Eat your way to better health

Fitness and wellness enthusiasts have recorded an increased interest in Naturopathy as a method of healing. The practice of using age-old traditions of a healthy-diet and a controlled lifestyle is gaining preference over surgeries or allopathic and homeopathic treatments. With the Ministry of AYUSH declaring November 18 as Naturopathy Day across the country, city-based Gandhi Naturopathic Medical College celebrated it with a week-long programme, complete with free consultation camps, lectures on various treatments and a two day food-festival.

Shedding light on the need for a food festival, senior medical officer, Director in-charge of the Women Yoga Research Institute Dr A. Malathi Syamala says, “This aims to encourage millet-based diets. Not only are millets rich in nutritional value but they are also easy to cultivate as they require very little water to grow. Millets, such as ragi, oats, jowar are rich in fibre and protein. In addition, we also encourage a Naturopathy diet which mainly consists of food that has not come in contact with fire. This is called Amruthahara. Of course, we also serve our patients cooked meals that have very little salt and spices.”

Interestingly, the food festival had quite a lot of takers! To start with, it dispelled the notion that healthy food had to be either bland or not-so-appealing to the taste buds. With students from the college itself preparing the dishes fresh on-the-spot, the spread ranged from tangy green chat, fragrant cinnamon herbal tea to shakarkand cutlets and hot thaaleepets with a yogurt dip on the side. Treatment-specific dishes on offer were a haemoglobin juice and a Polycystic Ovary Disorder (PCOD) diet based on bananas and desi ghee.

Sashidhar Kocharlakota, a 23-year old fitness enthusiast, was slightly hesitant when he first heard about the food festival, but was pleasantly surprised at the simple yet wholesome spread on offer. “Fitness has now become more of a fad than a way of life. With new mobile applications and websites in the market constantly telling you to jump from one diet routine to another, I think it is imperative to go back to our roots and simply understand how our body works. It is great to see such a food festival happening in the city. It also manages to break the myth that nutritious food cannot be tasty.”

Gandhi Naturopathic Medical College caters to over 120 patients with chronic ailments such as obesity, hypertension, PCOD, infertility in women (without organ defects), skin diseases such as eczema and hyper-pigmentation.

The facility also provides treatments and consultation at affordable prices as compared to private wellness centres. The general ward of the hospital not only provides treatment free of cost for people who have a white ration card but also beds at a nominal cost of Rs 10 per bed, while the diet involved in the treatment can be bought with the state government sponsored food coupons. 

N. Vijayalakshmi, a 62-year-old patient who has been living in the facility for over a week now sums up her experience saying, “I tried every possible method to rid myself of joint pains and spondilytis until I was recommended this place. Though I was told that a naturopathy-based regime takes time and patience, I have seen the change in the last 10-odd days that I have been here.”