About healing Interstitial Cystitis
Food is medicine - Medicine is Food ~ Hippocrates
At present women and men who are bothered by the symptoms of interstitial cystitis are having difficulties finding solutions to help them. Using an energy approach to help the problem is of value. What follows at this site is scientific information that explains the energy approach which comes from the Ayurvedic discipline of the yoga tradition. It is the ultimate desire of this website to see the marriage of the energy and matter field disciplines rather than to see them as mutually exclusive of one another.If you and I were to visit the great buffet in the sky where everything that was on the planet was represented, if we were in balance we would choose those foods which harmonize with our energy patterns if we wanted to maintain a state of optimal health. The problem is that we do not have information about which foods are harmonizing to our physiologies and which are not. Information shared at this site can help you learn which foods are balancing for us. If you have interstitial cystitis or the symptoms consistent with that diagnosis then this dietary information is fundamental to getting better irregardless of what other techniques are being used.
The major caveat is that you as the patient be evaluated and diagnosed by a urologist as having the diagnosis of interstitial cystitis before embarking on this dietary approach. Furthermore if your symptoms fail to respond at all to this simple approach that you take the responsibility to seek further advice about your condition from your urologist because there are significant bladder prostate and lower ureteral conditions that may mimic interstitial cystitis. Having said this, an energy diet approach can be a great benefit in the treatment and amelioration if not complete cessation of symptoms over time.
As discussed in other areas of the website, the concept of the mindbody as an energy field is consistent throughout all of the ancient healing disciplines. The Ayurvedic discipline that is used in this dietary model for the management of excess acidic loading represents only one of these approaches. The reason that the Ayurvedic energy approach is used over others is because from a dietary standpoint its recommendations are the best articulated and most easily understood of those available. It is recognized that the Traditional Oriental discipline is also very popular in the U.S. community because of the use of acupuncture, herbs and other practices. But as one sage advisor once said, "It is better to dig one 200 foot hole rather than to dig 4 fifty foot holes." These energy disciplines are very sophisticated and take a lifetime of practice to do them well. Particularly in the U.S. we like to explore all the alternatives open to us but then the benefits of any one of the disciplines is lost because none of them is understood to any degree. The Ayurvedic discipline is used but if one finds good information through another discipline then by all means use it but resist the temptation to dabble and practice distraction, which will not bring about the fruits of the work you bring to gaining health.
Lastly, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Dr. Vasant Lad for his lifelong dedication to the teaching of Ayurveda and for all his work in bringing this knowledge to the Western medical community. It is with his inspiration that this work was created. Without his guidance this website would not have been possible. The dietary recommendations for the recognized Ayurvedic energy patterns are taken from his material at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
