As summer's warmth intensifies, find refuge in the cooling wisdom of Ayurveda. Dive into this episode to discover age-old techniques for inner coolness, even in the hottest of seasons.

Unearth dietary choices and herbal supplements tailored to mitigate body heat and inflammation. Discover strategies to sustain your fitness regimen without succumbing to the heat.

Venture into the world of 'Pitta', Ayurveda's dosha embodying heat, which permeates our bodies, minds, meals, and even the changing seasons. With Ayurvedic insights, you can master the art of balancing Pitta, ensuring optimal well-being.

While the blazing sun might be unyielding, harness the power of Ayurveda to regulate your body's internal temperature and thrive amidst the heat.

Pitta reducing herbal supplements:

Read the full transcript:

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This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer. Welcome to Episode 31 of the breast cancer recovery coach. I am Laura Lummer. And today we're going to talk about turning down the heat with our your VEDA. Because man, it has been hot, it's hot everywhere. And I used to love the heat, I lived in Palm Springs, California for several years when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. And you know, of course, that's back when I had no body fat on me and no clue of what a menopausal hot flash was. But now my body works very differently. And I have to be very mindful of avoiding things that cause me to be more heated, overheated, uncomfortably heated and agitated. And if you do too, then you're really going to like this show. And I'll give you some tips to help you in the most natural ways to kind of tone down the heat that's going on in the body and help you to be a little bit cooler throughout the day. So first of all, I just want to tell you, thank you so much for tuning in for downloading the show. Thanks so much to those of you who are leaving stars leaving reviews. And I gotta tell you, I go back and I read the comments that you leave for the show. And it's another word, it's just so moving. It's so meaningful to me to read those and know that the work I set out to do is the work that's actually happening. And that some of you out there are finding this show when you need to find it and you're hearing things you need to hear. And

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I thank you, thank you for leaving those comments and literally brings tears to my eyes when I read them like it's so cool. And I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. Because you know what I know it takes time to sit down and write a review. It takes time out of your day. And it's extra effort that a lot of people don't do and that I really, really appreciate. So thank you for that. And if you're somebody who enjoys listening to this show, and you haven't yet been able to find the time to subscribe to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast, or to leave some stars a review, I'd really really appreciate it if you can make the time to do that. It's a very special effort, I understand that. And if you can find the time to do it, that would be awesome. Alright, so let's get into this. In our VEDA, the dosha the energy that brings about heat is Pitta. And when we're talking about reducing heat, we're talking about being overheated internally in the body, not just because it's 110 degrees outside, but just your body being overheated. That's called balancing your Pitta. Now if you're new to the show, or if you're unfamiliar with Ayurvedic go back and listen to episode 14, it's titled What is a dosha and in that episode, I talk in more detail about the fundamentals of ru Veda and I go into more detail about the doshas, but for now, in summary, Pitzer is the heating energy of our bodies of our food of our environment. So Peter being the energy of heat, it has the qualities of the elements of fire and water. So think hot and humid, right. pitar governs energy production, digestion and metabolism. And when pitches, imbalance, you feel focused, you're able to make decisions easily, you're quick witted and well spoken. You have physically a strong appetite, good digestion, lots of energy. But when PID is out of balance, and when the heat in and around you is too high, you can start to feel irritable, argumentative, you can experience heartburn, indigestion, rashes and random burning sensations. Now, as I said, pizza is not just in our mind and in our body, but it's in our environment. It's in our food, that energetic is all around us. It's even in the time of day, the pizza time of day is from 10am to 2pm. And then it's again from 10pm to 2am. And the pizza time of year the season of pizza is you guessed it, Summer, right. So for those of you who are experiencing menopause or even chemically induced hot flashes. I'm sure you know what that PID two aspects of menopause are right? They're hot flashes and night sweats, and they suck right. Now, if you don't have an air conditioner in your house, you know, there's only so much you can do to stay cool when the temperature gets as hot as it has been lately all across the country. But there are also steps you can take with your food. There are supplements and even exercises or the way that you exercise that can help keep your internal heat in check and make the blazing hot, wet summer days a little more bearable. So let's start off by looking at the first thing you could do that I think is the easiest thing you can do. And that is to pack your fridge with delicious Pinto reducing foods. So this is easy, because summertime is the season for Pitta reducing foods. And this is also a clue into how your Aveda works. So the Earth produces what we need to stay in balance with the season naturally. So that is if we eat the foods that would naturally be growing at this time of year. And hopefully we're all aware of the fact that just because it's in the store right now doesn't mean it's not naturally seasonal. So there are many foods that we have access to year round now because of technology, chemical fertilizers, hybridization, and other farming practices that make that possible. So for example, the natural season quote unquote, for strawberries is April through June. But they're now grown and available from January to November because of the development of these new strains of the strawberry. And this doesn't mean that it's bad to eat strawberries out of season, I just want to make that point that seasonal foods tend to balance the seasonal changes of our bodies. So we have to kind of educate ourselves and become a little more aware of what actually is in season at this time if it were just the natural food. So Pitta reducing foods come in all categories of food, not just watery, sweet fruits and vegetables. But they're also PIDs reducing grains like white basmati rice, and oats. And these foods are heavy, sweet and sticky. These are the opposite qualities of pitta, which is light, pungent and sharp just to name a few of its attributes. So I'm going to post a list of Pitzer reducing foods in the show notes for this episode. And you can use that as a guide. And in that guide, you're gonna see three columns. One shows that there are pitcher reducing foods that you can eat as much as you like. And the second column is foods that are best only be eaten occasionally, if you're feeling like pitches high in your body. So it's not that they really increase it too much, but they don't really decrease it too much. So a little bit at a time is okay. And then in the third column, there are foods that you should avoid, especially if you have a lot of heat going on in your system, heartburn and rashes and irritation. If pittas really high, then you want to stay away from that avoid column as much as possible. So here's some examples though of foods that fall under the best categories. In grains we're talking about oats, barley, and whole wheat and obviously if you have a gluten intolerance, you'd consider that when making food choices and donate the wheat pit to reducing dairy products would include ghee, which is clarified butter cream whole milk, the more sour fermented dairy products should actually be avoided when Pitta is high or it's really hot during the summer, and in the middle of the day. Ghee and olive oil are actually also good fats that you can choose from that are pitta, reducing sweet fruits and cooling vegetables like melons, sweet apples, not sour apples, berries, grapes, figs, these are all grapefruits, asparagus, leafy greens, spinach and cucumbers, excellent Pitzer reducing vegetables. Now, it's best to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. But if that's not in your budget, or for some reason that's not accessible to you try to choose the frozen fruit and vegetable varieties before choosing the canned ones. A lot of times frozen fruits and vegetables are great because they're picked and they're just flash frozen right there. So they're as close to getting fresh as you're going to get whereas canned has actually been through a lot more processing and usually has a lot more salt and or sugar added to it. Okay, beans, pinto reducing means chickpeas. So think of delicious hummus, black beans, mung beans, cooling spices and herbs include dill, which is one of my very favorites, even if you're just making a lovely salad, taking some fresh dill and just chopping it, snipping it with scissors and sprinkling it that fresh dill all over your salad it so good and cooling and you can tell right even just when you bite into it when you bite into something like cilantro if you're not a cilantro hater I know there's two schools of thought on cilantro. I'm in the love it my husband's in the hate it tastes like soap club. But if you love it and you buy it into something like dill or cilantro or peppermint, you drink something, you feel that coolness, right, you know that that energetic the effect of that food is cooling. So speaking of more cooling spices, tumeric licorice, and that's not the candy, cardamom, cilantro, chamomile, and peppermint. So these are wonderful to prepare in your foods, and to also take throughout the day at room temperature or as cool teas. Also, when it comes to beverages, of course, drinking lots of cooling water and infusing that water with pitta, reducing fruits and herbs is a great choice. And this is super easy to do nowadays, because everywhere you look, there are fancy water containers that have those little tubes down the center. And you can fill those tubes with these lovely fruits with herbs, cucumbers, strawberries, dill, put it all in there. Let it cool off, are you feeling the coolness just thinking about it, it's making me thirsty. So when it comes to food and drink another way of keeping your pizza from getting too high is to eat regular meals at consistent times. And Don't skip meals. It's also best to eat your largest meal of the day at noon, or close to it. And recall that the pizza time of day is between 10 and two. So this is when your activity is usually the highest right and your digestion is the strongest. And even though margaritas sound amazing to cool yourself off on a nice hot weekend day. avoiding alcohol and salt actually really helps to reduce Pitta as well when it comes to considering beverages sorry. So one of the thing that I love most about ru Veda is that it's really all about being good to yourself. And one of the daily routines suggested in our event is called Avianca of the UNGA is a daily oil massage, it's generally performed in the morning prior to getting into the shower, which sounds weird, right? Like, why would I put oil on before I get in the shower, don't you put that on your body after as a moisturizer. But no, we're actually in Iveta, you're going to put it on first. So that when you get into that nice warm shower, those oils just are kind of driven into the skin. And they just help to keep that moisture just kind of sealed in there really nice. So to reduce pitta, you would use a cooling oil like coconut oil on your skin. And I have to share something as we're talking about energetic effects of different things on your skin. My daughter has been dealing with an inflammatory skin condition for several weeks now. And although there's been many things that the dermatologist has prescribed to put on her skin topically, the only thing that has really had an impact is coconut oil. So just putting this organic coconut oil on these red inflamed areas of her skin has really helped to cool it and to moisturize it and to heal it, it's pretty remarkable to see how something so simple can have such a tremendous impact on an inflammatory condition. So if you're using coconut oil for your daily massage, or if you prefer to use coconut oil when you get out of the shower and just rub it on and use it as a moisturizer. That's okay too. But another ru Vedic tip to cool down would be to use some beautiful essential oils, like lavender rose or sand sandalwood in your coconut oil. And that's not only going to have a lovely scent, but the energetics of those essential oils are also very cooling. So you have little coolness and you have a little fragrance as well. Really nice. And speaking of cooling essential oils, it's a great idea to use essential oils and use them frequently to help to kind of just cool your environment and to keep yourself nice and calm. So one of the trends that I love right now are these stretch bracelets that are made from lava beads. And you can put a couple of drops of essential oil right on to the bracelets. And then that scent from those oils is just kind of wafting around it you move your hands and you get a little whiff of lavender essential oil. So it's a really lovely subtle way to work aromatherapy into your day. And I'm also a huge fan of diffusing oils in the home and in the office. So not only because it smells lovely, but you get that environmental benefit of having this essential oils in and around you as well. In a 2011 article in Yale scientific, Cynthia dang tells about a study that was done at my University School of Medicine. And this study found that patients who had depression needed smaller doses of antidepressant medications after they inhaled citrus fragrance for their treatments. And she also refers to a study from the University of Vienna where a female patients exhibited decreased levels of anxiety when the scent of orange oil was used in dental clinics, really fascinating. And I know Melissa, one of my favorite orange oils is something that has been used and studied quite extensively in helping to decrease symptoms of depression. So if you don't already use essential oils, give them a try, you might be surprised it has something so subtle can have an impact on how you feel. And one of my favorite cooling blends is combining Geranium and clary sage. A few drops of these beautiful oils, in some cool spring water in a spritzer in your purse can do wonders for a hot flash. Rose Oil is great for that, too. So it just smells nice, it's refreshing, very cooling, just a little spritz, maybe on the back of the neck on the face.

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So in a natural balanced state, the energy of pitted drives healthy competition and focus determination. But when we're in the height of Peter season, it's a good idea to tone down the intensity of exercise, heat, mixed with more heat and intensity can create crabby and that's putting it very nicely controlling people. When Peters high, we have a tendency to be more competitive with those around us and to push ourselves even harder than we probably should. So rather than checking in with ourselves, we're looking around, we're trying to see what the next person is doing. And then we're trying to go faster and stretch further and lift heavier, you get the idea, right. That's what happens when pizza is too high. So try instead to focus internally. If you're doing an exercise like yoga, or Pilates, try to keep your eyes closed. And notice only how you and your body is feeling how your body is reacting. And especially in yoga. Remember that this is your practice, it's individualized to your body. And although there may be a teacher there, offering suggestions for you to flow with yoga is a time for you to give your body what it needs. And remember that close your eyes and really tune into that as you go through your practice. Now, if you're doing something outside like running, please don't close your eyes. But do try to focus on exhales try to focus on the release of heat and the letting go of the breath. As opposed to the inhales maybe you can even tune down the running a little bit and try like jogging or even walking fast. Now if you're a naturally high pizza person like me, you might panic a little bit when you first hear the idea of toning it down of doing not less exercise, but less intense exercise, because I promise you the idea of high intensity interval training was dreamed up, and is still relished by those of us who have a lot of pizza in our veins. But maybe you could just put a little bit of a spin on this since every pizza loves a good challenge. You could challenge yourself with taking it a little easier on your body for a while and see what you think when you try to concentrate on the letting go more than on the getting fired up. And finally, I want to tell you about three iron Vedic herbs that are amazing for balancing Pitta and for dealing with excess heat in the body. Now, as always, everyone's body is different and you should always check with your doctor before beginning an herbal program, especially if you're taking other prescription medications you're pregnant, you might be pregnant, or you're lactating. So that being said, one of my favorite Pitta reducing herbs is called min giusta. In Iveta Min jisa is known as a blood cleanser. And it said to remove excess heat from the blood and from the body. I mean Gza will do wonders for clearing up the skin. And it was my go to supplement when my kids were teenagers and it started to have acne breakouts. And jisa can also be used as a gentle wash for the skin by making a tea out of it and then you just allow that tea to cool down and wash it over your skin and does wonders for the complexion. You can also drink Mandisa tea, but it's pretty bitter. And I am not a fan of drinking or eating things that aren't delicious. So when it comes to taking herbs that don't taste good, I stick with them in capsule form. When it comes to the tea, I actually used to make a majesta tea for my dad. He had very severe type two diabetes and he had diabetic ulcerations on his skin. And so I would make them in giusta tea and my mom and him would use it to wash his legs and his skin and it actually just had some very positive results. Min jisa is anti inflammatory and it's used in Iveta to detoxify the liver and the kidneys. And it's also used to reduce the swelling and pain of inflammatory arthritis just to name a few of the benefits of ng Sta. And important note here is that in Ayurvedic herbs are not used like Western medicine. So you don't go take an herb to treat a symptom you don't say, Oh, I have this. So I'm going to take that you take an herb to support an overall lifestyle program. So while you're diffusing oils, and while you're eating a pizza, reducing diet and putting some effort into self care, you can use these herbs to support an increase the healing actions on your body. But don't think that you can keep going out and drinking Pepsi and eating hot fire Cheetos and then resolve your issues by taking something like Min giusta. That's why are you better is a holistic approach to wellness. It takes working on your entire lifestyle, your lifestyle as a whole to get the balance that you seek. Okay, another incredible herb is called the Shatavari. Now Shatavari is so great on so many levels, I could actually do an entire show on Shatavari. And one of the things that I love about it is that I would definitely consider Shatavari to be edible too. And I do often drink Shatavari it has a really nice sweetness to it, which is one of the reasons that it's cooling. Shatavari is used in Ayurvedic to support the female reproductive system and menopausal transition. It's nutritive, it's nourishing, it's calming and rejuvenating. And it's used to support the digestive system and blood by reducing Pitta in these areas. Mixing about a teaspoon of Shatavari and more milk with some cinnamon and cardamom at night is a really lovely treat that can also support some sound sleep and if you're not big on animal milks, then using that milk is fine. Or if you have any kind of lactose intolerance. My third pizza reducing favorite is called Boom mama lucky I really just love that name too. Now, I first heard of Boomer Malachy, when I was in I read a college and I was so impressed with the case studies that I read about it and the results that people got when using Boomer malarkey as part of a lifestyle program that I started to use it myself and I've recommended it many times sorry Aveda clients over the years Booma. Maliki is known in Iveta as an excellent liver detoxifier. It's cooling, soothing and strengthening. Naming notice that there's a little theme here about the herbs that I've been bringing up. The ones that I refer to have had affinities for the blood or the liver, because Pitta is the dosha of heat and an eye event of the blood and liver among other areas in the body. But the blood in the liver are these primary areas of heat and have excess heat. So you want to use herbs that really work with those areas of the body, and especially herbs that have an affinity for the liver, that heated organ that processes so many things and as so much blood going through it all the time. But if I'm lucky is also used to support and to cool the digestive tract and the gallbladder. In a study in 2011 from the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, the extracts and the isolated compounds of Booma malarkey were looked at. And what this study found was that there were a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities in boom unlocking in these compounds. And these activities included antiviral, antibacterial, anti inflammatory, anti malarial, anti microbial, anti cancer, anti diabetic, hypolipidemic, antioxidant, hepatic, protective and never protective, and it also has diuretic properties. So in English, what are we talking about? It protects the liver, protects the kidneys, also protects you against bacteria, and inflammation amongst all these other things. This is nature's medicine, my friends, and it's very, very impressive. So you may not have air conditioning, and I hope for your sake you do. But at least you're now armed with lots of tools. You can try out to cool your jets during this and any heatwave that comes up. So as always, I will post resources on the show notes page of this episode. And if you have comments or if you have ways of keeping yourself cool and Pina is raging. I'd love to hear about it. So you can find me on Facebook at Laura Lummer. You can find me on Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach. And if you haven't done so yet, I hope that you'll visit my website Laura lummer.com, where you can download my free ebook six habits of healthy heavy breast cancer survivors. And in doing so you become a part of the email list and part of the community of thriving breast cancer survivors. Thank you again so much for listening to the show for subscribing to the show. And I will talk with you again in two weeks until then, stay cool. And don't forget, let your lifestyle be committed to the test

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laid all your doubts. Your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures Give it all you know you've been waiting on

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this