Ancient Health Secret Revealed | Shivani Gupta PhD

Pain that creeps in, brain fog that lingers, weight that resists every effort—what if the culprit isn’t “just getting older,” but inflammaging? We sit down with Dr. Shivani Gupta, author of The Inflammation Code, to connect ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with modern science and map out a practical plan for cooling chronic inflammation. Instead of chasing symptoms, we focus on the terrain: circadian rhythm, gut health, stress load, and daily rituals that nudge the body back into repair mode.

Shivani shares a refreshingly doable morning routine—intention setting, hydration, tongue scraping, and early sunlight—that anchors your clock and digestion. She then walks us through soothing evening practices like dry brushing, abhyanga oil massage, and mineral baths to move lymph, calm the nervous system, and deepen sleep. We explore the concept of “mental inflammation,” how chronic stress inflames the body, and why short decompression breaks plus adaptogens such as ashwagandha and shatavari help regulate mood and resilience.

We also dive into the science of turmeric: how curcumin modulates NF-kB and TNF-alpha, supports the gut lining, affects AMPK and sirtuins, and promotes neurogenesis and mitochondrial health. You’ll hear when food sources are enough, when supplements make sense, how to boost absorption with black pepper and healthy fats, and key safety notes for blood thinners and kidney stone risk. For midlife women, Shivani emphasizes sleep as the non-negotiable lever—assessing progesterone, using calming botanicals, and protecting the 10–2 overnight window where the body clears inflammation.

If you’re ready to replace quick fixes with smart rhythms, spice up your meals with potent anti-inflammatory allies, and finally feel your energy return, this conversation offers a clear roadmap. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs actionable hope, and leave a review telling us which ritual or spice you’ll try first.

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Transcript

A Book Launch And Origin Story

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey Shivani, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

I'm so excited to talk about your new book that's coming out today. It's going to be released called The Inflammation Code. Yes, there it is. I've read it. It's outstanding. And we're going to dive into what the book's about. And also today, talk about Ayurveda and and uh your your expertise in it. So um you're you you fuse ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with cutting edge science, which is really, really unique. And that's that's a bold claim. So maybe, maybe before we like dive into specifics, you could tell our listeners what happened in your own health journey that that made you reject the status quo of modern medicine to pursue this path.

Rejecting The Quick Fix In India

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Sure. So I grew up in Houston, Texas. My parents were new immigrants into the United States. And I grew up like any typical immigrant family living the American dream. So my parents worked really hard to build financial security. And every day on the way home from school or dance practice or sports practice, we would say, Can we have McDonald's? Can we have Taco Bell? And as busy parents, they would pretty much give in to us a lot, even though they were also trying to feed us healthy, fresh food. And so I grew up eating a lot of junk food like we typically do here in the West. But I also was somehow always sickly. I don't know if I can attribute it to the food, but I do. So I grew up constantly having colds, sicknesses. And by the time I was in my elementary school years, we started going to India every year or every other year to see my grandparents and my cousins. And that's where I would get disastrously sick. And so I noticed, like in the US, anyone sneezes or anything goes wrong, I catch a cold, I go to India, I get horribly sick and take really strong antibiotics. And so that pattern kept going through middle school, through high school, through college. And by ninth or tenth grade, the first or second year of college, I was in India. I was so sick, they thought they'd need to hospitalize me. And we went to this doctor, he was a Dr. Gupta MD in in New Delhi, India. And I'm sitting in his office, barely able to sit still, because I'm so unwell. I can't tell. Do I need to run to the bathroom or outside to throw up? And he looks at me, he goes, Here's her prescription. She'll be fixed. And some voice inside of me screamed and said, No, we're not doing this again. We're just not. So I looked at him and I said, Can you please tell me, uh, is that antibiotic very strong? He goes, Yeah, it's gonna get the job done. I was like, you know, why don't you drop that down a couple notches, okay? We've really destroyed my gut enough times. Because I was doing my own research. And then I said, What are those other 12 medications for? He goes, Those are for symptoms. I said, Yeah, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing this again. Because I had done it enough times. And I looked at my parents and I said, you know, we're in this land of yoga and Ayurveda and everything natural. And I think we have to go find a different way for my health because this thing, we cannot do this anymore. And so that's when I went on with this journey, and I studied Ayurveda all through India at the feet of gurus, and I thought, this is the most incredible system of health and medicine. This is what I need to learn to transform my health, and I just need to find a way to break this down in a way that I can teach it in the West where I live, because it's just not translating well. Someone has to translate this wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yeah, so so you've really you've done a deep dive, you've studied with uh Ayurvedic Ayurvedic masters for for you know for decades, let's say, and and you've built uh and a fascinating evidence-based lifestyle methodology, modern Ayurveda, right? And what what's the what's the biggest myth in that do you think about Ayurveda that actually holds people back from vitality and and chronic disease reversal?

Ancient Systems And Modern Science

SPEAKER_01 4:11

You know, a lot of people look at the ancient wisdoms and think they're rudimentary, or that they're simple, or that it's just too easy. I can't just live by my circadian clock. That's not gonna fix anything. It has to be this modern technology, or these big tools, or there's or these pharma level tools to provide a result. And where I come from, I'm actually married into a family of all doctors and physicians. So I deeply respect MDs, surgery, pharma solutions. All of those are so valid and so good. And then I also equally respect that ancient wisdoms teach these truths and tenets that were so pure and so um honest, and so the like wisdom pieces that we need in life. And so, although they might seem simple to us now, those are the best practices we need to go back to. So, Chinese medicine, which has acupuncture and herbology and so much more inside of TCM. Um, we have Ayurveda, we have homeopathy, naturopathic medicine, like all these ancient wisdoms hold such truths and tenets that if we just went back to those basic principles, I think we would have great health. But we're living through this time where industrialization happened, so much modernization has happened, and our poor body is like, wow, this is a lot mentally, physically, emotionally. And so those ancient wisdom teach they teach us how to bring body, mind, and spirit into alignment. That's actually the goal of Ayurveda is to show you your unique constitution. Ayurveda came up with circadian rhythm. It's from Ayurveda. Ayurveda taught us that gut health is the center of all health, immune system, mood, everything comes from the gut, which modern science has now proven. Gut microbiome, gut brain access, we know that now. The diet was like a Mediterranean diet and teaching us to eat a circadian seasonal diet and really pay attention to how we eat and when we eat, not just what we are eating. And a really moderate road path, which is kind of different from what we have now, where we're going to such extremes with our diets. And then Ayurveda taught us about the super spices and how you can have this beautiful mindful medicine chest of spices that's so powerful. And Ayurveda finally did teach us a lot about detoxing and how detoxing the system and and releasing what's kind of stuck inside and polluting us is the key to vibrant health and reversal of disease.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Yeah, these these ancient uh traditions of health and wellness are so fascinating. How how how does Ayurveda how is it different from, let's say, Chinese medicine or homeopathy or some of the other ones, or or are they all all kind of telling the same story just through a different cultural lens?

What Ayurveda Actually Teaches

SPEAKER_01 7:01

I think they're very much telling the same story through different lenses. So in homeopathic medicine, we're looking at the distillation of plants, because plants have such powerful healing tools inside of them and healing energies and healing properties. And so that was that deep study of which plant and how and when to drive a huge change in the system. And it's a subtle change, but that subtle change over time leads to the powerful result because the body wants a subtle shift, not a huge hit it with a hammer kind of shift when we're asking for change. And then in traditional Chinese medicine, it's really about assessing the person. What are their elements? What are their you know, driving forces of imbalance, what organ is driving the imbalance? What is the lifestyle change that's needed? So I'd say traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine are very similar, and we have just a few things that are different because every time I meet acupuncture physicians, they're like, yes, I use ashwagandha and turmeric and ginger, and we're talking about the same herbs. All the adaptogens are almost in common between the two systems.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's I mean certainly modern allopathic medicine, you know, as your brothers will agree, you know, have given us a lot with the modern technology. But it's it's interesting even today that people have observed that with our diet that most people would experience an improvement in health if they stopped eating any foods that were created in the last 200 years, any any new type of food, and we went back to and and our Yurveda in Chinese medicine is more like thousands of years old, for you know, so uh, but it's it's interesting how how we're seeing that. Your your book is about inflammation and the inflammation code, and um inflammation is one of the biggest drivers of aging. You know, it's certainly got a lot of attention, and you you call it the the silent epidemic. Can you unpack for us how inflammation, combining inflammation and aging, actually accelerates biological age and how someone listening might begin to reverse, actually reverse that today?

Inflammaging And Its Early Alarms

SPEAKER_01 9:18

For sure. So, you know, growing up, every time I landed in India, although I was a sickly kid, I would land in India and someone would have a really big health event. So all my grandparents were diabetic, all their kids were diabetic, and now looking at my generation, we're within a few years of the majority of us being diabetic as well. And so looking at that pattern, every time I landed, a grandparent would need a quadruple bypass, they'd have a heart attack or a stroke or have advanced Parkinson's or have a leg amputation. And I saw this and thought, why? Why are we leaving lives where we work so hard and build success? And then when we go to retire, that entire time spent in and out of hospitals and in and out of doctors' offices in devastating, excruciating times of health. That made no sense to me. And so when I researched, what are the root causes of diabetes? Well, obesity, inflammation, lack of exercise and movement, lack of stress management. But really, that root cause is inflammation. Inflammation is that root cause of all of these chronic metabolic diseases. So I thought this should be easy. Let's just win at inflammation. How hard is it? But it's not as easy as I thought because inflammation is this forest fire burning inside of us, and it's like the fire alarms are turned off. I know when I'm inflamed just because I hear it very clearly. I've trained my internal messaging to myself to be clear. So for myself, if I'm ever going through a moment where I'm like, oh, you know what? My my hip hurts or my leg hurts. Every time, every day this is hurting more. What is that? And then I'll wake up and I'll say, my feet hurt. There's another pain. That's interesting. And then in any given week, it could be any number of complaints. People will say, brain fog, fatigue, joint pain, aches and stiffness when they wake up. Maybe it's their bodies looking or feeling more puffy. Maybe it's weight gain around the middle and resistant to weight loss. Maybe it's just this overall fatigue and tiredness, less energy. Um, there's a lot of different symptoms. Headaches even can be a symptom of inflammation. And so my message to everyone is when you start to hear those things creep up, those are the alarm bells ringing inside your body. And your job is to pause and say, wait a minute, because uh usually our message to ourselves is, gosh, I guess this is aging. And whenever I hear that voice in my brain say that, I go, no, no, no, it's not aging. That's inflammaging. This is inflammation wreaking havoc, and you think you're aging. No, you're not gonna give up and say, Oh, I guess it's just part of the aging process. Pause and say, I'm going to address my inflammation and let's see if all that goes away. And inevitably it does. So for me, I'm a big turmeric fan, that's where my PhD is, so I reach for turmeric first. But I also quickly start reaching for all the tools I taught in the book. Because what I realized over a decade of working with turmeric is people reach for turmeric, which I love talking about. But if you don't address sleep, movement, diet, gut health, self-care, if you don't address the other pillars, you're always gonna stay in these loops of inflammation where you're chronically inflamed. And so our lifestyle must shift. And here in the West, we typically don't want to change our lifestyle. We want to just do what we're gonna do. And so I put the book together to show how easy it is to implement these changes and then start to feel so much better. Because we can look and feel so much better than what we do now if we just get off that train of inflammation.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah, and it seems like the the symptoms you're describing, the inflammation, um, are similar or really, really kind of this the same thing as the metabolic dysfunction that that we we drive things, you know, insulin resistance, which you know can can involve inflammation and um oxidation, all these things get to this this same same root cause. And and then again, the drivers, like you say, not just diet, but also sleep and exercise and all these things. It's it's it's just it's just fascinating, yeah, that that all these things are there. It's almost like modern medicine kind of treats the symptoms with the pills, with the surgery, but Ayurveda looks more towards the terrain and addressing the the ground truth. Is that a fair observation?

Terrain Over Symptoms

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Correct. Yeah, it's really I love the word terrain because we're talking nowadays more about terrain theory and what's the environment that we're in. And Ayurveda was very much about that, even on a multidimensional level. So in Ayurveda, I need to know like what is your career? How are you doing in your work life? How's your personal life? How are your relationships? Yes, what is your home life? Because from a modern standpoint, we know, like, is there a huge environmental toxin burden? Is there a huge microplastic burden in the functional medicine space? We're pretty obsessed with the mycotoxin and mold burden. Is there a parasite? So, like, there's a burden piece to that puzzle, but also taking a big step back, where's the mental space? Where's the emotional space? If we're not bringing ourselves into alignment, disease can be caused in in so many different ways. And so when I was writing the book, I actually wrote it, and my last piece, I kept thinking I have to find a way to explain to people that we get so stressed out about health or about life that we can actually cause our physical inflammation. And so that's when the term came to me that I coined, which is mental inflammation. I was standing there and I was like, I need a word to explain to people, you can actually cause your inflammation through your own mind. Do you realize the price you're paying by staying chronically stressed? Because that chronic stress has a toll. We see it in our sleep, we see it in our bodies. Sometimes you experience it in your gut when you're really stressed out, you feel like the pains. But do you acknowledge that that alone will cause the disease that you're trying to avoid? And how can we take that issue off the table? And that's one place where I think Ayurveda performs really beautifully because we teach a lot about a morning routine, gentle detox of the system, we teach about deep breathing, we call it pranayam. Yoga is a sister science to Ayurveda. So a lot of what we call mind-body medicine now originated from Ayurveda. And we said these practices in some form need to be part of your day. Because if you're not going to decompress that stress, which we now call vagus nerve toning, but if you don't decompress that stress out of you, we're going to be manifesting disease. And so I teach that as simpler habits because I know as a modern-day woman running around, it's not easy to always make a meditation practice time. So I teach it in simple ways, like grab a cup of tea and have tea time as me time. Pause a couple times a day. Could be your coffee. But pause during that time and check in with yourself. Ask yourself, how am I doing today? What do I need to do to make today better? Am I gonna eat today the way I've scheduled it? Half the time, that's not in my scheduling. Or what do I need to change for this week to be better? And so Ayurveda is really trying to show us we can really self-navigate and build a like a really beautiful circadian rhythm in our day. And that alone will reduce the stress on the system. And if we aren't flying, you know, in Ayurveda we teach you're oftentimes flowing, trying to flow uphill against the river of life, and that's what's causing your dis-ease. And if you just simply turned around and flowed downhill with the rivers of life, things would be easier. And that's where circadian rhythm is a key integral piece is live according to nature's clock, and all health can be easier.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

And what what's a good talking about that? What's a good morning ritual? It's Ayurvedic based. In other words, I'm starting the day, I get up, should I be scraping my tongue? Should I be oil pulling? Um, what to get rid of toxins and things? What should I be doing?

Mental Inflammation And Stress Tools

SPEAKER_01 17:23

So we always say start the day with an intention. So pause, take a moment, set your intention for the day. That could be gratitude journaling, could be a moment of meditation or deep breathing, but start with the pause first. Then we teach to hydrate and get the system moving and grooving. We want that peristalsis for the first bowel movement. It's very key that that's regular because that's our detox process number one. And then we do teach to go brush your teeth and do something called copper tongue scraping. So you buy a copper tongue scraper, could be steel or another metal, but we love copper the most. It's an antibacterial metal. We believe copper has those beneficial properties for the body. And so when you gently scrape the tongue seven to 14 times, you're gently detoxing all the organs of the body. So just like in reflexology, all our organs are reflected on the bottom of our feet. In Ayurveda, we teach that they are reflected on the tongue. And so, as practitioners, we love looking at people's tongues and saying, I see where we need to detox, I see there's some issues going on there. And that's just a good indication of where the work needs to begin. And so gently scraping the tongue clears the oral microbiome, clears those organs, removes what we call ama or this sticky toxic or toxin residue that resides within us, and has it supports a healthier tongue. So, like we're gonna taste our food better, clears the taste buds. And so you gently risk, you rinse that tongue scraper, and then you can also move into oil pulling if you have time. Oil pulling means take a tablespoon or two of food-grade organic oil, put it in the mouth, and swish it around for five to 20 minutes. Now, if you think you're too busy, what's good about this is you can do it while you're in the shower, while you're making your morning coffee, getting dressed, as long as you don't have to talk to somebody. You can do this habit. And then when you spit out that oil, make sure you spit it out in the trash can, not the toilet sink or shower, because you don't want to clog the pipes of the home. So some people love using coconut oil because we like the taste of coconut, most people. Um, for IRV though, we really loved sesame oil. That was our favorite oil, kind of our king of oils, because it has vitamin E, it's antibacterial. And nowadays you can get sesame oil with mint in it, which is really cool. And so building that those two rituals is a great morning practice. And then we actually have a lot of other self-care rituals after that, but I've pretty much moved them into the evening because most people have a busy morning time, unless you're like retired or have a lot of free time on your hands. So I moved some of those into the evening. But that's a good starting point. And what I love about tongue scraping is it's your first healthy habit of the day. So it's kind of setting the tone for I am going to take care of me today. I'm Going to do a good job doing good things for my health. Another one we do is splashing cold water on the eyes to really remind the body we are awake, we are starting our day. And then nowadays we talk a lot about circadian clock. And Ayurveda said, get outside, kiss the sun, like see the sunlight, allow it to touch your body and allow it to come into your eyes. Because that's going to set your circadian clock, your sleep pressure for the night, and all those things as well.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yeah, that's that's that's great. So what those are so good. Tell tell us some of the night practices. I want more.

Morning Rituals That Set Your Clock

SPEAKER_01 20:33

For sure. So when we talk about circadian clock, the goal is really to bookend the day. So when we're starting and we're rising, we're waking the body up, getting it going, get the brain online, get the body online, and prepare for a beautiful, productive day ahead in alignment. And then as we're starting to wind down, I teach about the evening practices, which include dry brushing. So in Ayurveda, we taught that dry brushing from the feet up to the heart is gonna move the lymphatic system. Somehow Ayurveda knew the lymphatic system has to move and it's not gonna do it itself. And so I love that dry brushing was already built into it. And then another habit we teach is called abhyang massage. That's A-B-H-Y-A-N-G-A. Abhyang massage. We we pronounce it abhyang here in the West. And so abhyang massage just means put a towel down, take any food-grade organic oil, again, it could be sesame oil, coconut oil, almond oil, any of the oils, even olive oil would be fine. If you can, warm the oil, it's even more luxurious. I typically don't make time for that. I just, if I can fit in the habit, I do the habit. And you take this food-grade oil and you really gift it to your body, starting with your feet. And so you're gonna sit down on that towel and you're gonna generously apply that oil to the body, generally in long strokes, and then when you hit the joints, you would go in round circles around those joints. But this is gonna create oleation of the skin, oiliation of the joints. In IRV though, we take about we talk about an elemental body type called vata. And so the vata people are typically very dry, and so this is gonna really create that oleation to the system, and it's very grounding to our energy and helps us get better sleep. So then it's abhyang. Then you might want to take a hot, quick shower to kind of get that oil off. You could also do an Epsom salt bath if you want to really, really settle into perfect, gorgeous sleep. I like to do an Epsom salt bath. Shower, get everything off, and when you get in bed, really taking time. For me, I do deep sleep tea or any sleep tea that I love, and that's the beginning of my final sleep hygiene habits leading to better sleep.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

That's that's beautiful. I can't wait to try some of that tonight, and and tomorrow morning, even. Uh you are an expert in turmeric, and I think you your PhD was uh focusing on that. So talk to us about this this molecule, this substance. Uh, what's what's so amazing about it?

Night Routines For Deep Recovery

SPEAKER_01 23:04

For sure. So I love turmeric for so many reasons. When I was in my Ayurvedic coursework, the P the professor taught us about the different spices in the herbology class. So we have a lot of spices in Ayurvedic that are powerful, from the ginger to the fenugreek, fennel, cumin, cinnamon. I mean, there's a lot that we use, even a lot that you've never heard of here in the West, that are so powerful. Um but turmeric really caught my eye because it's so multidimensional in its ability to support the body. It affects a lot of the top, you know, master inflammatory markers and pathways like NF kappa B, TNF alpha, interleukin 6, and thus so many of those downstream inflammatory markers. So the reason it's one of the most studied plants right now on earth is because of how anti-inflammatory it is. It's a powerful antioxidant, it has immune support built in because it's antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-candida, anti-H. pylori. So I think of turmeric as this ultimate janitor. It goes in there and it just cleans house. So when it comes to our zombie cells, our synolytic cells, it'll clean house. We know as we age, we're naturally gonna be more inflamed because of oxidation and synolytic cells and all these things, but we're also gonna have malignant cells or cells that don't go through cell apoptosis and die off when they should. So curcumin just gets in there and cleans them out. But it leaves everything good in place. So it's supportive to our gut barrier lining. It takes out the bad bacteria but leaves the good. From an anti-aging standpoint, it affects our sertuans, our AMPK pathways. It impacts, it creates neurogenesis, mitogenesis, so it brings on new brain cells, more mitochondria, which are big things that we want right now. It increases nitric oxide, increases blood flow in the system. So to me, it's it's kind of the one thing that can do it all. When I speak to physicians, the next question is well, what are the contraindications? Because nothing does it all, which is so valid. So curcumin from turmeric is a vasodilator. Tumoric is a vasodilator. So when it thins the blood, that can be problematic for anyone on a blood thinner. We also do watch out if people are very low iron because it is a blood thinner, you have to keep an eye. And then there has been some literature around kidney stones and keeping an eye on that as well. Other than that, we don't have any published science on adverse effects. We know that it's safe up to eight grams a day. At eight grams a day, we do start to see some GI distress because that's a lot of curcumin and turmeric to drop in the system. But one thing I like to explain is out of the entire turmeric plant, only 3% of it is the humanoids. So tumors become trendy. A lot of people are taking fresh turmeric and juicing it. We never used it that way in ancient India. We always dried it into a spice. And kitchen culinary turmeric is effective, but we should consume that with black pepper or healthy fat, because black pepper will increase the absorption by 2,000%, and a healthy fat will help it cross the blood-brain barrier, which is really beneficial when we talk about neurocognitive issues, but you know, tau tangles, amyloid plaques, there's a lot of arguments for supporting the brain with turmeric. But when only 3% of it is the carcumanoids and we know that that's the most effective part at inflammation, that's where we start moving into the world of supplementation and talking about, okay, well, if you want to drive a significant result, then taking a turmeric supplement that's actually potent will drive that result.

Turmeric’s Science, Power, And Limits

SPEAKER_02 26:35

I see, I see. Well, before we get into how we optimize our dose and how we how we consume it, just a quick question on it comes from a plant, right? And so I'm always curious, why do you think a plant would have a molecule that would do these things? Is it uh neuroprotective against the plant somehow? Or um what does anybody ever speculate on that? Like what it is is it good for the plant, or is it more to get animals to eat it, maybe like sugar and fruit, you know, that gets things to consume it, or yeah, you know, that's such a profound question, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

There's so many plants out there that produce lectins so that they are self-protecting. There are so many plants that provide such varied benefits. Like we know moringa produces tons of benefits for the body. Ashwagandha to me is the next one after turmeric. I I want a whole PhD on ashwagandha next because I'm excited about its power. Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know turmeric and ginger are both so powerful in terms of their anti-inflammatory antioxidant benefits. So I just always think Mother Nature knew what to make for us and knew that we would have to find a way to utilize it to get these level results at some point. And we need it, I think, now more than ever.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Uh-huh. So so if I want to, if I want to consume it, um, what what what foods would be like curry? Is that I I assume right? Curry uses a lot of it. So curry would be one thing. What other what other nat uh kind of food-based ways are there to consume it?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I would say any of the foods coming out of India use a high amount of turmeric because we are the largest producers of turmeric and we're the biggest fans of turmeric. I've heard that Iranian culture, some of the Middle Eastern cultures use a lot of turmeric as well. Um, you can also fit it easily into Mexican food. So whenever I've cooked Mexican food and use the spices, I can see they are using ground cumin seeds and a lot of our spices as well. So you can almost hide turmeric inside of Mexican food without affecting flavor too much. Um but yeah, typically it's your Eastern cultures who use it.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah, I have a friend who sprinkles it on his coffee, has a little of that, and it and it's actually delicious. It's uh it's good. So when do we need to supplement it? Or what uh what are the other routes beyond food?

unknown 29:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

You know, when do we need to supplement is a good question to ask from someone like me because I think we need to supplement it all the time. Um according to all the research I have done and and the life I have lived, I think that the majority of us are suffering from inflammation. Everyone who finds Ayurveda is usually kind of at their last door seeking an integrative solution because no one else has helped them. And so I think societally we are so inflamed that we really need to look at ourselves and say, okay, where are we not addressing lifestyle, which is the biggest piece to win at inflammation? Secondly, where is our diet really off-kilter? Because we need to address it there. And then thirdly, where can we bring in fast solutions to win at inflammation? And then we'll go back and address sleep, you know, diet, lifestyle, all those things. So, I mean, most of the people I meet are inflamed. And I tell them, look, turmeric will absolutely help with inflammation. And then your job is to get off it and win it lifestyle and hold the result. And then for me, I have seen the devastating effects of diabetes in my lifetime. I'm still seeing it all around me right now in my parents' generation. Um, every aunt, every uncle, and my own mother struggling with diabetes uncontrolled. So to me, it's something we should all utilize on a daily basis as a piece of the overall plan. Because we have to win it inflammation or we're not gonna win it our health.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Yeah, yeah. Um the um taking taking the uh turmeric for inflammation, if we if we take it either in food or as a supplement, what's the what's the response time? In other words, is something you have to take it for a few days and then a week later you'll feel better, or do you feel better immediately, or is there any sense of that?

Food Uses, Dosing, And Supplementation

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Sure. So when we eat the food consistently, kitchen culinary spice, if you did use it in your cooking every single day, a lot of people do tell me, I feel great when I eat turmeric, or I juice my turmeric and I get a lot of benefit. So it could be that on the food side you'll get there. I typically say when you're taking a turmeric supplement, expect it to take three to seven days for you to start to feel something, and then continue to take it for two, three weeks, and you'll start to see that cumulative effect. A lot of people tell me I took it and the next day I felt something. And then some say that 10 to 14 day window. And then most people tell me I bought turmeric for a long time, I felt nothing. Then I bought yours and I felt the difference. And then when I left town and forgot to take it with me, then I noticed the difference. Then all of a sudden I realized the level of aches and pains, and uh my joints were hurting, then I realized how much it was holding me. And so that's been interesting to kind of see is when you put really potent curcumin together at the right ratio, because out of that 3%, only curcumin is the most effective at reducing inflammation. So all three curcumanoids are valid, but the ratio that you give them in can mimic mother nature, and that's where we start to really see the result. And so people have told me when they have big health issues, it goes after those, like a big pain in the body, maybe it's hip pain, back pain, knee pain, then the medium issues it supports, and then really tiny issues, it can also help because reducing inflammation has helped them with allergies and asthma and all sorts of little tiny things, gingivitis. So it's interesting to me how as a plant it has this intelligence and goes after big, medium, and then smaller problems.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Through your you have a supplement company called Fusionary Health, and and uh turmeric is available in that. How do you recommend um how is your product different than others, or how do you recommend taking it? In other words, should it be a daily thing you do every day, or should it be like, oh, I have some knee pain, my I can sense my inflammation up, I take it that way. What's what's the best practices there, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Sure. So I built fusionary formulas a decade ago, and my dream was once I finished the PhD, I just wanted doctors to say you could take turmeric for that. That was my dream that they trusted something and would recommend it. Because a lot of times with physicians, they're like, I don't trust a supplement, they're not regulated, I have no way to trust that. And so in my case, I made it in the United States, third party tested all those things. Um, the typical dosage is two capsules a day. And so two capsules a day is a thousand milligrams of curcumin a day. And I think the majority of us can take that every single day safely. And I think that we should all cycle on and off our supplements. That's the the most reasonable answer to give. We're not actually meant to take anything every single day forever, and I do see that problem in the supplement world is, and I do that too, I'll pick up a probiotic and it becomes my everyday forever, or a vitamin D and it's my everyday forever. We should be able to take a day off a week or a few days off a month and cycle through with our supplements, um, depending on us and our different issues. In my case, I I am really worried about inflammation in my family history. So I do use it as a daily tool. And then, you know, for me, I won't let it go forever because I know the science behind it. But I do think that as a society, one big issue is our level of inflammation. So I encourage everyone, whether it's turmeric or a ginger tea or whatever you're gonna do, build some practice into your daily life to battle inflammation.

Midlife, Sleep, And Adaptogens

SPEAKER_02 34:38

You've spoken about and you've written about women's health and and life stages. I mean, you your your previous book was the the conscious pregnancy. Um what about menopause and midlife health? They're huge, huge topics. So, what's one Ayurvedic tool that um most well-trained Western clinicians don't know that can radically shift midlife vitality?

SPEAKER_01 35:07

I would say my number one tool on the lifestyle side is sleep. I think we are talking about sleep a lot more, but it's still this enigma. I meet so many women who share that they're not sleeping well. And I'm like, well, you're never gonna win an inflammation. You clear inflammation at night. That's when we're clearing it out of the body, is in that time window, according to Ayurveda, 10 to 2 on the circadian clock. So in perimenopause midlife, so many of us are pushing sleep back because we've got so much to do, so many commitments. Maybe you're in the sandwich generation, like I am, where you've got teenagers and elderly parents and you're juggling your worlds, or just life commitments because of life's stressors, but whatever it is, when sleep takes a toll, inflammation is going to be up, inevitably. And so I reach for a lot of sleep tools. And in midlife, I'm reaching for progesterone, um, which I recommend to all my clients to get tested for their progesterone. I use a sleep tea that I invented that has adaptogens that calm the mind and calm the nervous system and calm the digestive system for better sleep. I use sleep gummies, I recommend all sorts of people sleep solutions. Whatever works, I want people to have it in their hands. And then on the the like, what is the tool you can reach for quickly? I love adaptogens. I think adaptogens are such beautiful plants from the plant kingdom that adapt with our system. So Ashwagandha, there's one called Shatavari, we pronounce it shatavari here in the West. Um, Brahmi, there's so many Bacoba complex, all these adaptogens that exist, when we're stressed and anxious, it calms us down a couple notches. When we're depressed and feeling low or feeling the blues, it lifts us up a couple notches. Ashwagandha is a great example of it. Ashwagandha will literally go with the body like a thermostat and adjust where you need it while giving you strength, while giving you neurocognitive support. So I love tools like that that I can bring on board that calibrate to me and help me feel the way I need to feel to stay focused and energized and accomplished in what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

If you, if we could, if we could wave a magic wand and you could you could rewrite modern medical curriculum with maybe maybe one core principle from Ayurveda, what would it be? And how would it change the future of healthcare?

Super Spices As A Medical Bridge

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Oh, it's so hard to pick one. I I would pick all six pillars, but let's say I really had to just pick one, I would pick the super spices because I think when we add super spices as a complementary tool to modern medical solutions, then you've got this beautiful synergy because in the medical community, every doctor is trying to help the patient. They're trying to find what is it that's wrong with them, how do I support them? And so usually by the time you get to the doctor's office, you need some pretty hard-hitting tools. You're not saying, oh, just sleep an extra hour at night. Like you're you're kind of far beyond that level of tool. And so when we're looking for the what are the fastest, hardest-hitting tools out of Ayurveda, I think of the super spices because they are like superfoods. So in the West, we reach for blueberries and spinach and salmon and an anti-inflammatory diet, Mediterranean diet, nutrient-rich foods. Same thing in Ayurveda. We're gonna reach for that nutrient-rich diet, but we're gonna add on top of it the power of the spices. And those spices are anti-inflammatory, very gut supportive, they're very antioxidant in their nature. And so bringing those in, whether it's a whole curriculum, I'm happy to teach it in every medical school, on ginger, cumin, cinnamon. Cinnamon helps with blood sugar. So so many of the issues we struggle with as a society could be met by building out a beautiful spice cabinet and sprinkling those on our foods. And we're living through a moment right now that's very protein forward in its philosophies. And so as I watch everyone talk about keto and protein, protein is great, but it gets kind of boring. Like I sit here and just shovel protein in, like, it's my job, and I'm just grateful that I own so many spices to create so much variety of flavor on that journey, too. And so that's a piece of what I want to encourage people to do is play with your spices and start to really flavor up your life in that way.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

And that and that's just one of the six pillars. So for the other five, they're gonna they're gonna our audience is gonna have to read your book, which as of today will be available at Barnes Noble, uh, all independent bookstores, libraries everywhere. Uh so um, if if you want listeners to take nothing else from today's uh conversation, what's one piece of wisdom you want to echo in every listener's mind as we as we close out this episode?

SPEAKER_01 39:53

I want everyone to remember Ayurveda carries so much ancient wisdom, it has the lifestyle. Practices, the goal being bring to bring body, mind, and spirit into alignment. But the power of the super spices and our circadian alignment are two of my favorite ways to help bring us back into feeling rooted, bringing rituals into our life and feeling more grounded, healthy, and vital. And so reach into the toolkits, start to play with them, start to practice them for yourself so you can start to feel a transformation in your health.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

That was that was so beautiful, Shivani. Thank you so much for being with us on the program today. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

And this is we've been speaking with Dr. Shivani Gupta, author of The Inflammation Code, which is available as of today. It's coming out. So please check it out. And uh we'll hopefully have you back on the show again, Shivani, and uh we can get an update.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Awesome, thank you. And I wanted to share where people can find it.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Oh, right. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

The book is at the inflammationcode.com. My website is shavanigupta.com. My name, and I have my podcast and my master classes and my quizzes there for everyone. And then the teas and supplements are at fusionaryformulas.com, f u s I O N A R Y. And I made a special code for your audience, Lufkin15. We'll give them 15% off.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Thank you.