The doc's in the house

For a growing number of Mumbaikars, the panacea to all medical problems caused by living in a polluted city and beset by stress and lifestyle ailments, is in their kitchen. Instead of a doctor's clinic, they're turning to food to heal themselves

Vile Parle-based Falguni Shah is a happy mom. Neither of her two older children -- 10 year-old Dhruvi and five year-old Dhyeya -- have fallen ill with the change of weather this monsoon. While this may mean that the duo misses out on the fun of lolling in bed watching Tom & Jerry cartoons with a thermometer sticking out of their mouths, the sisters are not complaining.


Falguni Shah does not give her two year-old son milk. Instead, Arham's
breakfast comprises fruits and mashed vegetable. Pic/ Nimesh Dave

A growing number of urban households, including the Shahs, have begun to keep illness at bay, not through prayers or regular visits to doctors, but through a shift in perspective about food.

Seeing food as a natural healer has led families across the city to monitor what they eat, when they eat and how they cook. And several among them have been able tou00a0u00a0 address health conditions, as a result.

Take Krish Desai, for instance. The 41 year-old Chartered Accountant had an ulcer in his colon eight years ago, which is when he approached a slew of doctors. They gave him suppressants to control the ulcer, but told him flat out that it couldn't be cured.

He lost close to 15 kilos. The Girgaum resident then made a few key changes in his diet. For instance, he began to eat raw cabbage first thing in the morning. He also gave up milk and milk products, which had natural laxative properties. A year later, says Desai, he wasn't troubled by the ulcer anymore.

Like Desai, 36 year-old Shah and husband Samir (39) gave up certain foods when they began to plan a family 10 years ago. That included milk and vegetables that grow underground (radish, onions and garlic). Shah, who belongs to the Jain community, was already a vegetarian to start with. "Our bodies didn't feel right after eating all of that," says Shah, who doesn't give her three children milk, since she believes it isn't meant for human consumption.

"There are a lot of other sources of calcium, like banana, spinach and even sesame seeds. Not giving my children milk hasn't made them weak, as some believed it would," says Shah.

The fact that none of Shah's three children -- including 22 month-old Arham -- have fallen ill despite the bouquet of illnesses that accompany the start of the rainy season in the city, is enough indication for the family that health is just a right bite away.

Anju Venkat, nutritionist at The Health Awareness Centre in Worli, says, "There is a disconnect between what the body wants and what the body needs. Instead of eating food for nutrition, we consume it out of memory, habit, taste, and availability." The Centre, which was set up by health activist Vijaya Venkat in 1989, teaches clients about how the body is capable of curing itself if we give it the right nutrition.

"It is the intrinsic nature of our body to be healthy, and it sends us signals to tell us what it needs. For instance, if we have a salt craving, the body is asking for cleansers, or minerals. If we crave sugar, the body is asking for glucose," explains Venkat.

By the same measure, plying the body with foods it doesn't need, such as processed, refined or packaged foods, leads to health problems.

And, says Venkat, who has been practising for nearly 20 years, given TEDx talks on nutrition, and has Bollywood clients visit her, there are more people who are beginning to realise that now.

Shop owner Mansukh Shah should know. He receives a steady stream of between five and seven visitors at his Dadar home through the week -- not to buy goods or discuss business, but to consult him on what to eat.


Mansukh Shah is a 55 year-old shop owner who received an education
in law, but developed an interest in ayurveda. Research and reading over
the years has now led him to offer dietary advice to people for a nominal
fee of Rs 200. Clients visit him from far-flung towns on a Saturday night,
after 9.30 pm, and after being prescribed the right diet based on their
body type, are fed Shah's famous Rasagullas, which he prepares himself
and claims, have medicinal properties. Pic/ Pradeep Dhivar

The 55 year-old former advocate began dabbling in Ayurveda 15 years ago; more to pass time than anything else. What emerged was a deep interest in the way the body functions and how disease is caused. The self-trained ayurvedic expert now advices people on how to cure their conditions by studying their pulse. And the answer, he says, lies only in the food we eat.

"Through all my readings and interactions with the people who have visited me over the years, I have reached one conclusion -- almost every problem can be solved if we change what we are eating."

However, although Shah doesn't advocate the need for medicines, he's careful about asking his clients to stop taking allopathic medicines.

Premji K Shah, a 75 year-old retired businessman, first met Shah in 2010. Premji had been diagnosed with prostrate cancer two months ago, and after three sessions of chemotherapy, he felt too weak to emerge from his bed to visit the hospital. A year later, and Premji is fit as a fiddle, says his daughter-in-law Paras Shah.

"Mansukh bhai asked me to eat a bowl of cut cabbage pieces before brushing my teeth. He gave Paras a recipe on how to prepare Rasagullas, which I would eat every morning. He also told me to keep a cardamom seed in my mouth before sleeping," says Premji, a resident of Chembur.

While Premji still takes medication in the form of an injection once in three months, his last three checkups show the cancer has receded, leaving him in the clear.u00a0

According to ayurveda, there are three combinations of elements within the body -- vat, pith and kaph -- all of which should be in harmony for a person to be healthy. Each type corresponds with a combination of the six types of tastes -- sweet, bitter, sour, pungent, salty and astringent. Depending on a person's body type and element imbalance, Shah prescribes the foods that need to be included in their diet, and what must be dropped.

For instance, Shah would ask someone with a pith body type (mentally organised and physically hardworking) and a vat imbalance (which signifies low energy levels) to eat hot Sheera, and never put off a meal, especially when the person is hungry.

For someone with asthma, Shah would recommend avoiding foods that are sour and pungent, such as curd, idlis and tomatoes.

However, Shah is wary of offering such 'stock' information. You can't say, take a glass of carrot juice or lime water in the morning and expect it to work for everyone, he points out.

"We all have different body types with different kinds of imbalances. What works for one client may not work for the other," he warns.

And making the switch in diet is easier said than done, points out Hemant Chhabra, the 50 year-old owner of a home stay 100 km outside the city.

While Chhabra maintains that turning vegetarian was not as tough as he'd thought it would be, he admits that a change in the kind of foods one brings home, or even eats outside, is a larger lifestyle change -- one that happens over years.

"A Punjabi not reaching out for Butter Chicken and naan, drinking lassi or milk seemed strange to me," Chhabra laughs. "But I found it surprisingly easy to move to vegetarian foods and salads.

I simply listened to my body," he says.

Now Chhabra's wife, Sangeeta, doesn't stock processed food at home. Instead, there's a jar of dried fruits and a plate of cut salads on the table for the kids to munch on if they are feeling peckish.

Chhabra can't remember the last time he went to the doctor, since he changed his diet.

"Maybe it was 1992," he scrunches his eyes, trying to recall. Although he's down with a flu now, Chhabra knows just what to cure himself with -- lime and ginger shots, herbal tea, soup and sprouts.

For Chhabra, this is not just a home remedy or a stop gap solution. It's the food he eats.

No gas, only nutrition, Mansukh Shah told Premji Shah
The innocuous cabbage, or patta gobi, that sells for Rs 20 per kg in the market, is actually a nutrient powerhouse, rich in a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals including Vitamins A, B, C and E, minerals like calcium, magnesium, iodine and iron, besides having micro nutrients -- essential for the smooth functioning of vital processes in the body -- and fibre.

When Mansukh Shah, an Ayurveda practitioner based in Dadar, asked 75 year-old Premji Shah, a patient of prostrate cancer, to eat a bowl of cut cabbage every morning, he probably wasn't aware of a vast number of studies that have been conducted linking the decrease of cancer to an increased intake of cabbage. While many of these studies aren't used by large pharmaceutical companies (there are however deeper economic reasons for this that may have very little to do with the veracity and authenticity of the studies), they form part of a growing body of work that has begun to explore natural food as alternative therapy to cancer and other life-threatening conditions.

For instance, popular web-zine Web MD offers advice on exercises for Rheumatoid Arthritis. In a recent article, the web-zine spoke on how to curb joint inflammation, increase bone and heart health, and feel better all over... with food.

"Some patients say that certain types of food seem to make their RA worse," says Tracey Robinson, MD, a rheumatologist in Redwood City, California, and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "It may be highly processed foods with a lot of chemicals, foods that are very fatty, red meat, or milk products. It tends to be very individual," the article reads.

It goes on to talk of how the Mediterranean diet that's loaded with fruits and vegetables, like cabbage, and includes healthy non-saturated fats (like olive oil and canola oil), nuts, whole grains, herbs and spices (instead of salt and butter), and heart-healthy fish (instead of red meat) shows promise for people with RA.

Revolutionary road
We Love Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, an initiative that aims at spreading awareness among American parents about what their lifestyle and food choices are doing to their kids -- by feeding them pizzas, burgers and chocolate milk, parents are gifting their children obesity and possibly early death. Oliver kickstarted Food Revolution last year by visiting several schools in West Virginia in an attempt to reform the school lunch programmes and attitudes towards food. The series was aired by ABC last September.

Can you cure cancer with the food you eat?
A growing number of alternative therapists believe you can. Nutritionists Anju Venkat and Daniel Carroll were present at a talk in the TEDx event that took place at Blue Frog, Mumbai in April 2010. Here, Carroll, who is on the fundraising committee of The Indian Cancer Society, spoke of the possibility of reversing terminal cancer through changes in diet. Carroll is sponsoring a programme in the palliative care unit of BhaktiVedanta Hospital, Thane, and has also tied up with a group of doctors in the US and India who specialise in reversing terminal cancer by making changes in diet and lifestyle.
Watch the video

The handbook

Your guide to figuring your body out
According to nutritionist Anju Venkat, the body tells us what it needs. All we have to do is listen and decipher. Venkat decodes some crucial signals for you.

If you're craving fried food: Your body is asking for body-builders, i.e. amino acids and fatty acids that build tissues. Eat dry fruits, nuts, sprouts and green vegetables.
If you're craving sugar: Your body is asking for glucose, i.e. energy-giving food. Munch on au00a0 banana and stay away from refined sugar.
If you're craving salt: Your body needs minerals that do the job of cleansing the system. All fruits and green vegetables are rich in minerals.