Food can change lives: Nutritionist Dr Gauri Rokkam

Dr Gauri Rokkam is a well-known Holistic Nutritionist with experience in helping thousands of people worldwide for more than two decades. She firmly believes that healthy food and lifestyle can change lives, for good. It does not mend the body in parts but as a “whole” and is candid enough to claim: “When the body is rightly fed(in every sense), it wins battles while one experiences true health”.

In an interaction, Dr Gauri Rokkam spoke on several issues revolving around human health, current practices of dealing with disease and the way out. Here are her viewpoints on a few issues:

Holistic health is from a “whole person” perspective: Neither food nor body should be broken down into its parts. Food is a complex chemical factory. It should not be broken down into its components or specific nutrients because the components of food work in synergy with each other to produce desired effects. The body can work to its best and be in the best of health with whole foods, the way plants produce. They are loaded with all the nutrients and fibre required by the body, to be healthy.

For example, a tomato is supposed to have around 3,000 chemicals! If you say, I know antioxidant lycopene present in tomato to be beneficial as hundreds of studies have demonstrated and consume extracted lycopene, it might not work. Lycopene in synergy with 3,000 chemicals will have the intended effect and not when extracted or isolated. In some cases, some amount of refining might be necessary, but we need to keep it closer to what plants produced. For example, paddy cannot be consumed as such and needs to be hulled. Unpolished rice after hulling is considered whole rice(grain). Similarly, every food ingredient kept as unrefined as possible is the key to health.

Nature Cure talks about considering the body also as a “whole”, as each of its parts interacts with each other and works in synergy to be healthy. The body is intelligent enough, capable enough to repair itself, correct itself and heal itself provided we create the right environment – with wholesome food, a healthy lifestyle and a calm mind.

Speaking about a few other aspects of Nature Cure, she said……On checking different parameters? How many parameters do we know today? With advancements in science and technology, let us say we know some 100-150 parameters. We keep measuring them, checking if they fall in the normal range and if not, drug or supplement ourselves, isn’t it? What about thousands of other reactions happening inside the body every moment? We don’t even know them yet nor do we know their normal ranges. How is the body dealing with all these parameters which we don’t know? If the body can manage itself with all these thousands of parameters which we don’t know, is it wise to meddle with the few we know? We will go crazy if we try to measure or correct all of them, think of it...…Look at the causes and not symptoms: Nature Cure concepts on health and disease are wonderful. It says, do not deal with the symptoms but always look at the causes and correct the causes. Once the causes are corrected, the disease disappears. To understand it better, let’s look at a few examples.

If a virus or bacteria tries to enter the body through the nasal passage, the body intelligently initiates sticky mucus production. Thus, these viruses/bacteria can be thrown out of the body, an intelligent way of defending itself. But what do we do? Pop a pill and stop the mucus. How wise is this?

Let’s say, these viruses or bacteria enter the respiratory system, and now the body initiates coughing. A quick bout of coughing removes them from the respiratory system. But what do we do? Take a pill and stop the cough. The body wisely decides to defend itself, but we go against it and stop the natural innate process of the body, allowing these infections to invade the system!

Similarly, the body initiates fever to either destroy the invading microorganisms or to liquefy the accumulated toxins to eliminate them from the body. But what do we do? As the temperature rises, we take paracetamol and bring the temperature down disturbing the processes. Such constant suppressions lead to chronic diseases. After many months or years of suppressing such symptoms, we wonder how multiple diseases occurred….…

Type 2 Diabetes and the blood sugar levels: We look at the blood sugar levels and try to drug ourselves to bring down the numbers to whatever is the normal range. In fact, blood sugar is a symptom. The problem is in the pancreas which is producing less insulin or insulin resistance which is at the cellular level. We need to correct these if we want to prevent/reverse type 2 diabetes.

Holistic health is a complex interplay between physical and chemical, mental, and emotional as also as spiritual and environmental aspects of one’s life and being. It must be considered as a “whole”, to walk towards health.

Faith is a game-changer: About faith and a positive attitude in healing: Whatever the disease - psychosomatic, lifestyle or degenerative disease, there is a mental aspect to every physical disease. When the mind is involved, faith and a positive attitude have a huge impact on health. Calm mind; 

Faith calms down the mind: A calmer mind brings clarity to the mind and will be able to make the right decisions in life. One of them could be making the right choices of eating and living leading to health……Stress; Faith and a positive attitude decrease stress: Stress hormones induce inflammation all over the body. Most chronic diseases today are due to inflammation. Inflammation can lead to damage to the cells, proteins, tissues, organs or even DNA inside the body. Thus, decreased stress can lead to better health……

Neuroplasticity… Repeated positive thinking is going to influence the neurons positively. These neurons change chemical signalling altering the structure and function of the brain, and supporting healing….…Constant fear weakens our immune system: American developmental biologist Dr Bruce Lipton talks about how fear and negative attitude can weaken our immune system. The body considers fear as an external threat and emergency and directs all energies towards dealing with that fear which leads to dysfunction of the immune system which in turn gives rise to innumerable opportunities for diseases to occur.

…Placebo effect… Dr Lissa Rankin in her book “Mind over medicine” shows how faith and hope trigger self-healing superpowers that manifest physiologically in the body and support health.Faith and a positive attitude along with healthy eating and lifestyle can heal and create miracles.

-Manohar Yadavatti