This week we have started adopting some auyvedic principles in our kitchen. What has worked fro 4000 yrs in India should work here too. This ancient approach for using food as medicine has some good tips for how to survive in the tropics and protect from fungus inside and out.
We are aiming to reduce yeasts in the gut and on the skin as well as to make the digestion more efficient and the skin stronger and more resistant to infection from other fungus. The diet here is higher in sugars from fruits and carbohydrate such as rice, palatino and breads than some other parts of the world. The problem with this is that fungus loves sugars all kinds of sugars - anything ending in OSE.....sucrose, fructose, lactose.....and so on.
The beautiful thing is that fungus dislikes spices and we like them quite a lot. So, if you add the right spices to the carbohydrate foods that the fungus thrives on, it won't think of your food as its food. So this week a few changes .........
1. We have made jugs of ginger infused water and are busy making and drinking oodles of ginger tea with lemon and honey. Honey has OSE but also has anti-fungal agents. The bees figured out this problem too many millennia ago. We are drinking this mixture it at mealtimes. This is supposed to improve digestion of food, keep the digestive fire in the tummy and not let it break out into the skin and cause problems. Yeasts don't like the flavor but I think it tastes pretty good. Really warming and invigorating.
2. We are turning our food golden with tumeric. We are adding turmeric to my daughters milk, to lentil soup, to dahl and stirring it in the rice and anything else we can think of. Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory, antiseptic and an anti fungal agent. If it works for us we might try it on the horses too.