The whole brain includes the gut enteric nervous system
Book review - The Prime by Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary, MD, and Integrative Neurologist with training and childhood experience in Ayurveda.
In a previous post I mentioned the book The Whole Brain and I found another neurologist who uses a similar perspective.
The Prime - Prepare and Repair Your Body for Spontaneous Weight Loss by Kulreet Chaudhary, MD, is not a typical diet book. (Amazon) Dr. Chaudhary grew up in India with a grandfather who was a Ayurvedic health practitioner/doctor and her mother treated her childhood ailments with traditional methods and she also received early training in meditation after it had been prescribed for her own Hashimoto's thyroid condition by an Ayurvedic doctor. The meditation reversed the autoimmune thyroid condition for her so she sent both of her daughters to learn the skill too.
Dr. Chaudhary’s website has a variety of resources and a self screening quiz for gut health - your “Gut IQ”. There is also a screening for learning your dosha - *a topic for another post. Using sound for healing is also a focus of her work and topic of another book she has published called Sound Medicine. (drkulreetchaudhary.com) Healing frequencies and rhythmic sounds can also help organize and synchronize the aether energy flow within our bodies.
Western medical school and US style eating left Kulreet unhealthy and having difficulty thinking for a first time. Brain fog was happening at the same time he was trying to get started in her own practice - admin plus clinical work demands were too much. She asked her mother for advice and was told to go see an Ayurvedic doctor. So she did, with Western medical school skepticism even though she had admired her grandfather so much.
The Ayurvedic advice helped. Dr. Chaudhary was so impressed by the resolution of her severe migraines (by that point, plus other symptoms) and intolerance to standard prescription side effects, that she started taking her own tough cases in her neurology practice to see an Ayurvedic doctor. And that got impractical so she got trained in it too. She no longer felt comfortable offering patients standard prescription care that she had learned in Western medical school if she didn’t want to take it herself. Now that is healthy ethics.
The focus of Dr. Chaudhary’s method is in healing the gut first and reducing overall inflammation and improving toxin elimination. It is the method she developed for her neurology patients to help their brain conditions. She frequently heard back, “I lost 30 pounds, doc!” The range of weight loss went up to 100 or so but average unexpected weight loss was 20-30 pounds for his neurology patients. Word spread of her good results with her integrative methods of Western and Ayurvedic training that previously skeptical doctors started to refer difficult patients to see her or saw her as patients personally.
Kulreet Chaudhary wrote the book in hopes of helping more people to achieve better health and a more comfortable weight maybe, on their own, or with the help of their own healthcare team. The strategy is to improve the health of the gut and the gut brain ~ the Enteric Nervous System (ENS). The ENS is a vast network of nerves laid out similarly to that in our brain 🧠 but in a long tubular network within the inner layers of the intestinal tract. The nerve signals help to control the smooth muscle’s wave like peristalsis which helps move food along.
*If muscular peristalsis is dysfunctional than constipation can be more likely and overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine (SIBO) may also be more likely as contents of the lower bowels starts backing up. Ideally we should have a soft but formed bowel movement at least once a day and it might smell a bit but not strongly unpleasant. Foul odors in the BM means it isn’t as healthy of a microbe balance or isn’t digesting rapidly or thoroughly perhaps.
The ENS cells and gut bacteria make most of our body’s serotonin and it can travel to the skull brain within the vagal nerves. Ninety percent of communication between the gut brain nerves and the skull brain goes from the gut to the brain.
The ENS is also large so that brings up a question of which is in charge? The skull brain doesn't really control the gut nervous system yet 90% of vagal nerves transit goes from the gut to the brain …. Suggesting the gut brain has a huge impact on our skull brain.
Dr. Chaudhary doesn't play favorites, she views them as one of a whole and therefore healing the larger system of nerve cells in the gut (and the gut and nutrient absorption) needs to precede trying to heal the smaller system of nerve cells clustered within the skull brain. 🧠 Oh 🤯 mind blown.
Also, embryology is a big clue, both sets of nerve cells are derived from the same Neural Crest cells within the very early embryo rather than the ENS being derived from the endoderm along with other parts of the digestive tract.
That makes a lot of sense. She does educate on negatives in diet and lifestyle choices but doesn't start her patients with any limits or changes in those. Instead she sees people spontaneously start choosing healthier foods and activities because they want to as the support strategies she does recommend starting with are taking effect with better digestion, better energy, and a better mood, and maybe less pain too. Going for a walk or having a salad just seems more desirable once you are less inflamed, puffy, and uncomfortable.
She calls the puffy ‘weight gain’ of edema and lymphedema “Fake Fat”. You can feel like you gained a bunch of weight (because the scale shows that) and you may need to buy new clothes, but early morning your clothes might fit okay and are only too tight by the end of the day. We aren’t supposed to shift five pounds of fluid each day but that can happen with the swelling legs of lymphedema. It feels hard, and hurts a little compared to fluffier “real fat”. An overweight person can feel really soft to hug. Tissue with edema is hard and hurts the person. Dr. Chaudhary also mentions cellulite as being a sign of adipose tissue that is holding excess water. Our movement and activity is what helps lymphatic fluid move to lymph nodes for processing by the blood. Gentle lymphatic massage by a specialized masseuse (myofascial release or massage is another term) may help and can also partially be done for yourself.
An old saying in Ayurveda reminds us that ~ We are not just what we eat, we are what we digest. (*And I would add, …and what we absorb, and also what is leaking through loosened tight junctions into the blood stream. Also anything injected into us is 100% in us, 100% entered the body. The digestive system is the donut hole in our center - we are the donut, and the undigested food and gut microbes are what is filling the center of the donut - the creamy or raspberry jam filling in the middle. The gut microbes can weigh two to three pounds in total and include three types of species according to Dr. Chaudhary - symbiotic species which live in harmony with us - they support our health by making vitamin Bs and other nutrients, commensal species which neither harm or help us, but which seem to live in harmony too, and parasitic or pathogenic species which may produce negative toxins and harm us.
Balance of the species is needed as any type might be a problem if in excess. Balance of the species is also needed as they are symbiotic with each other too, or some are. Each species might produce some nutrients needed by all the species, but no one species produces all the nutrients it needs on its own.
Emotional clearance is incorporated right with physical clearance of toxins. In Ayurveda it is seen as one and the same thing, or parts of the sand thing “ama” - my take: in Western lingo I would call some of it as “oxidative stress chemicals”, “Reactive Oxidative Species, ROS” or “cellular debris”. But the body burden of stored emotional trauma is real too and the vagal nerves stimulation of the tapping EFT technique can be used to help release some of that old pain. Western terms for that might be psychosomatic symptoms.
My take on “ama” from the perspective of Wilhelm Reich’s work on aether and “body armoring” - his term for psychosomatic muscle tension, is that is the unhealthy “Dor" (*his word) state of aether energy - no longer flowing, no longer organized and vibrant energy. Instead more like stagnant old dank basement air that feels still and musty. There is more aether flow at the top of a mountain than at sea level, and less in enclosed or concrete/rock type of locations.
Aether energy is within us and all other life and throughout the environment. It is attracted to water and magnetism and will flow towards flowing water or magnet attracting/iron type of metals. It is also attracted to tubes and will flow through tubes well. Noteworthy: Our blood is full of water and full of iron and is made up of tubes.
For the skeptics in the room - the flow of aether energy has been proven by multiple scientists and used for weather manipulation by a few governments. This is real, just suppressed information and not used within ‘Western Medical Care” yet - or not much. Plasma energy fields are being used for wound healing now and is likely supporting ‘aether’ energy. Rhythmic movement like Qi gong or knitting helps increase aether flow, Yoga or Walking Meditation may also.. Repeating the Rosary along with handling the rosary beads likely increases aether flow too.
Any movement we make has been found to help mitochondrial function, even gentle stretching. I think for us to be healthy we need to keep our aether flowing energetically and in synchrony - not chaotic energy pulling you in a bunch of worried or overly busy directions.
There is lots more good stuff in this book but I haven't quite finished it yet… so Part 1 review - I highly recommend The Prime by Kulreet Chaudhary, MD., Integrative Neurologist, with Eve Adamson.
Regarding our ‘doshas’, we would all have some of all three types, but might skew a bit more towards one or two than all three. All three might become out of balance within our lives and health however and healing strategies for one might be useful even if it isn’t your main ‘dosha’ type. This excerpt is from a previous post focused on embryology and Tibetan Medicine (post):
In Ayurveda (medical approach used in India), the energy types are called doshas instead of nyepa and the three types are called Vata, Pitta and Kapha.
“The three Doshas (Tridoshas) are Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Their psychological correlates which play a role in the functioning and behavior of humans is the Trigunas—Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.” (Shilpa and Venkatesha Murthy, 2011)
[…]
In my opinion or theory, Vata would be roughly similar to the Loong nyepa and maybe more ectoderm cells in fetal development. Pitta is roughly similar to the Tripa nyepa and more mesoderm cells, and Kapha is similar to the Baekan nyepa and more endoderm cells. The difference may be in function or distribution of the layers too, rather than being a simple difference in cell count - I don’t know the details. I just look at patterns.
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I was pointing out the similarity to our three layers of cells formed during the first few weeks after conception. Dr. Chaudhary mentions that similarity also but somewhat dismissively - because doshas have so much more to tell us than body shape. I am not dismissive about the value of the ancient knowledge though. Ayurveda is ~ 5000 years old - I am very impressed with the way our early life formation was linked to our health and personality tendencies. We tend to form in similar patterns, and then have similar patterns of behavior too. I think it is neat. I think I lean towards airy, mood swingy Vata/Loong with a bit of angry/over heated Pitta/Tripa at times, and a little soft, likes comfort foods and comfortable chairs, Kapha/Baekan.
*Her site has products for sale that are part of her recommendations, I haven’t compared price or quality and am not affiliated. My impression from her book is that she truly wants to help as many people as possible - which is a value I share. Severe migraines hurt, and not having is much better.
Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health guidance.
JD - Not a very good, but excellent missive. People oft forget the littlest and smallest of things.
We had all better get used to taking care of our microbiome, because the SARS mutations like omicron are heavily targeting our guts, by creating leaky junctions with DAMP’s, especially HMGB1, very destructive protein.