The Dr. Josh Axe Show - The Spice That Fights Inflammation Better Than Ibuprofen | Dr Shivani Gupta

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Could inflammation be contributing to your brain fog, fatigue, and joint pain? Dr. Josh Axe sits down with Ayurvedic practitioner Dr. Shivani Gupta to explore chronic inflammation and its connection to aging, gut health, and menopause. They discuss turmeric, boswellia, and other Ayurvedic herbs, plus practical ways to bring more spices, seasonal foods, and variety into your daily meals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. They always say to me, I think this is a good. aging. I guess this is where we're at now. We're in our 40s. And I always look at them and say, this is not aging. This is inflammation. When you think, I guess this is aging, that is your moment in your brain where you should stop and say, why? Walk me through actually what makes turmeric golden milk so unique and therapeutic to the body. Turmeric golden milk, this ancient remedy that we use had a healthy fat with black pepper with that turmeric. And this was used across the board

in our kitchens for thousands of years, and now modern science is proving everything that Ierveda said to be true. In Iyerveda, are there any foods or herbs that act as a natural GLP1 for the body? It's a good question. The biggest myth about inflammation and chronic symptoms is that they're all separate issues. In reality, your symptoms behave more like a chain of falling dominoes. When one goes down, it triggers several more. And before you know what, everything, feels off. This new test completely changes things and I know exactly what to look for. I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test that actually tests for the right things. Targeted biomarkers that reveal the very first dominoes impacting your hormones,

inflammation, your thyroid, and your metabolism. Plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to review your results and show you exactly how the Health Institute can help you stop the chain reaction and finally balance your hormones and heal. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. Today we're going to be diving into the root cause of almost every disease known to man, inflammation. And my guest today is an expert in this area, Dr. Chavani Gupta. She's an Ayurvedic practitioner, an expert on inflammation.

She wrote her dissertation and got her Ph.D. in turmeric and inflammation. She's also an expert in integrative health. And today we're going to walk through the most anti-inflammatory herbs and foods on the entire planet. We're going to talk about how to stop inflamaging. That's not inflammation. Inflamaging, which is what's causing your body to age more rapidly. So if you feel like, hey, for the past couple of years, you've started feeling older, you've started looking older, and you want to start turning back the clock. We're going to walk through exactly how to do that today.

Shavani, welcome the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm really excited to have you on because you have a really. really unique perspective of very few people that I've ever had on the show. You know, a lot of times we talk about functional medicine. I actually have had quite a few guests that are more experts in Asian medicine, talking about, you know, everything from a lot of the Chinese herbal and things like that today. But you're really an expert in Indian medicine, and there's a lot of herbs and

different foods that have a powerful impact on hormones and reducing inflammation that I'm excited to talk about today. For sure. I'm excited to be here. And I know the core of your message is all about reducing inflammation. Talk just about why reducing inflammation is so important in its connection to both chronic illness but also longevity. For sure. So I grew up in a family of diabetics. I would go to India every year. And when I went home to India, all I would see was the after effects of diabetes. I would see my grandfather have his leg amputated, Parkinson's, heart attack, stroke, quadruple bypass needed. And I kept seeing all this tragedy. and thinking, how are we allowing such chronic illness based on inflammation to happen in front of us when this is completely preventable?

This is insane that we're watching our parents and our grandparents suffer like this, and we're not putting these stop gaps in place to stop it right now. And so chronic inflammation is this culprit, and most of us just don't really understand it. We think of it as, okay, it's my knee pain, it's my hip pain, I'll just take some insides and stop that pain. we put the Band-Aid on it, as opposed to pausing and saying, what kicked off this inflammation in the first place? And we know now that it can be physical stressors, could be environmental stressors, emotional stressors. There's a lot of things that could activate inflammation in our systems. And once that chronic inflammation is going on, are we doing the right steps to reduce it? And so I wrote an entire book on how to live the Ayurveda lifestyle because the Ayurveda lifestyle is inherently anti-inflammatory.

I love it. One of the things that I have said a lot over the years, which by the way, I didn't say this first, but it's food is medicine and really focusing on food is medicine. And one of the things that I loved is I started studying medicine coming out of the Middle East in India was the focus wasn't on food alone as medicine. It was meals as medicine. So combining certain foods together to make them more medicinal and healing to the body. True. And so talk to me a little bit about sort of that focus, that happens a lot of times in Ayurveda. Absolutely. So Iyreveda is this entire system of health and healing. And you're right, food is a big component of it. And when we look at food, it's really the combination of what we're doing that drives home such a powerful result. So even in the Indian kitchen, when we're cooking, we're going to use ghee.

We're going to use cumin seeds. Those are going to have certain properties just to help absorb the food, help us digest it better. Then we're going to use things like our turmeric spice, which is my favorite. We're going to add ginger. We're going to add garlic, chili pepper, powders, different things. Gara masala even is a spice mix we have that has black pepper in it that helps activate what's in that turmeric to absorb better. So it's a combination, like a cornucopia of different foods and spices that drive home that result for our body. And you're right, it is about the whole meal.

We want a balance of different tastes. So right now in modern day life, we're eating these very mono diets that are very macro-based. but kind of forgetting the art of different tastes being in our food. And Ierva thus said that nutrition diversity, that nutrient variety is so key. We even talked about seasonal eating. So if we're not eating for variety and seasonality, we're really missing out. And then we're wondering societally why we have such gut microbiome issues. I love this meals.

This meals are medicine idea. So like, you know, anytime I'm creating a plate where I am creating a program for a patient, I'm really focused on every meal they eat, whether it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, even a dessert, is this meal medicine for this individual? And we also know there's a level of personalized medicine with when you look at the dosha's and Ierveda of certain foods are really better in combinations for certain people. You know, I remember reading a study, this is probably even 10 years ago now. And you'll appreciate this because this was something of course you're keenly aware of,

especially with your PhD and what you've earned on inflammation and turmeric. But, you know, the study came out on piperine, that compound in black pepper, increasing absorption of curcumin and turmeric. And the entire scientific community in the nutritional world was like applauding themselves kind of like, wow, what a breakthrough. We discovered that, you know, it increases the absorption of turmeric and the distribution via circulation by like, you know, hundreds of percentage of points when that happens. And honestly, the first thing I thought of is this recipe is probably 3,000 years old and was

talked about Nairveda. And it actually goes beyond that because the classic recipe is also, you know, it's tricotoo and it's ghee. So walk me through actually what makes turmeric golden milk so unique and therapeutic to the body. For sure. I mean, you're completely right. We have this opportunity to create every meal, every dessert, every drink we have to be medicinal. And when it comes to this art and science of turmeric, when I learned about it, I was doing my master's degree, and I learned about every spice in Iarveda that we use.

And when they got to turmeric and talked about the benefits, the fact that turmeric's anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, it's so powerful for anti-aging. Helps with our senescent cells and zombie cells that accumulate in the body. helps with insulin resistance. There's so many clinical trials that show that if you are pre-diabetic, it can stop you from becoming a full-on diabetic. Wow. It helps with Alzheimer's and neurocognitive disease,

memory improvement, like the benefits of turmeric I could go on for hours about because I love it so much. But you're right, turmeric golden milk, this ancient remedy that we use, had a healthy fat with black pepper with that turmeric.

And we know that the black pepper will increase the absorption, 2,000 percent, and we know the healthy fat will help it cross the blood brain barrier and further enhance absorption. And this was used across the board in our kitchens for thousands of years. And now modern science is proving everything that Ayurveda said to be true. And that to me is so exciting. Like, I sit in the science, in the research all the time. And I'm just astounded that we're proving year after year what Ayurveda said to be true. And I think that it's so beautiful. because our modern day mind wants the scientific proof.

We want that affirmation confirmation. But if you just look in the ancient text, it's also written there as well. You know, this is why a huge part of my career I've really focused on combining both east and west and also focusing on, hey, what does modern day science say today? Let's look at these double-blind studies. I do want to understand that more.

I do think it actually helps us hone in a little bit on where a certain herb should be used. But also, there are thousands of years of anecdotal studies that prove the benefits of how these herbs can be used in benefit people. You know, I saw this recently where there was a, you know, it was a PhD, and he was saying, well, there's really no evidence on this herb, you know, helping this condition. It was something like slippery home for digestive health. And I thought, well, there's like 3,000 years of history of a lot of cultures in Asia and India

where they have used it. And a lot of individual case studies where people said, no, this has really helped me with my colitis or irritable back. And so the reality is, is there is a lot of evidence. And I do, I like combining this evidence of these, you know, human studies today along with looking at ancient history and how it used. And I think that leads us to the best truth. And this is why I've loved pulling from the Bible. I've loved pulling from Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine. I'd say those are the three that I've pulled from the most in terms of combining with science today.

You know, I wrote an article. It was one of my top 10 articles I ever wrote in terms of traffic on Dr.ax.com. and the title of the article was turmeric is as powerful as 20 medications. And it really walked through all the science of, of like, there are plenty of clinical studies where turmeric outperformed without the side effects. A lot of these, will you walk through

just a few of maybe the most well-known examples of where turmeric may be performed equal to or even outperformed, you know, a drug? I love this question. So we have many clinical trials, double-blind placebo-controlled trials that show that curcumin is as effective as inseds without the side effects. So when we're talking about rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and the number of people in this country

who are taking ns, popping them every day like their candy, and saying, well, I'm out of pain and I need to be out of pain to function and go to work, curcumin was as effective, but didn't have those negative side effects of stomach pain and ulcers and GI bleeding, which are some of those serious things caused by inseds. So when I was doing my PhD, I actually went ahead and built an entire formulation for orthopedic doctors. Because I thought when I go to orthopedics and I have pain, they put me on inseds for 10 days and it rips up my stomach. And so what if we could just win in that one arena and put people on less pain killers? And I've actually seen that curcumin can cut opioid use in half out of orthopedic offices.

Wow. If we really put it in the hands of that doctor who is going to use surgery, PT, injections and NSEDs as part of their plan, plan of care for their patient. So NSEDs is a big example. Another great one is BMJ, British Medical Journal, which is a major high-impact journal, put a study together, and they did a double-blind placebo-controlled trial on patients. There was 158 patients who registered in that trial. And they showed curcumin is as effective as PPI's in the patient without the side effects. And imagine how many people are going to the doctor with their heart.

burn and their indigestion. They're getting put on PPIs which stop our stomach acid, which we know from an Ayurvedic perspective is the opposite of what we would ever do to somebody. And curcumin was as effective. And then right now what interests me the most, because I'm a woman in her mid-40s, is the perimenopause menopause conversation. When we talk about estrogen, estrogen was a natural anti-inflammatory. It was holding down that master switch of NF-CAPA be in the body. All of a sudden, What happens in our mid-40s? Women are saying, I've got brain fog. I've got joint pain.

My brain doesn't work anymore. My mood is off. My energy is off. Everything went left on me. Well, when estrogen shifts and NF-cappa-B rises and we've got all these inflammatory cascades going on in the body, we're struggling with our health. Curcumin affects all of those same pathways. And so I'm really looking at curcumin as, okay, estrogen's going to shift on us.

Curcumin can come in and at least hold down that inflammation for us. So we can keep our mood, our energy, our weight gain and check all of these different struggles. Because we're seeing in perimenopause, insulin resistance, atherosclerosis, we're seeing joint pain, frozen shoulder, musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, as they're calling it. And so that huge struggle and shift, and especially postmenopausal, there was a study called the Swan Study. And in the Swan Study, they studied thousands of women over 21 years. And they saw that when that final menstrual cycle happens, there's a surge, a rise in inflammation that's tremendous.

That rise can be really, really harmful to our bodies. That's detrimental. And curcumin can come in and help reduce that inflammation. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I know you think the same way that I do about this, whether it be functional medicine or integrative medicine, always getting to the root cause. Absolutely. And that's where, I think, focusing on food first, I want to get in that in a minute, too. But, you know, one of the biggest things I learned, and I learned this first from a doctorate Chinese medicine, but I was talking to him about herbs and using them as, you know, he asked how I was prescribing and recommending herbs. And this is my first, this is almost 20 years ago. And practice, and a lot of times I was recommending singular herbs. So ginger for digestion or turmeric for inflammation. And he said to me in kind of a kind way, and this is a guy much older than me and more experienced wiser. And he said, well, you know, you're much going to be, it's going to be much more effect.

if you do herbal combinations together. And I said, well, talk to me more about this. He said, you know, all these herbs work synergistically. And he said, most of the time, if a woman is having menopausal symptoms, for instance, it's multi-causal. So I said, you know, and I'll give the example from an Ayurvetic standpoint, you know, hey, let's do a combination of looking at, you know, tumor to reduce inflammation, Chitavri, you know, for that estrogen-progester imbalance,

holy basil to get the cortisol down. And he's sort of explained in terms of like taking, sort of this multi-pathway approach in order to heal. Yeah, absolutely. We very much believe in the synergistic effect of putting those herbs together. So I think of it like an orchestra. And when I was in my studies in the herbology classes I was in, we went over how to formulate. And that's what led me to formulate the way I do now.

So when we talk about formulations, we're going to take that curcumin to do the main job. We're going to have Guruji or other immune supportive herbs to help even support that job. Like primary herbs do the main job. Secondary herbs support those primary herbs and doing the job they have to do in the first place. Third set of herbs help these herbs go where they need to in the body. Fourth set of herbs will help mitigate even the negative effect of putting something so strong into the system. Because these are powerful herbs you're putting in the system. So there's a lot of thought that goes into that formulation.

And you can bring together baswilia, turmeric, dry ginger, amla. And they can really work in a synergistic way when we're talking about, joint pain, joint health, and these kinds of things. And you're right, Shatavri Thalci is a beautiful combination in perimenopause menopause. And I've seen it directly help people with their hot flashes and their night sweats. So powerful herbs can lead to such powerful results if we use them. You know what's so interesting is 20 years ago, no one knew what turmeric was. And I mean nobody.

Yeah. And we're going to continue to see more of these herbs that were used in the Middle East and India, more in Asia, continue to move forward. I'll give you, I really think that we're going to see Chitavri be the next big one, especially for perimenopause and menopause. Absolutely.

I mean, in Ashwaganda is the other one, 12 years ago, I don't think anybody had heard of Ashwaganda. Agreed. And it's just now growing like crazy because it's effective. I mean, you look at the studies

on Ashwaganda for hypothyroidism. Right. And for cortisol. I mean, it is incredibly powerful. I have a very exciting announcement. We just found out that heal yourselves is officially a New York Times bestseller. And that's entirely because of you.

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make sure to go to heal yourselves.com and enter your email and your order number and will send you hundreds of dollars in free content. Again, that's heal yourselves.com. By the way, that free content includes a peptide guide, natural healing recipes, a masterclass, and loads of other free content. I'm so excited for you to read this content. I hope it's going to change your life. What I'd love to do is I want to walk through some of the most powerful Irovetic herbs.

And you can just give a few sentences or a paragraph about each, you know, its benefit when you'd recommend it for somebody. we should let's we kind of already went through turmeric so let me go through number two here this is one that I love and I've used this for myself for digestive health and it's actually a blend but it's trifala. Absolutely. I take dherfala right now. I love it. Therfala is what we use whenever anyone's having gut digestive issues. We recommend it for 30 to 60 days at a time and then take a break but it's a powerful support. It's a gentle laxative. So if anyone's feeling constipated, their system is not working the way they expected. Or if you're traveling a lot and eating foods outside of what normally feels good to you,

you can take Therfil-A for 30 to 60 days and just reset the system. It'll also increase the system kind of clearing out what it needs to, so it's a good detox as well. Yeah, yeah, and I love it. I guess I've been pronouncing it wrong for 20 years now. I call it Trafalah. But it is, you know, it's a three-berry blend. And it has an amla, which I think some people are familiar with because it's one of the most vitamin C-rich foods in the world, or berries in the world.

And so that's one of my favorites for, I actually put it in a formula in the past for constipation, in combined with a probiotic, and so I love that. Boswellia, also known as Frankencents. Yes. So Boswellia is really interesting. When we talk about turmeric, Basulia,

turmeric functions really well on the Cox 2 pathway, Boswilia on the Five Lox pathway. So it's a powerful anti-inflammatory, supports the body, is a beautiful, beautiful synergy with turmeric, when we're talking about how we're going to help with long-term chronic inflammation. And so Boswili is one of those beautiful anti-inflammatories that I think works across the

board for us really well. So good. Holy Bezo also known as Tulsi. Oh, yeah. Dulci I love. I take Dulcy and tea every single day because it's so calming to the nervous system. When you bring together those dulci plants, it's going to calm cortisol, calm the immune system down.

It's really a relaxing, gentle support on a daily basis. It's one of those rejuvenative adaptogens out of Ayurveda. How about Bacopa or Brami? Oof, I love Bacopa or Brami. Since I had children, so since I had some brain fog and pregnancy brain, I started using Bacoba and seeing a direct benefit on my brain health. Like, it is impactful. And so using Bramme can be very calming to the brain, very nourishing to the brain.

You can take it at night and it's supportive in a sleep tea blend, for example, or you can take it during the day for your brain to work better. ignition support. So good. Well, let's go to Ashwaganda. Yes. Oh my gosh. Ashwaganda is the next king after turmeric, in my opinion. It is a powerhouse of an adaptogen. We're talking about cortisol support. When you're stressed and anxious, it calms you down. If you're depressed and have the blues, it lifts you up. We've seen studies where it's as effective as 14 different psychoactive drugs on people. So I think Ashwaganda is having its rising moment. And rightfully so, because we're living through a moment in modern day life where we're finally recognizing that everything in our

environment is a stressor, and we need to have buffers against that stressor. And I think Ashwaganda does an incredible job. Yeah, and there are so many clinical studies on Ashwagand. It's absolutely amazing. I remember one of the first studies I was just blown away by with Ashwaganda. It was a study on patients with thyroid issues. And what was just, this amazes me is in the group, they had people with hyperthyroidism and hypo. Okay. And it helped both groups. For the people that needed TSA to go up, it brought it up,

the others that needed to go down, it brought it down. It worked as this adaptogen. It was amazing. It's amazing to me. And you've highlighted adaptogens for decades now online. I've watched your work, and you've been such a powerful supporter of Ayurveda. And you're right, Ashwaganda is one of those plants that it will go with you.

It has the intelligence to come into your body and do what you need. And isn't that the math? of Mother Nature. Well, and I think, and I think that is the difference between many drugs and many herbs. Drugs, what they tend to do is they, so 30% of medications today are taken from herbs where then they learn how to, and then they make them synthetically. But then they tend to take the dose and then they 10x something that's synthetic and sort of force your body to doing something versus herbs.

They're changing the environment. They're sort of nudging your body in the right direction. Absolutely. I think they work with us. It's plant medicine. It's from Mother Earth. It's made from the exact thing that we are made of. And so it has this power to go into our body, understand what we need, and support us in exactly that way. And so it's beautiful when you understand them and can work with them. Yeah. One of my favorite herbs in recent years, I talked to Daniel Aeman about this. He's a brain expert here pretty recently. That's right. Yeah, I was reading in the book, The Song of Solomon, in the Bible, and I came across, and I love when I come across herbs in the Bible or anything nutritional. And it's talking about this incredible herb saffron. Nice. Nice. I mean, I follow Daniel Amon's work. I'm a huge fan of everything for the brain. Like I said, since having children, I thought, okay, I have to find a way to preserve this brain. Keep it. sharp. I have so much I learned and so much I'm yet to learn. And so he talks so beautifully about saffron, how it is so beneficial for the brain. It has these effects for neurocognitive support. It has the support across the body. We call it like a resyana. It's a rejuvenative plant that

comes into the body and gives us what we need. And it's interesting to watch. We're having a moment with Ayurvedic beauty, Ayurvedic skin care, Ayurvedaic hair care. So I even use Ayurvedic oils that have saffron now for that glow. And it's fun that people are creating these really high quality products for us now. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, saffron, when I look at this study, we've talked about, you know, brain health, of course, ADHD. Yes. Amazing. I'm in mood, of course, you know. And and it's actually a very small amount. Like, what I was sort of impressed with is when you look at the dosage, it's like there's two studies. There's somewhere around 30 milligrams, most around 88 milligrams in terms of the effective dosage. But it's amazing. It is expensive. Yes. I mean,

for, but it is, it's incredibly beneficial. Here's another one that I think maybe the honest is a little less familiar with. But I think we're living in this world where you mentioned, you talked to Chris Motley recently, a mutual friend of ours. And I know an herb that he prescribes all of the time is Neme. Ooh, Neme blood purification. Absolutely. So in India, we use Neme toothbrush. We use neem cream. We're willing to take neem baths whenever there's an issue going on. Neme is known as the purifier of our blood, purifier of our skin. So it's going to get in there and really cleanse at a beautiful deep level.

But it's not known to really strip anything, but it has to be respected. It is one of those strong plants. People in the ancient times would just take a neem leaf and use it, whether it was for their teeth brushing or for their skin, and they knew that it had those purification benefits. Yeah, and oftentimes it uses a sort of natural antimicrobial. Right. And so I know that's how Dr. Chris Motley recommends it as oftentimes his patients that come in with these chronic infections. Name is one of his favorites there. I mean, I can go into many others. I mean, the others, I'm, what, you know, of course, ginger. I mean, that sort of is all across the east. It's used in Asia a lot as well.

Right. But that's let's let's hit on that one. And then actually, I have one other really new question. I want to ask you about turmeric. Okay. So ginger's interesting. Ginger, we know, is good for the gut digestive fire, what we call Agni in Iervate. Though we want that fire to be strong. And so we love using ginger as this morning ritual, whether you have a ginger tea in the morning, ginger lemon tea, which would be very alkalizing. So I always recommend that to my clients who come into my program or to do sessions with me. Then we talk a lot about ginger. We know it's antinnausea. People know that one. But the fact that it helps line the digestive lining, support that digestive fire and ignite it is very powerful. And we need those anti-inflammatories nowadays. So just like tumor is an anti-inflammatory, ginger is also a great anti-inflammatory.

Yeah, it's so great. We talked about Chitavri. I put that on the list, too, really beneficial. So my audience in particular, who tends to be very educated in natural health, most people are aware of the benefits of tumouric. Sure. Not everybody is aware of some of these other beneficial compounds like tumourone that you're going to find in turmeric. Yes. So we have tumourome, tumourals, tumourones, and all these different compounds inside of curcumin are very interesting. We usually focus on the curcuminids and how that three to five percent out of the entire turmeric plant is, the most effective at reducing inflammation. But it is interesting because there are studies that show that non-courcuminoid turmeric also has benefits. I thought that was shocking. When I was doing my PhD on turmeric, I thought, how does that make any sense? We only talk about the curcuminoids,

but that just shows you that whole plant always has benefits. So we are very, in modern day times, we always extract the one thing we want to use. We use it as a high dose and we just want to get that benefit. We're always running so fast. But if you look at Mother Nature, the whole plant still has all these other benefits to have the essential oils. There were parts of it that were important. And so I think it's so important when we're taking any formulation, yes, we take those curcuminoids at the highest potency at that high dose, because it'll do the job. But also respect that Mother Nature had other benefits in the whole plant and include that as well. Like assume that extract with wholeness is going to get that best benefit that we want to have. Yeah. And

And the way that I typically go about it is just for daily longevity and health, I'm typically taking turmeric. Sure. Now, if I would go in and let's say I would have, I don't know, a major injury or there's a surgery or something like that and I really want to use it, in even stronger dosage, I might do a curcumin extract for that time. But for the most part, I'm a whole foodist. In fact, anytime, you know, I've created supplements or anything else, it's typically

the whole plant, the whole food that I prefer. You know, I remember I was, I was very. reading an article on turmeric and it talking about curcumin, but it also started talking about tumorone. And the way that when I was looking at the different benefits, I started thinking about it was when I look at curcumin in Chinese medicine, I would kind of, I think it would lean towards more what we would call yin in nature, which is very autophagy, cleansing, getting rid of, killing cancer. I mean, those sort of things, where the tumorone, which is more of the essential oil base, the studies around it were more related to it boosting stem cell production in the body

and brain. And it was just more of yank, anabolic, regenerative approach. But I think that that's one of the things that it's so unique even about a lot of these plants is like different parts of the plant have these different benefits. Yeah. I mean, that's why we see such a tremendous benefit in people, right? When we're looking for a solution, like you mentioned anti-inflammatory, we're going to reach for the pharmaceutical a lot of times nowadays because we're like, I need this solution, I need that solution. But isn't it interesting that in the same plant, we got all the benefits all in one. And what I'm seeing is so many people struggle with such a high level of chronic inflammation that they do need the supplement at this point.

I wish regular tumor powder worked. In my household, we cook with tumor two, three times a day. It's part of the Indian cuisine. It's going to be in there with the ginger and everything else. But I'm looking at modern day society right now, the level of obesity, metabolic dysfunction, heart disease. brain suffering, we have so much neurocognitive disease happening in front of us. It's such a high pace, autoimmunity. And then we add on perimenopause, menopause being an inflammatory shift. And I think bringing in ginger as a ritual every day in tea is important. I think adding curcumin

supplementation at that higher dose is important and bringing it in as food because we're dealing with a higher level of inflammation than we realize. Yeah. I remember growing up, so my neighbors, I grew up in this Troy, Ohio, this area of Dayton, Ohio, and our next-door neighbors were from India. I remember they became two very close friends of mine, Erfahn and Amir. And anytime I would go to their house, it was so different because I would eat dinner there on occasion. And it smelled like herbs.

Like my house, I thought to myself, maybe it smelled like tomato sauce one time or something Italian, maybe Mexican. But every time I was over there, you know, you would smell the curry and a lot of, the different sort of spices. And as I started getting into natural medicine, I just started to appreciate it so much more,

just thinking about, you know, when I look at a lot of my friends from places like Israel or India or Asia, herbs are so much more prominent, and they're using it in such more, in much larger volumes in cooking. True. You know, so it's, and I think per capita,

the United States is very low in our herb consumption. I mean, we do a lot of salt and pepper. a lot, but herbal's not, not so much. No, it's so true. And I don't go to my friend's houses. Sometimes I'll open their cabinet looking for salt or some chili powder or some hot sauce. And I'm always astounded because it'll be salt, black pepper, basil, oregano.

And I'm like, you guys, do you have any idea? So when they come over, I'm like, this is spice cabinet one. This is spice drawer one. And we can barely survive out of this one. And we are running through these on a monthly basis. Then in the cabinets. we've got spices. And then in the fridge, I have a whole fridge for herbs and spices and lentils because we buy them at such a high volume at the grocery store and I don't want to go often.

So I've got spices upon spices upon spices. My friends are like, you're the spice queen. What's happening here? I'm like, what's wrong with you today? Got issues? No worries. I've got you. That's Hing and Kalanama. Let's create my grandma's recipe for you. Or are you feeling, you know, any problem you have, fennel will solve half of life's problems. That's amazing. That's why you get served fennel when you leave Indian restaurants. They know they're going to give you heartburn with all those spices and those fried foods. And they want to settle it down for you. And so we have this opportunity like you're talking about just to have this awareness and keep a spice cabinet that's so much more robust and beautiful

and thus have ancient remedies at our fingertips. And it always tastes better. I mean, that's the reality, you know, it's if you're making, I mean, I make hummus. It's one of my favorite things of all time. And so I do a lot of hummus. And so I'll throw, I, sometimes I'll do a turmeric flavor, sometimes I'll go in and I'll throw in more cumin and that type of thing. I love using that as medicine. You know, another thing that I was thinking about that I, that is not talked about in the United States at all today in terms of medicine is the properties of food. Sure.

You know, some foods are warming. Some foods are cooling. I started really explaining this a lot to my patients with hypothyroidism. Sure. You know, most people's body temperature, we know, should be around 98.6. Right. women with hypothyroidism in particular, it's in the 97s. Wow.

That's telling us something. Yeah. And a lot of those women are eating salads and drinking cold smoothies and ice drinks all day long, and they're making it way worse versus doing these warming foods like ginger and warm soups. I mean, that's part of the cure. You know, I also thought about this. You mentioned this earlier. Now, this is a little bit more Japanese cuisine, but sushi.

Yeah. When you're eating sushi, most of the time early in the meal, you're getting raw fish. you're getting seaweed. I mean, these foods are very cold and cooling to the body. Correct. And it's how do they offset that? Wasabi and ginger. Correct.

Very, very warming to bring that neutrality and heat to, you know, to the body. Absolutely. You know, in IRV that we taught the circadian clock. And so it was interesting later, three Nobel Peace Prize winners won a Nobel Prize for proving something that IERVita talked about for 5,000 years. And so we always laugh, like you said, when the studies are wrong. show now we are always laughing at the fact that it was already always there in the wisdom. But yes, when we talk about foods and the circadian clock, if you look at the seasonal diet, in the winter, what is grown, the foods that are so warming to the system. So any nuts, any seeds, what is grown

in the fall, those root vegetables, the pumpkin, the squash, the beets, all those earthy foods, those are going to warm us and they're going to ground us as the weather shifts and becomes more windy and more cooling. In the winter, when it's freezing outside, you're actually meant to eat those heavier foods, those soups and those stews that keep you more grounded. But in modern day life in the West, what do we do? We eat our salads and our icy cold drinks and whatever we want, ice cold smoothies 24-7, 365 days a year, never acknowledging that there's a seasonal shift happening. Oh, yeah. We get so mono in our diets. And so Ayurveda said, adjust to every season, eat those circadian foods, And based on your health struggle and based on your individual dosha, really adjust your diet.

And so, for example, I'm a fire type. I'm pure bitha. And so I love the things that are most detrimental to me. I want hot sauce on everything, chili powder on everything. My team laughs at me at my office. They're like, again, Shivani with the hot sauce. And then she's going to be all angry and frustrated because those are the imbalances of a fire type. And so you have to laugh when you know that about yourself.

But you also have this opportunity to say, wow, if I have hypothy, thyroidism, let me take a season or two and just eat those warm, easy to digest foods so my body can feel nourished. That's right. So my digestive fire is supported. So I actually absorb the benefits in this food and support my body and healing. Hey, no matter what you've been told about cortisol, it's not the actual enemy. And your goal isn't to eliminate it.

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Right now, new customers can save $10 by using my code, Dr. Ax 10. Give your body the support it needs to handle stress the way God designed it to. Click the link to check out this incredible cortisol balancing product from ancient nutrition. Yeah, you know, I sometimes think about it like this is that, you know, a lot of times food, and by the way, I'm not saying it's a replacement at all, but I find so many people in the world today are undernourished. And they're undernourished oftentimes emotionally as well,

right? So I think that, you know, there's something about if you're undernourished nutritionally, you're undernourished spiritually, you're undernourished relationally, that, you know, you want to do everything you can to address all of those root causes, but that's where food becomes even more important in being able to nurture and support yourself back to health. I love that you shared that. I think it's so true. I think if we actually did big, deep blood work on everyone and we did real stool test, which you do in functional medicine, you would actually learn so much more about how people are malnourished. Well, can I tell you what I do? So I have two practices. I have a local practice here in Nashville, Tennessee. And then I also have a virtual one. But what I do, when I, when I, when I

when I work with patients is I do tongue mapping on every patient. So we do a combination of their history in depth. We do blood work. And we do markers that most people don't do. We're looking more at omega-3 fatty acid index. We're looking actually nutrients. Like most people don't know what their magnesium or zinc or selenium levels are. But then we look at their tongue. And, you know, we can tell so much about, hey, if the tongue is pale, well, there's a blood deficiency. There's certain foods for that. If there's those ridges on the side, your digestion is weak. If the tip is right, There's that fire, you know, is out of balance. And so being able to address those is just so incredibly powerful.

Awesome. Do you use a copper tongue scraper? We've recommended it before. Okay. I mean, it is. I mean, that is a great therapy. To be honest, it's probably one that I probably should recommend more, especially, of course, for people dealing with infections and candida.

For sure. I brought you one because copper tongue scraper is one of our favorite things out of my RV. though. We want everyone to scrape their tongue every single day. Yeah. And I talk a lot about turmeric. I've done this hundreds of times on turmeric and I wrote a whole book with a chapter on turmeric. But it's interesting. I think more of the world will tongue scrape because of me, which is totally fine by me because it's one of those Ayurvedic rituals that's so powerful. Well, obviously oil pulling is an Ayurvedic tradition of swissuing around. I mean, typically it was sesame oil early on and people started using coconut oil too. But, but, you know, probably a similar, you know,

benefit of doing those to, you know, I would imagine those are, those are helpful together. Absolutely. So when we scrape the tongue every single day, we're going to gently scrape all the organs of the body. We're going to reduce something called AMA or the toxin residue that accumulates in the system. And it's interesting nowadays, we talk about metabolic dysfunction, all these byproducts in the body that are accumulating lymphatic system that's backed up, inflammation all over. That totally translates to AMA or this toxin residue. And so, So Iyriveda taught us gently scrape the tug, ignite that digestive fire. It'll clean up your oral health.

And we know oral health ties to gut microbiome health. You know oral health ties to heart health. Yeah. And then Iravida taught us oil pulling, swishing around any food-grade organic oil for five to 20 minutes. And what that's going to do is it's going to accumulate all those toxins that our body accumulated overnight. And when you spit it out, make sure you spit it out in the trash can, not your toilet sink or shower. Yep, you'll clog them over time. You'll clog them over time.

I always like to say that because I don't want to mess up anybody's. home, but really that it's this honoring of oneself. I think of the daily Ayurvedic self-care rituals. As a way to honor your body first, we live in a modern day world where we're so outward focused. For me, I start my day and I'm running with the kids and everything else in my business. But what if we took a few minutes for ourselves and really set the body up for success and having what we call resilience. We call it OJAS in Ayurveda, this resilience we can have, especially when we're talking about a modern day life that's so inflammatory and problematic. sometimes for our health. You know, I've continued to see conventional medicine,

just continue to just prescribe more drugs, right? And I just think it's making everybody worse. The most, the fastest growing over the past two years have been these GLP ones. Yes. In Ayurveda, are there any foods or herbs that sort of have that, that act as a natural GLP1 for the body? It's a good question. I was researching curcumin for this, of course, because I always go to turmeric first. We can look at turmeric as a very powerful anti-inflammatory support, which is what a lot of people are reaching into GLP-1s for. I'll be at doctor's offices and they'll say, it's a great anti-inflammatory.

It's going to help with Alzheimer's. I'm like, you're going to give everyone on Earth a GLP1 for Alzheimer's. That's your game plan right now. Guys, you have curcumin, you have ginger, you have an anti-inflammatory diet. Are you talking about stress or environmental pollutants with people? This is insane. I always look at the world like what is happening. I have no problem with GLP-1s.

I think people should use them as needed. But if it's just for inflammation, yes, let's talk about that. And then yes, Ayurveda's entire premise is gut health is the center of all health. Gut health is your vitality, your immune system, and your brain. And so we talk about gut health heavily. We talk about bitter herbs. Let's bring in the arugula and you talk about food as medicine, all the bitters that we've kind of given up because we don't like the taste of anything better. That was a taste that was important. We have so many different herbs that are so

pro-gut and gut supportive that we can look at. And so, yes, I think there is a lot of different things that we can use in Ierva that correlate to GLP-1 support when we're talking about heal the gut to then have a system that works better. Yeah, I think probably, you know, a couple that come to mind for me are now Bayberry, which I knew was used a little bit in an Irovet and Chinese medicine and but also Fenya Greek. You know, I mean, Fenya Greek, when you look at the studies on blood sugar. I mean, they really are phenomenal. And it's a great herb. And so cinnamon. Yeah, cinnamon would be another. Yeah. And so I think that there's a lot of herbal combinations that could be used. And of course, probably even more important is just eating

meals that are high in protein and fiber. True. You know, and in good bacteria, it would be great as well. That would be beneficial there. Yeah, over the years, one of my other biggest passions has become really focusing on longevity and health span and just being active in my 80s and 90s, even you. I'm really blessed enough parents that are in their mid-70s that can water ski, snow-ski, be really, I mean, incredibly active in their mid-70s. And part of it is we've just done everything we can to just continue to, you know, help them do that, right? And there is this word, there's a friend of mine, his name's Raphael Gonzalez. He's a PhD scientist in stem cells. And he started using this term quite a few years ago called inflammation. And I, and I,

I love this term. Walk through me, what is the difference between inflammation or inflammation and how do we start to reverse inflammation in the body? Absolutely. I mean, it was a big reason why I wrote my book, The Inflammation Code, because we are as a society struggling with inflammation, but we know inflammation rises when something happens. Either it's, you know, you stubbed your toe, you harmed yourself, any redness swelling in the body is an indication of that inflammation. But what we're struggling with when we're aging is a whole different set of symptoms. And so when I hang out with my friends, the topic of conversation is always my joints hurt, my hip hurts, my knee hurts. I walk in a room. I can't remember anything. I've got this brain

fog. I cannot focus. Anyone else in a rageful mood every evening. I don't understand all these symptoms are rising. Suddenly I have headaches all the time. When I go to eat something, I don't tolerate it the same. I keep having to wonder what can I eat? And I always say, guys, they always say to me, I think this is aging. That's always the thing. I guess this is aging. I guess this is where we're at now. We're in our 40s. And I always look at them and say, this is not aging. This is inflammation. And when you have that happened, when you think, I guess this is aging, that is your moment in your brain where you should stop and say, why? Why do I feel like I'm aging today? What changed? Was it my sleep quality? Did I have alcohol

this week? Was it diet? Was it stress? Like, what could have kicked off inflammation? Because it's inflammation that's running rampant in your system that is making you feel like you are aging. And don't assume that it's just aging and this is just how it is. And you could become inactive and lazy, in my opinion, and give up all exercise and activity and movement because you feel so limited now. No, just pause and look at it and say, what are my causes of inflammation? And sometimes, unfortunately, it's a pretty chronic exposure of whatever's going on. And that's where I like to bring up, let's talk about clean air. Let's talk about clean water. Let's talk about clean diet. Let's talk about really great sleep practices. Because each thing you do adds up to reducing that systemic inflammation. You hold the power. And if you hold the power to how you're aging, why wouldn't you shift that? You have every right to shift that right now. You have the power. You have the sovereignty. And my friends all look at me like Chavani. again with the lectures on health. And I'm like, you know, guys, aging is a choice.

Yeah. We're going to age naturally, of course. But how we age, we can shift completely. And all the ancient wisdoms taught us, use your herbs, use your spices, food is medicine. Yeah. You have this ability to create any level of health you want. Like for myself, I believe in creating endless digestive fire and resilience in the system and vibrancy.

And like you talk about, it is mental, emotional, spiritual. and physical. And so Iervida said, we should nourish on all levels to build that level of health. And that's the equation for inflammation. Yeah, it's so good. You know, when I think about it too, you know, if we're talking about irovedic medicine and how it really impacts this, is, you know, I think there's two hormones here that are the biggest drivers of inflammation. It's high cortisol, high insulin. And if those hormones can come down, we can fix that. And there's, and the two probably most prescribed iveretic herbs address those things. Tumric for inflammation or insulin is really tied there as well.

And then ashwaganda or holy basil, right, are very much tied to those cortisol levels. And so I think getting good sleep, reducing stress, clean diet, along with using these medicinal herbs as a support is really powerful. You know, there's two conditions I want to hit on here. Next, so many men and women today are struggling with hormone issues. I'm going to have you handle the women. I'm going to handle the men. We can go back and forth and share at the end. Sure.

But I want you to talk about the top herbs for estrogen, progesterone, for menopause. And I want to talk about some Ayurvedic herbs for low testosterone in men. Sure. You know, we're having a huge movement right now around perimenopause and menopause. Finally, there's a conversation. Finally, there's clinical trials and studies happening. Really, they're happening on us as a population. I find all of telehealth is figuring it out for us on us.

And we're trying to figure out how to really personalize this. And so as I watch all of this happen, I really think about that estrogen and inflammation piece, how estrogen was really keeping NFCAPA be in check. And when estrogen starts to decline and shift, all of a sudden, all those inflammatory pathways are released. That master switch of inflammation is flipped into the on position. And we're releasing interleukin 1, interleukin 6, interleukin 8, interleukin 1 beta, ATNF alpha. Like it all just starts exploding within us. And that's a tough, a very tough thing to deal with. You know, I have so many women who come to me.

They're like, I bought your book. I'm taking turmeric. What else can I do? And I'm like, well, apply the book. I reveal the lifestyle is detoxification, circadian rhythm, sleep, eating well, honoring digestive fire, all those things. I always tell people, you don't need a pill. You need a protocol.

Correct. Maybe there's a couple pills as part of it. Yes. But if you really want to heal, you need a full-on protocol. Absolutely. And that's the thing is if we can put that protocol in place, we can see such huge life shifts happen. But your question was, what are those best herbs? I would say turmeric first, of course, because it's by far my favorite.

I would say ginger is another powerful one we can add. Like you talked about, Ashwaganda, Ashwaganda is going to help adapt to any changes that are so significant. I think Brummi is so powerful for brain at this time. We need that brain support during the perimenopause shift. I think adding in Dulcy as well as a powerful adaptogen helps. Fenugreek is also cooling and supportive to the system at that time. And so those would be my top favorite when we're talking about the menopause shift. And then I would also say that because menopause is a gut microbiome shift,

as you know, Cynthia Thurlow talks about that. And she has a whole book on menopause gut right now. And so it has me thinking a lot about leaky gut and how much gut dysfunction we deal with societally right now. we're lacking the diversity. The good bacteria are not winning over the bad. So firstly, curcumin can help with that. Curcumin goes in there and supports the good bacteria, helps get rid of the bad,

and directly helps with that gut lining and leaky gut. But then adding the ginger in daily, adding in aloe vera. Alivira is very powerful for gut healing. So many people are struggling with constipation right now, and I always say start with alovir first. You can add cumin seeds to your food. That's going to help it digest better.

So as we're going into this very protein first approach, Iirveda gave us the herbs and spices that help us digest those hard to digest foods better. Cuman is one of them. And asa fatida is the other. Hing. It's another powerful, it's a pungent spice out of Ayurveda, but it's very effective at helping us digest better. So I think that's like my cornucopia of herbs I would add in.

Yeah, it's so good. You know, I think that, you know, obviously during perimenopause and menopause, we see these declines in estrogen and progesterone. And, you know, the way that it's viewed in both Chinese medicine, I are veda, to agree, is these herbs, they're yen, they bring moisture and coolness to the body. And so when you start to lose them, you need to have food to offset and support moisture and coolness. And so that tends to be a lot of good fatty acids. It tends to be things like egg yolks, yogurt, ghee, like a lot of these foods.

You've got to bring moisture and coolness. and of course coolness is the opposite of inflammation in most cases. And one of the things, aloe vera is in particular very cooling, very moistening. That's why that is such a good tonic to use in that case. And there are foods for this, right? I think sesame is really good for progesterone, but then you've got, you know, flax and soybeans, yam and a number of things that are good. Chickpeas.

Pumpkin seeds good for estrogen. So there are meals you could put together in Ierveda that would be perfect tonics along with the herbs. Right. Specifically for, and so, hey, everybody, here's something you could do because I actually have this on, I just launched this on Dr.ax.com. I have an AI tool at the top of the screen. Okay. So if they go on there and they type in, if you type in, what is an ideal Ayurvedic meal for menopause? Give me 10 recipes.

It'll do that for you on there. Nice. If you want that because it's trained on that. But all that being said, that's one thing I love about I or Veda is that there are meals for almost every condition you can think of. And then I want to jump over to low testosterone because it's such an issue today. I did a podcast recently, and this blew me away. You know, it used to, again, and I'm not saying that this was correct thinking, but it was statistically leaning this direction that if there was an issue with infertility,

it tended to be more connected to the female. That was true statistically, historically. Interesting. But that gap is so much smaller now. It's only a 5% difference. And so it was something like 35%. It was the woman that wasn't able, the challenge with conception, 30% now men, like 15% or so there's a percentage that's unknown. Wow.

But overall, the testosterone and men has declined just dramatically. I mean, it's like 30 to 50% over the last 50 years. And so there are a lot of herbs and things in Ayurveda. I know that Fenugreek and Ashwaganda are typically used in men for that. And then a lot of the warming herbs, you want to do more spicy. You want to do more lamb and foods like that there. Any other thoughts on some things that are good for men with more testosterone? You know, it's interesting.

I saw a documentary recently on plastic and how, have you seen that? And it talked about that was a serious reason as to why we're saying lower and lower fertility as a society, but especially highlighted that men. And so I showed it to my son. I wanted my children to see it. I said, just, you know, I've worked on your fertility since birth because I knew that your future fertility is tied to your microplastic issue right now. And so, yes, we're having this huge issue in society.

And I've written about Ayurvedic pregnancy and how to really honor pregnancy to create Zen babies because we had this opportunity to really invest in our health. So I think microplastics is a big issue. Yes, I totally agree. And we know curcumin helps to clear out microbeating. plastic system, which I thought was incredible and heavy metal. So I get so excited about the curcumin piece. When we talk about low testosterone, yes, we want to bring in more nourishment into all the tissues. So I always think of Ashwaganda first. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. In Chinese medicine,

it's known as a Chi and Yang tonic, which is really going to be that exact deficiency caused with low testosterone. You know, just speaking on men and some of the microplastics, I think the top things you can do, one is get a water filter. You know, that's up there. I switched over. I would say 90% of my clothing now is wool or cotton. Wow. And because I just became, I just, I've read enough. Yeah, I know. I feel that way too right now. I'm like, all my clothing should not be at leisure. This is problematic. I'm sitting in polyester. It's the polyester is the problem. Yeah. We're sitting in synthetic clothes all day. I have a house that had mold in it last year. So I've been in a huge mold learning, which anyone who's been through it knows how hard that. is. Yes. And so now I'm a stickler for air purification, water purification. And I got my kids to watch that documentary. And now they come to me and they're like, Mom, my shampoo is cleaner than yours. They're studying it. And I think that's the level of intentionality we need to bring for our health

and the family's health. That's so good. It's so powerful. With Chivani, it's been a joy having you on. You're brilliant. And I want to encourage everybody. Chavani has a great book out. It's called The Inflammation Code. It's in Bookstores Nation. It's on Amazon.com. You go to Amazon.com and check out the inflammation code here from Chavani Gupta. I don't want to encourage you. Follow all the amazing things she's up to. Let us know where we can find out more about you and your great work.

For sure. So my website is Dr.shvani.com, just Dr.S-H-I-V-A-N-I. I'm on Instagram. I have the Inflammation Code podcast. And so I'm always there to educate the world on health and wellness and well-being, just like you. And I've admired your work for decades, Dr. Axe. So this is such an honor.

Oh, well, Dr. Shavani, thanks so much for coming on. And everybody, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to Dr. Act Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and the principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Also want to mention, hey, do me a big favor, subscribe to the show. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show, allowing me to continue to bring on more amazing guests here like Dr. Chavani. So again, do me a favor and subscribe. And think about who's one person that would really enjoy this and benefit from this? Hey, send them a text, share it with them.

We appreciate you being on mission with us to help heal the world with food and natural medicine. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you on the next episode.