Habits and Hustle - Episode 372: Radhi Devlukia: Healing The Body with Spices and Why You Need An Individualized Approach to Health

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Did you know that the spices sitting in your kitchen could be powerful allies for your health? In this Fitness Friday episode, I dive into the world of traditional Indian spices and their incredible healing properties with guest Radhi Devlukia.  We discuss a variety of spices and their benefits, along with how to properly use them. We also discuss the importance of listening to your own body and understanding how different foods and practices affect you personally. Radhi Devlukia is a plant based cook and recipe developer, mission-driven entrepreneur, well-being enthusiast, and a trained dietitian, nutritionist and ayurvedic student. Through her love of food she’s on a mission to bring more joy into your life, more spice into your kitchen and more vitality into your body. What we discuss:  Using spices for healing Trying too many health things at once Listening to what YOUR body needs Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off Find more from Radhi Devlukia: Website: https://www.radhidevlukia.com/  Instagram: @radhidevlukia  Book: https://www.joyfullbook.com/  Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their tri-light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go and I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations and places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps,

shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therisage Trilite everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therasage.com

right now and use code BEBOLD for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to Therasage.com and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products. There's so many health benefits to all of these spices. Well growing up Indian, I had a bit of a benefit or advantage because spices were just part of our DNA and our tradition. Every single day would be food will be filled with spices. But my mom also used to use them to heal us. So whenever I would have a cough or cold, she would use this spice called Ajwain, which is incredible.

It helps to take out all the phlegm and all the gunk that's, you know, What's it called? It's called Ajwain. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'll send it to you. Will you send it to me? Yeah, I will. Where do you get that?

You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on, it's a, it's more of an Indian spice, but you can get it everywhere now. And it's incredible. You just boil it in hot water with ginger and with lemon. And it's, you know, a lot of cough medicines, they suppress our, our, you know, the symptoms. Yeah. Whereas Ujwain is an expelant. And so what it does is it kind of brings everything up and out of your body.

And it's incredible. Helps to relieve temperature. Like if you get a temperature, it helps to get out all the phlegm and the gunk that accumulates when you've got congestion. You should do a book on this. I think this is really interesting. My next year is going to be spent studying because I've realized that you can, you go through periods, I feel I go through periods where I'm learning and then I'm sharing and then I'm learning and then I'm sharing. And I'm learning and then I'm sharing and I find it hard to do both at the same time.

But I got to the end of this book and I was like, you know, I feel like I'm running really low on inspiration, on creativity and on information. And I feel like when you get to that point, you know, you have to become a student again. And so I'm so excited because this next year, as much as I am going to focus on sharing the book with people, I want it to be my year of learning and exploring and expanding again, because I really miss doing that. And I think when you stop being a student, you really feel a lack in your life. I think that is that that's so true. You stop growing, right? That's how I feel. It's a

very stagnant feeling. So that's one spice. By the way, what can I cook with that spice? Oh, yeah, all the time. So with that spice? Where would you put that? Where would you put that in? So with all spices. I'm like obsessed with this type of thing. Okay, great. Yeah. So with all spices, you should, I don't know whether people know this, but when you add

heat to it, so when you either dry roast or ideally cook it in fat, it actually releases the aromatic, so aromatic properties and also the healing properties of the spice become more available. And so I recommend with all spices, you either dry toast them or if you're using them in curries, or you can grind them up and use powders in your smoothies like cardamom. Cardamom is this amazing sweet spice. Yeah. It has so many incredible benefits and I use them inside my smoothies. I'll put them into desserts, but I'll also put them into curries. And so you can either, I recommend heating spices and then using them, but a lot of them them into curries. And so you can either, I recommend heating

spices and then using them, but a lot of them can just be used in hot milk or hot water. So then how would you use the cardamom? Okay. So if I were to put that in a smoothie, it's going to cold, a cold ingredients. Yeah. So how would you warm it? So ideally, how would you warm it? So what you could do is you could dry roast the whole spice and then you can grind it up. Oh, so you're not buying it, sorry, you're not buying it like in a powder. In a powder. So you can. That's the problem. But the thing is with spices,

as soon as you grind up a spice from its whole form, it starts to lose its aromatic qualities and it starts to diminish its, you know, it's the same as when- Potency, probably? Yeah, the potency. That's the word I'm looking for. As soon as you grind that up,

it's like as soon as you pick a fresh herb or a basil leaf or something, if you pick that, you see it's away from its source. And so it starts to wilt. And so whole spices are the same as soon as it starts to interact with air and with the qualities around, if it's taken out of its bottle, it's going to start diminishing in quality. So where would I buy that? Like where would I buy like a full?

I mean, now what's amazing is Amazon has incredible organic spices, Whole Foods has incredible whole spices. In its full form? Yeah, in its full form. On Amazon I can buy that? Oh yeah. Seriously? Yeah, otherwise Indian shops.

If all else fails, Indian shops have all the spices you possibly need. In LA, can you tell me which one to go to? I'm gonna go. Oh yeah, there's Indian Sweets and Spices, it's called, and there's like, I think there's one close to here, honestly. Yeah, there's quite a few of them. Okay, so what do you think of it now? I'm literally loving all this.

No, it's great. Okay, like turmeric, right? Because I put it on like my chicken, and I put it with olive oil and all these other things because of the fat thing that you were mentioning, because it helps with the absorption and I guess getting the ingredients into, I don't know, all that stuff that you just said. So if I were just to put turmeric into a shake from a bottle, it's not going to be effective, right?

Or I should just buy like a turmeric root probably. Yeah, turmeric root is incredible. Yeah, it's amazing. It's very messy. That's what I used to do. So messy. The color gets everywhere. Everywhere.

I had it all over my clothes, all over the kitchen. It's not that it's not gonna help. It's that it's gonna be of lower potency. So I always say that it's about the type of the quality, right? There's always gonna be a spectrum of quality of the ingredients that you get. And so, yeah, I think you have to pick your, what's the word you have to pick your battles. Yeah, which I always think about this, like there's a 70 30, or you could even live by 80 20 rule or if you can, a 90 10 rule where you decide this proportion of the time I'm going to try my

best to get this. These are the ingredients I'm going to get best quality. And then these are the ingredients that, you know, it's too difficult and I'm not going to worry too much about it. Right. Because you can't get everything perfect and you can't get everything in the best quality. It's just too difficult. It's impossible. I mean, give me one more spice that has like, tell me another one. Oh, yeah. Okay. So the spices I have every single morning without fail, there's this Ayurvedic trio. It's like the queen of all spice blends. It's called CCF. So it's

coriander, cumin and fennel. So you get the whole seeds of coriander, whole seeds of cumin, and whole seeds of fennel seeds. You can mix them all. It's equal batches. You do like one part of each. So you can make up a whole batch of one cup of each thing and mix it up, put it in a jar. I take a tablespoon of it every morning, put it into a pan with hot water, and I'll boil it. And I drink that tea in the morning every single day. It is incredible to one, ignite your digestive juices and fires to help detox your different organs like your livers, your kidney. And also if you think about it in the morning,

your body has accumulated eight hours you've been sleeping is when your body detoxes. And so all these toxins are actually kind of just going around your body ready to be released. So if you don't end up releasing them through your, you know, poop and wee, they're also still there in your bloodstream. So this CCF blend is a really subtle spice blend

that helps to detox your body, release the toxins out, and get you started for the rest of your day. It's incredible. Okay, first of all, I'm gonna start using, this is very, this is actually very practical, actionable things people can do. And for people who get acid reflux or, you know, get a lot of heat that accumulates in your body, fennel seeds and coriander seeds are so cooling.

So they help to also reduce inflammation. We've all got so much inflammation. So much. Environment, the food that we eat. And so these spices help to reduce the inflammation in the body too. And you grew, you kind of grew up like this, so you don't know any different. Well, I grew up and I took it for like, took it for granted and I wasn't taught it in that way.

I just knew my mom makes me this when I'm unwell. My mom does this for me when I have a cough or a cold. But when I studied Ayurveda is when I realized, wow, like my spice box, and I can honestly say this, I use my spice box as my medicine box. I believe it's incredible for prevention. I think it's incredible for cur. I think it's incredible for curing different diseases that you have in the body. But see it as your armor. Like that's how I see it. If I know I'm getting spices in throughout the day, I feel protected just

like when you go out and you're wearing your coats and your jackets and stuff, like spices are going to be there for you. So wait, so the one that you just said that recipe for in the more CCF is called, how is it, you know, because what I've been doing is I just drink room temperature water and squeeze a lemon in there as a way to detox my in the morning. But it's, is that what you're talking about so much more effective in terms of I'd say so because the spices are just so potent. Yeah, so potent. And you'll feel it. I remember I told my friend about this who used to get, who gets a lot of acid reflux

when she was pregnant and she was just really struggling to even keep food down. She started drinking the, she started drinking this tea, but she would soak it in water overnight and then she'd drink it because she didn't want to have it hot every day. And she said it made, I mean, I've had so many people tell me it's made a difference, but that for me, I was really happy for her because she was pregnant, she was feeling uncomfortable, but that CCF drink, it just really changed so much for her. Wait, is that recipe in the book?

It is in the book. Oh my gosh, why didn't, I don't have a book by the way. No, I don't have a book either. Yeah, no, I would have given you the book if I had it. I would actually buy this book because, no, I'm serious because I love that kind of stuff because it's actually, the problem I find with wellness a lot of time, well, in the health, whatever, there's so many different euphemisms we can use.

There's too many. Yeah. But it's the same thing that people say over and over again, you know, do the cold plunge, do the sauna, you know, eat this way, exercise that way. When the truth is, there's a plethora of things to do and modalities that work for you that might not work for me. There's so much out there and it's really becomes like a trial and error. Well, that's what it should be.

Yeah. I think about that with, that's why I fell in love with the, with Ayurveda because it is one, it's so old. It's like over 5,000 years old. It's the most ancient health science to exist. But what I loved most about it is that it is all to do with the individual. Yeah. But that takes work.

So instead, and that's what my, my really, and I'm not just trying to plug my book, but that's what I've shared so much of in my book is don't use these recipes as I've written them, use them as your body needs them. So through my book, I want you to learn how to intuitively listen to your body, how to understand what this food does for your body. So, you know, which spices your body needs. We've gotten so used to putting our health into other people's hands and that scares me so much for the world because we're saying that when this Instagram person tells me this workout works for them, it's going to work for me.

And even though I'm getting exhausted after doing it, even though my body is not responding to it, I'm going to keep doing it because that person told me it's good. And this food that this person's eating that they said has given them X amount of weight loss and has done this for them. I'm going to do it because that's what I'm trying to achieve in my body without realizing that my body is completely different and it may not have the same effect. Yeah. And so I think what we really need to do is strip everything back and start listening to our body from a point of view of let me see every single time I eat this ingredient, how does it affect? So it is work.

Like it's easier to believe that this person is going to solve my issue. That's what I was saying. It's a form of laziness in a way, but not in a negative way. No, it's because that's what we're told to do. Right. And like, and it's like an infobesity, my friend says it's like infobesity in a way. There's too much infobesity. Oh my gosh. Yes, that's a great word. It's a great word because there's so much information is overloaded.

It's so overwhelming. It's so overwhelming information is overloaded and people are so overwhelming And you get very confused like what who to listen to what to listen to so what happens? I'm sure you can relate you end up doing like a smorgasbord of a bunch of things right? I did that with workouts. Oh my gosh. Yes, my trainer would always be like you need to stop doing this I was doing weights in the morning pilates at night boxing the next the next day, this the next day. I was like, I have to do it all and that's what's going to make me feel good. Exactly. And I was overstraining my body and I was not listening to what my body actually needed. Yeah.