Article : Obesity and Naturopathy

by: Dev Sri

Naturopathy points its fingers to two habits as the cause of obesity – eating more than is required and lack of exercise. Sedentary lifestyle coupled with binge eating is recipe for fat accumulation, overweight and obesity. Stress and excess alcohol too can be reasons for obesity.
Obesity can lead to formation of many kinds of diseases. High blood pressure and heart diseases are the main diseases that an obese person needs to be cautious of. Isolation from the society is other serious condition obese persons have to face.
Obesity is classified into three types viz. mild to moderate, moderate to severe and severe based on the intensity of the problem.
The Naturopathic Way of Curing Obesity Cold hip bath two times a day Warm water enema Fasting on liquid food for 3-4 days Underwater massage Friction baths Neutral whirlpool
Steam and sauna bath Warm water immersion Lifestyle Modification
After completing fasting or treatment, the person must be disciplined enough to not to get addicted to over eating again. It is essential to maintain healthy nutrition, intake of large quantities of water, and staying away from high calorie food. Daily minimum walk of 5 km is also indicated. Practicing yoga and aerobic exercises also should be made part of your daily routines. Continue fasting once a week and identify carving for food. Different water therapy measures can be continued till you get desirable results of weight loss. The important thing is to stay away from undesirable habits like excessive smoking and alcohol consumption.

Diabetes and Food Style: Turn Your Food into Your Medicine

by: Dev Sri

Fast paced life of modern world has necessitated us to give only lower priority to nutrition. This is at a time when nutrition awareness of everyone is high. Instead of taking well cooked food items, fruits and juices, people go after carbonated drinks, fast 'junk' food, frozen and preserved food, microwave food. People also don’t take the time to enjoy and appreciate the food they eat. Today most of us just need any food that fills the belly for sometime.
This food habits have given rise to a variety of health problems. Significantly important one among them is diabetes.
Ayurvedic principles tell us food is one important element that keeps a person in a balanced state of body, mind and soul. Taking healthy food translates into healthy body.
Ayurvedic view on diabetes is no different. There are times when diabetes can attack without any warning sign. Ayurvedic food style combined with certain herbal applications helps one effectively manage his or her condition of diabetes.
High sugar level is the most dreaded thing about diabetes. Ayurveda recommends food items that don't release excess sugar into the blood. Food items that are too sweet, ice cream, chocolate, friend food items, white flour, preserved food, fast food, junk food etc are to be avoided. Bad habits like smoking and drinking should be given up.
Ayurveda recommends Ayurvedic herbal tea for diabetic patients. Replace sugar with honey or jaggery (thickened molasses - sarkkara) or better still palm jaggery (thickened palm molasses - karippatti).
The advantages or drinking more than eight glass of water everyday is not easily told in an essay. Drink a minimum of 8-15 glass of water in the day time. After sunset take only minimal quantities of water. Another thing is to drink plenty of water an hour before a meal and an hour after the meals. Drinking water close to meals dilute the digestive fire (in Ayurveda it is called pitta) and makes the process of digestion difficult.
Take fruits like grapes, fig, pomegranate, citrus fruits etc. Bitter melon (bitter gourd, karela) is used as medicine for diabetes.
The point about Ayurvedic management of diabetes is never a hard task. All you will have to do is to incorporate Ayurvedic principles as your daily routine. Having healthy food and exercise regime itself can help one control his or her diabetes to a great extent.
Include turmeric and garlic as spices, bitter gourd as vegetable, triphala as a laxative and drinking lot of water as daily habit. These are not very difficult to follow. You can't eat or drink all the food items you have. But living a sweeter life sometimes means giving up some sweet for tongue food items.

Putting Taste Into Health Bars

by: Suzanne Boase

I met the managing director of Desire Tree International, Biddut K. Roy, and discovered the wonderful taste of their health bars (also known as nutrition or energy bars) under the trade name of "Wonderbar".

In my conversation with Mr. Roy, I asked how he became involved in manufacturing such a wonderful food product. Mr. Roy replied, "I grew up preparing and serving healthy food to others...it is traditional as well as a good deed so my inclination was there."

He further explained, "As for manufacturing food items, several years ago I took care of a business for friends and later I felt inclined to do something with my own team--with the scope to develop and grow a unique company.

I was disappointed that many "energy bars", "health bars" or "nutrition bars" in the market are too bland for the consumers to be inspired about. Even parents expressed that they cannot get their children to eat them. Knowing this, our team wanted to make natural, healthy, tasty and nutritious health bars."

Formulating the Wonderbar

I sampled several Wonderbars made by "Desire Tree International" and WOW!, the products are very tasty and satisfying. The combinations are excellent with fresh nuts and dried fruits carefully prepared and packaged. An excellent product!

Mr. Roy went on to tell me, "My new partners and I worked for weeks and months formulating the product with different combinations of ingredients. We use only the finest, highest quality ingredients that are natural, free of chemical additives, without GMO, free from allergy causing substances as well as no added sugar.

We looked at many sweeteners and decided that honey would be the best ingredient. It is energy giving, naturally healthy, plus the taste is great. We worked with food nutritionists and studied necessary food guideline information to work out the food value, prepare and print wrappers, boxes, and acquire machines for proper mixing. We rented a suitable premise, registered our company and took care of the many details required to open our licensed company, "Desire Tree International."

After extensive preparations were made, we were finally ready with a line- of products in eight flavors: cashew almond pineapple, almond apple cranberry, pistachio apple, hazel date almond protein, almond apple ginger, pumpkin seeds sesame raisin, and macadamia pineapple. You can visit our website and check out our tasty and pleasing product choices at: http://www.wonderenergybar.com."

Entering and establishing Wonderbar Nutrition bar in a crowded market:

Biddut was very down to earth in letting me know the struggles of trying to establish the product in today's market. He said, "I knew that trying to market our product was going to take a lot of work. We started telephone marketing to health stores and participated in some health products shows but we were not getting anywhere fast. People told us our product is very good--some say it was the best in the market, although we had limited budget to work with. It was an uphill battle and I realized having a product is not a formula for success. It is one thing to have a great product but to be able to enter the market and compete with established brand-name products is success.

We kept sending samples to major stores, distributors, chain stores and building our direct sales. Finally, COSTCO Wholesalers approved our product for in store roadshows. People sampled our products and started buying from day one. That gave us a big break."

Encouraging Feedbacks

Biddut showed me many favorable responses he has been receiving from happy and satisfied customers who have sampled the company's products.

"It's the absolute best food bar I've ever eaten. Keep up the good work!"

"I bought a box of your bars this past weekend at Costco. They're fabulous! I love how fresh they are. I have tried 3 flavors so far and like them all."

"As soon as I tried the first bar, I loved it. This is by far the best fruit and nut bar I have ever tasted. Thank you so much for such a great product!"

"I just tried your Pumpkin Sesame Raisin Bar today for the first time and Loved It!!! Congratulations on a Great Product!"

"These macadamia pineapple bars are AWESOME! I love the crunchy factor and also that I can truly taste the goodness!"

"Those Wonder Bars are the best bars in existence today. Can I sell them on my website?"

It is very satisfying

Biddut said, "It is very satisfying to know people have received valuable food and loved it. Since they are inspired, I am sure they will also tell others."