Hypertension,
Heart Disease, Prevention and Total Heart Health

Diabetes According To Modern Medicine,
And How It Affects Your Heart Health

Diabetes has been rapidly increasing worldwide. In America, 20 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes, and at least 5 million do not know they have it. Of particular concern, is that diabetes, once thought to be an adult disease, is now on the rise in young children.

Simple Explanation of Diabetes

Your body converts some of the food it receives into sugar that your cells use for energy. Diabetes is the inability of your body to assimilate and store this sugar for cell use. This results in too much sugar collecting in the blood. Excessive sugar damages the blood vessels and is commonly associated with high levels of triglycerides and cholesterol in the blood. This leads to hardening of the arteries, or atherosclerosis, a central contributor to heart disease. Diabetics are seven times more likely to die of a heart attack.

Simple high blood sugar (not diagnosed as diabetes) is also thought to be a precursor to diabetes. Factors that may also contribute to diabetes are poor diet, lack of exercise and obesity. Drugs and insulin are used to try to control diabetes, but these have adverse effects on health and do not cure the disease.

How The Total Heart Health Program
Helps To Control Diabetes and
Reduce the Risk of Heart Attacks

Diabetes is a blood disease resulting from the body’s lost connection with its inner intelligence, as with other risk factors for heart disease. This lost connection results in a specific mind/body imbalance, which in certain individuals, may lead to diabetes. People become pre-disposed to diabetes through various dietary and hereditary factors related to mind, body and environment.

Imbalance begins on the most subtle and basic level of the principles governing all the activities and processes of your body. In Ayurveda, these principles are called Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Vata is the principle of movement, Pitta is the principle of transformation or heat, and Kapha is the principle of structure. If it continues over time, an imbalance at this basic level of your body eventually manifests as disease. Kapha is the primary type of imbalance associated with diabetes.

Total Heart Health’s Ayurvedic
Recommendations for Diabetes

The Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health offers changes to diet and daily routine, to reduce excess Kapha — the primary imbalance leading to excessively high blood sugar. These changes also increase the body’s production of Ojas, an essential body essence in Ayurveda. More Ojas increases the body’s intelligence. This helps with proper metabolism and organ functioning — for example, in the pancreas and the liver, which are involved in regulating blood chemistry.

Total Heart Health offers guidelines
for a Kapha-pacifying diet

Below are examples from Total Heart Health of dietary modifications that may be helpful to reduce a Kapha imbalance.

• Eat more light, dry, warm, bitter, pungent, astringent foods, such as bitter gourd, fenugreek leaf, guar, and well-cooked leafy green vegetables.
• Increase quinoa, amaranth, and barley.
• Reduce sweet, sour, salty tastes.
• Avoid fatty foods.
• Do not overeat.
• Avoid heavy foods such as meats, cheeses, and other hard-to-digest dairy products.
• Avoid ice-cold drinks and foods.
• Drink lots of warm water throughout the day to help flush toxins that can inhibit the function of the liver and pancreas.
• Avoid fasting or skipping meals.