and I’m sorry, but if you go back to what was made early in, you know, in the years that the brand came out if it was more than 50 years ago,

Michelle Shapiro

it’s the belief that limiting oneself is more damaging than the actual food itself, which is untrue. It is important to have a relationship with food where food feels safe and nourishing, and provides value and life. It’s literally lifeforce, like for us. And I think that’s super important. But it’s almost like the feeling I get is from what you’re describing is, there’s almost nothing. It’s almost like we have only viewed the world from this such a narrow view. And in this narrow view of the world. This is what has come out of it.

So it’s like if we had learned a different way, if we had ever seen maybe the right way, we would know so emphatically how absolutely wrong. That idea is, but it’s so hard because we’re arguing, like you said against so many systems that have been built in, in ways of pharmaceuticals and ways of food systems and ways of advertising, that we’ve now come to a point in healthcare where we are saying, No, it’s not only it’s not only okay, that we’re living like this, it’s actually better to eat what feels right and to do these things.

And that’s where I go completely nuts, because I’m like, you know, it just drives me. That’s the part of it where I’m like, we’ve really truly have the answers that can help people with their health. I think there are some really incredible healers who can do that. I think there are some really incredible nutritionists. I think, certainly our Vedic professionals, I think we’ve got it, I think that we have a good grasp and understanding. But we’ve gotten so far that now we’re at the point where we say, hey, all foods fit, no foods are bad. And it’s just a it’s a it’s, you know, talking to you even gets me more riled up about it. Because it’s such a Eurocentric American way of just there’s nothing but what I’ve seen, you know, that idea that not only is this okay, but it’s right.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

And it’s wrong. And what I know, and what I see is correct. I see this, especially in California, that when they say, Well, we have the most intelligent people out here, so we must be right. And there’s a lot of stuff that people out in California are doing in their kind of airhead enjoy life lifestyle where they’re unconscious. And if you were to give them some real facts of what’s going on around the world, you know, they wouldn’t be like this is the whole world, they would see what else is going on? I think it would be it’s actually painful.

They don’t like watching those things. Because like, oh, well, it’s very disturbing to watch those images. I know someone that actually moved out of her neighborhood and moved into another area because there were too many homeless people. And she didn’t want her kids have to see the homeless people because it would be disturbing from that for them. This was like she moved from Manhattan Beach up to Malibu because she felt that her kids shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of negativity in the world.

So everything should be New Age, positivity. And whatever you want, you should have, and we’re lucky that we have the means to get it. So it’s okay that we have it. And we don’t have to think about the rest of the world. That is one way of looking at it. But it’s very ignorant of the ecosystem that’s a larger world around us. And ultimately, you know, it does harm people, maybe not in an obvious way in their lifetime. But when they get sick, they’re like, I just don’t understand why I’m getting sick. Right? You have these shade balls covering the LA reservoir, right? I used to live out in LA so like, why is there water reservoir, purifying the water and then putting it in a lake that has these black plastic shade balls in it that are supposedly inert and just sitting there without any sun coming in? Oh, well the sun creates a reaction that we want to you know, the chemical reaction is dangerous. It’s going to poison the water. Okay, so why is that reaction happening? There’s lots of water sitting out there under the open Sun not becoming poisonous. Why is your water becoming poisonous because there’s something you put to process the water and now your solution is to put plastic balls over the top of a lake so that the water water stays in the dark. And then you’re going to feed that to people. There’s like these solutions that they’re coming up with, that are so illogical and so not connected to the ecosystem of the natural world,

Michelle Shapiro

we just keep putting solutions on top of solution. It’s like, well, this, it’s like the core of the house is rotting from the inside, let’s just put pretty stuff on top of it. And let’s pretend that what’s going on underneath is not a problem.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

That’s beautifully said. And I think that’s exactly what’s happening. And people that buy into it are getting confused, and then they’re getting very sick. And then they come to the dietician, or the Ayurvedic practitioner or someone please help. So I find it unusually relevant that in the last five years, most of my patients have gut issues, big bad gut issues, everything ranging from ulcerative colitis, and liver issues to celiac.

Yeah, well, so include liver in pancreas into the gut stream, and that’s what they have the accessory organs of the gut. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And, and one part of it is that there are lots and lots of wealthy people who’ve worked so hard self made, you know that whether it’s an IT professional, or a programmer, or YouTube influencer, at the age of 1819, starts making six digit figures is making lots of money, financially set, you know, unless they squander the money, they’re basically financially set if they invest well, so they don’t have to work nine to five jobs anymore. They’re free.

And then they realize, Oh, my God, I’m really sick. Why? Because while they were working that 18 hours a day of getting themselves, you know, to that financially, well, place, they were sick, and I have met hundreds of people, I’ve met people that are creating these apps to fix the gut. And I, you know, I went to one of them to their house as an advisor, and his girlfriend kept going to the bathroom, like every 20 minutes should get up and go. And then he got up a couple of times.

And so I talked to him. I said, so have you tried this, and then they both confessed, you know, the reason we built this app is because we both have incurable irritable bowel syndrome, we’ve been to all the best doctors, they obviously have the money to do it, they live up in the Hollywood Hills got this great, huge, famous, you know, house, it was lived in by one of the Beatles, and

Michelle Shapiro

oh, my God, oh, good life, we

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

have a great life. And then their, their gut is like not well. And so their bathrooms are very luxurious with like, lots of perfume, things and ventilation and all because they’re pooping, constantly spending a lot of time in the bathroom. And so I talked with him about it. And they Oh, we have leading gastroenterologist on our team. And we have the leading so and so you don’t need an MD doctor on your team, because MD doctors know very little about keeping the gut healthy, they are basically unsuccessful when it comes to the gut.

And I can say this, about 99% of my colleagues, they are unsuccessful at treating the gut. If you go to Ira though, where I tend to find myself, I talked to the doctors, some of them are trying to make it in the US. So they’re trying to do what the MD doctors do. So they’re messing it up. They’re like emulating the road, you know, Paragon doc, please. But that’s what they’re doing. Right? But that’s what they’re doing because they don’t know how to adapt what they learned in their training in India, to what is available in America.

Michelle Shapiro

Dr. B, I cannot thank you enough for this conversation. Can you tell this audience where to find you, because I’m certain that they’re going to want to find you, they might hunt you down? Because they want your services so bad. So tell us where can people find you? And how can they work with you?

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Well, 2023 is going to be kind of hard to find me because I want to work on my second book. And I want to get that out there

Michelle Shapiro

I will not be able to hunt her down. She’s very elusive.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

I try to be elusive now. And I’ve also got a lot of plans to travel. So I’m first of all doing a intensive going to India to do what’s called bunch of karma. So I used to do that this year, but then the just that whole Delta Omicron thing happened and I wasn’t able to get it done. And so I’m gonna do it. I’ve got it scheduled for February. I just gotta how many days? Are you doing it? I’ll be gone for February. Maybe in the middle of March? How good are you gonna feel when you come back after that? Well, I’m gonna look even younger and more vibrant. It’s not possible. So my website is Dr. Pus with the.com, which I’m sure you’re going to, of course will be linked below. Yep. And it’s not going to be easy to get an appointment with me. But I do a lot of consultations now online because even if I’m getting a bunch of karma when I’m not relaxing, I can actually schedule like maybe one or two hours with patients. So and I love to help people you know, who are really really oriented and want specific help. And they are the ones that do really well and it’s very rewarding to work with them. And so since there’s so few people that do what I do, I feel like yeah, if you show up and you say this is what I really need, and I definitely want to work with you. I usually make time for them

Michelle Shapiro

in the past when I have asked you so I have evidence that this is absolutely true. Besides that, I know you’re an honorable person. The other thing is before your next book comes out, please everyone pick up everyday Ayurveda, I will also post a link for people to buy that is that available on Amazon now how would they go

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya 

in amazon.com, you can get it and most of the Amazons around the world you can get it now, it is a best seller in India. So you can definitely get it if you have a connection in you. But I think you have to buy it with Indian currency. I mean, Amazon, you have to buy in whatever currency you use as. But if people are in the US and may want a copy that’s autographed. I do have copies here like you did. And I get people autographed copies, and then I just send it to them, you can just write to me through the website. And there’s a place where you can ask for copies.

Michelle Shapiro

And I just have to recommend, I’m telling you, if you’re my client listening to this, please still get this book. Oftentimes, if my clients are, you know, book recommendations, if it’s adding more information that could be like, confusing for what they’re already doing for their health. I’m saying maybe it’s not the time to add information. There’s always a good time for every day or beta. This book is incredible. And I think it’s applicable and supportive for people. And I don’t have to say any sort of like trigger warning, like take this with a grain of salt. No, it’s an incredible book.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Overall, I think it doesn’t deny anything else that people are doing. It just asks you not at all conscious of what you’re doing. Maybe do it in a different order. That’s more applicable to like what we were saying about the clock jeans before. And to put certain things in there consciously when you’re ready. It never tells you you have to do

Michelle Shapiro

those right. Exactly. Right. It feels supportive in that way. Definitely.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

So the next book is on food, which is why Yeah, I’m taking some time off to finish that in the right way and get that out there because people really need that now after the pandemic and they’re really asking for more help around food because as you said, the food quality is so bad in the US now.

Michelle Shapiro

Even the best quality is still worse than most other places, unfortunately. Which is again, Dr. B you’re obviously coming back for another episode because I know people are going to be roaring for you to come back and I need you to come back. There’s so many topics we didn’t cover. I cannot thank you enough. I’m so honored that you sat down with me today and please You know everyone at least get everyday or Ayurveda and then wait like with bated breath like I am for Dr. B’s next book. Have a beautiful day and thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai