Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Unlocking Vibrant Health through Ayurveda, Turmeric, and Self-Care with Dr. Shivani Gupta

• Nika Lawrie • Season 2024 • Episode 79

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Unlock the secrets to vibrant health and well-being with my special guest, Dr. Shivani Gupta. Inspired by her family's health battles and her enriching visits to India, Dr. Gupta embarked on a transformative journey into the world of Ayurveda and the remarkable benefits of turmeric. Discover how her academic pursuits, culminating in a master's and PhD, have equipped her with profound insights into preventing chronic illnesses through holistic approaches like gut health, detoxification, self-care rituals, and optimal nutrition.

CONNECT WITH SHIVANI: http://www.shivanigupta.com

CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie

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Nika Lawrie:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Laurie podcast. Dr Shivani Gupta, welcome to the show. I'm so grateful to have you here today, thank you, thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely so. We're going to talk about all kinds of cool stuff around turmeric and health from kind of the Ayurvedic practice. But before we get into that, can you share a little bit about your back history and then really what sparked your interest in kind of the health world, the health profession? Sure?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Well, I grew up here in the US I'm from Houston, texas and as I grew up, I kept going to India every year to see my family. So my immediate family was here, but a lot of my extended family and grandparents were there, and every time I went, inevitably I would land and someone else would have had like a catastrophic issue happen to their health or they would have passed away. Yeah, and I got so frustrated because I was like wait a minute, this is what life's about. You age and as you're aging, these horrible things happen. I thought my family was so successful and so awesome and life was good, but then I saw this end point and I didn't like it. I was like this is not going to be fair. If we're diabetic, and that's like the whole family history, fine, but why does the last part have to be fair? If we're diabetic, and that's like the whole family history, fine, but why does the last part have to be heart attack, stroke and amputation? Right, what if? What if we made different choices? Would that change the result? That really set me on the path of researching, like what causes diabetes? What is inflammation? What are all these issues? Um, what are the lifestyle if things we're not doing, what do we not know as a family?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Yeah, and so I started studying yoga and Ayurveda because I was like they're from India and I think they're pretty awesome. And after I go deeper, I was like, wait a minute, you guys, we have the golden keys to health and wellness right here, so let's just use them. And so that's when I took a deep dive into Ayurveda and I started really studying it until I finally did my master's in it and my PhD in it, cause I thought let me just formalize the study at this point. And in my master's I fell in love with the herbs and spices and I was like, wow, these are magic superfoods. And the whole PhD was on turmeric, cause I really wanted that, that support to our preventive health.

Nika Lawrie:

Oh, I love that. You know, I think I always kind of find it ironic when people talk about this because, you know, we we look at, we have all these questions about health and like how to heal our bodies and how to take care of ourselves, and the reality is so many of those answers have been around for four or five, you know, thousands of years these practices have been around and they've been healing people that whole time. And so why we don't look at these ancient practices to give us guidance today is beyond me. So yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

So talk a little bit more about your study into Ayurveda and and what really I mean you. You mentioned the spices, but really what? What was so passionate about it for you?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

So when I started studying Ayurveda it was in college, and in college I had left for Boston to this cold place eating a totally different diet and I found that I was constantly getting sick, Like I'd get a cold. And I had already gone through having a lot of colds in high school where I had been taking Augmentin and big antibiotics back to back to back chronically. Back then they just didn't know antibiotics were bad for you. Take this, you'll be better faster. And so after years of taking antibiotics a lot I went to college and I would just get sick again and again and finally I was like, okay, there has to be some way to bolster your immune system.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

So when I studied Ayurveda I was like, wow, you guys teach self-care in a totally different way that talks about detoxification and supporting the body every day. Wow, you guys teach gut health and you teach gut health in such a deep and profound way and you talk about how the immune system, longevity, vibrancy and vitality all comes from the gut. That was a new concept to me. I had never heard of it. I learned about a preventive lifestyle and I was super interested in what can I do to prevent that other life I had seen over there happening to all my grandparents and stuff, I was like, okay, prevention sounds like a really good idea.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And then, being young, I was also looking for like, what's the right way to eat. I had never been taught how to eat, what to eat to have a healthy body, and so Ayurveda to me encompasses detoxification, self-care rituals, gut health, what to eat, when to eat, the circadian clock, circadian sleep, sleep rituals, optimizing sleep, and then really there's so much more. It's a system of medicine, so it addressed everything from, like, pediatrics to surgery, yeah, but when it comes to what we can really work with when we're coaching people here in the West, you know, I kind of keep it to more of those wellness types of talks.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. So you you mentioned earlier you ended up doing your PhD on turmeric specifically. What about turmeric made you so interested in doing an entire PhD about it?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Well, I was in herbology class in my Ayurvedic studies and the teacher was talking about cumin and coriander cilantro. She talked about hing. Hing is a spice called asafoetida here in the West, but it's like the most powerful gut healing spice and garam masala and what's in there. And I kept saying to her we eat this, we eat this in our Indian food. What are you talking about? I didn't realize it had such powerful healing effects when used in the right form and way. And she said, yeah, isn't it amazing that Indian food has these super spices built into our cooking? And so finally, after like learning about ashwagandha and hing and all of them, and even triphala, like so many of them, I just revere Like I would literally play in spices all day if people let me like I just sit in a spice box world and I have one usually here that I illustrate to people. But when I heard about turmeric, I was like wait a minute, this is the mother load, it's anti-inflammatory. So inflammation is a root cause of metabolic disease. Every itis in the body is based on inflammation. And here, with my family history, I was like I know, I have to keep inflammation down, I have to keep my weight down, I have to keep my exercise up. There's a lot of things I have to do to prevent diabetes. I have to manage stress, but that inflammation one, I was like, oh, you solved that problem for me, huge. Then antioxidant. I was like, okay, well, from what I've seen, the aging process doesn't look so good. My family, I'll take an antioxidant that's anti-aging Cool, I want to say young and vital. And then it was immune supportive, which to me was everything. I was like, wait, you're antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. I needed more immune supports that could be like a barrier defense for me against the outer world.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

So that's when I thought, okay, well, why is everyone not taking this? Like, why don't we all take it every single day and know for a fact that it does the job? So as I began researching, I realized that in the supplement world you can buy any pill and you have no idea if it's going to work. We're generally not doing blood work consistently enough to see did product A work and lift my vitamin D level or not? Who knows, I'm just wishing.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And back then I think it was the New York Times or Wall Street Journal came out with an article that 75% of supplements on the big box retailer shelves do not have the active ingredient at the level that they say they do, and I was like, wait a minute. But don't you realize, with my family history I can't take that risk. So I really thought about it and I was like, wait, let me see what I can do here. So I studied turmeric and death and then I decided, well, I've got to make my own because we're living in this world where I need to know that I've prevented this, I need to know I've saved my family from this. And then whoever else needs that support, let's get it.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely, I think it's. I think it's so powerful. You know I I talk a lot about kind of detoxing the body and getting our gut and our liver and our kidneys functioning at the optimal level. And one of the big things I was talking about is the use of turmeric. But I know you know turmeric you can't just sprinkle a little bit on your, on your you know meals here and there and expect it to work. You really need that quality level of turmeric for it to really have the um, the appropriate effects within your body to lower the inflammation and stuff. Can you talk a little bit about you know the different potencies of turmeric and how that plays into healing our bodies and lowering inflammation?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. So, like you said, sprinkling a little turmeric is not going to do the job. And what people don't realize is turmeric is a plant that looks a lot like ginger, it's just a lot more orange. You can buy turmeric and grate it and juice it and do all those things and, yes, it's a whole plant. It can have some benefit. But what people don't realize is when we're talking about this craze or trend around turmeric as an anti-inflammatory. Out of the whole plant turmeric, only 3% of it is the curcuminoids, and those curcuminoids are what we have studied as being the most effective against inflammation, and out of those three, just one curcumin is the most effective at reducing inflammation. And so my intention was.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I'm surrounded by an all MD family here in South Florida of physicians and surgeons. All day long, when a patient has a problem or an itis, they write a prescription, and so my thought was what if I can create something where you guys offer a natural solution alongside not saying we're going to give those up? Those things have their place and they're very effective for what they need to do. But what if I changed how the doctor is really supporting the patient? And what if the whole world realized that IRB done. Turmeric could have been doing a lot of what all those other people are trying to create out there. Like what if you just gave me a more natural support? And so that's what I sought out to do.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I didn't see. I didn't want to just create your daily turmeric that you just take for fun, for a little bit of health and wellness benefits. I wanted to match the efficacy of things that are out there, and so that's what I did. I created a 98% grade potency curcumin only supplement, and so a lot of what's out there is 95% or it's not even standardized. That's because in our industry again, you can make a supplement, say it's beneficial, and people will take it. But in my case I have tons of doctors who are saying, wow, like my patients are cutting their pain prescriptions in half, they're taking yours. My post-op recommendations are in half now compared to a few years ago because they're taking your stuff. So now I tell people look, you can take a daily tumor gold and it's actually effective, it's actually going to support you. Or you can take turmeric plus inflammation and really drive down inflammation for those joint pains, chronic joint pains and those kinds of issues.

Nika Lawrie:

I would love for you to maybe deep dive a little bit too for somebody who maybe doesn't know the kind of the difference between the inflammations, because we have these kind of acute things that cause you know that you cut your skin and you have inflammation. In that sense you have the joint pains and the muscle pains and those kinds of things which people often don't realize that that really is inflammation in their bodies, usually causing that issue. And then there's that real long-term inflammation which leads to the chronic diseases that we're seeing, like the diabetes and and uh cancers and other um, like dementia and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about how the curcumin can affects or mitigates the inflammation in those different areas?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure, I don't think I have my hand out here, but when I was doing my dissertation what I found fascinating was there are so many pathways Like. Imagine there was a circle and around the circle I had 50 different names of ways of our body. All of them are happy to grab curcumin and go use it to reduce inflammation. When I was doing my thesis, my advisor, one of my professors, was like Shivani. The way I looked at it is when we're in our youth, in our 20s, or whenever we tend to party, drink, eat poorly, go through our first loves, first breakup stresses, all those things that might've happened to you in college. And he said at that time we flip on the light switches of inflammation in the body, not for another, we're just flipping them on. Might've had different acute issues, like you said, a cut, and the body's going to send healing to it. Might have chronic inflammation going on in the body or chronic, low grade, persistent inflammation which is the culprit, caused by stress, caused by toxins, caused by poor eating, caused by a lot of things, and we flip those light switches on. And when do we ever stop and do like a profound 21 day detox where we de-stress and cleanse and heal the gut and love on ourselves. That's not really part of our culture, not in the West. It's not part of our thinking really or our mentality. But when you go to India and you study Ayurveda, they say that's the root, like that is the one preventive thing we can do is to do a proper 21 day detox every year. And he said, because we never flip off those light switches, that inflammation is just on and it's spreading.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And so so many people say I don't know why I'm getting this diagnosis in my forties. I'm so young. I don't get why I'm getting all these itises in my 50s this itis, that itis or I don't understand why I'm so creaky and I'm stiff and a lot of complaints, headache, fatigue, gut issues, ibs these little warning signals that come up. These are the body's way of saying hey, you're on the wrong path. I need you to switch the road back to the one we were on where I could stay healthy.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And so one thing I share with people is look when you're, when you have inflammation in the body and you have a clogged up lymphatic system, that's a sign of traffic jam. You're in a gridlock traffic jam. And the problem with that is none of us really pay attention to it. We don't realize it. We're seeing the signals but we don't really want to do anything about them until there's so many that we have to go to a doctor, dig into the issue. But the gridlock occurs and now any virus or problem is going to come going into the body and it's going to latch on and go cause its damage. And here our system is in gridlock. It has no ability to move or react. Yeah, my goal is always to give people all the tools Turmeric is just one of them but give us all the tools we need to just get that system cleared, get that gridlock out of the way. So we're moving and churning and burning and that digestive fire is taking in for us.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I love what you said. I think you, I think you explained it so well because you know we think about you. You mentioned the, the switches being turned off, on and off, and so you know people are worried about having, you know, heart disease as they get older because mom or dad had it, or they're worried about getting breast cancer because family members had it. Or dementia is usually the big one you hear about, and and I think it's so important for people to understand that we may have a genetic predisposition for those diseases, but the thing that's really going to cause those switches to turn on is the inflammation and the lack of detoxification in the body, and so I just love the way you kind of explained that and laid that out in such a simple manner. Thank you, yeah, so tell me a little bit. So you, after going through training and school and doing your PhD, you went on to formulate fusionary formulas. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and what you guys are offering and, I guess, how to find you guys too?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. So, yeah, I decided, okay, well, I love turmeric and I kept telling everyone who walked into my house they should take turmeric. And finally my husband said why don't you make one? Like, if you're going to sit there and really tell everyone to take one and you don't know which one's the best one, either go test them or go make one. And so I actually partnered up with a factory here in Florida that's owned by an MD and I already knew him for 10 years and I said, look, I have this idea, but if the product isn't perfect and it doesn't do the job, I'm not doing this. It has to be better than what's out there or I'm going to take what's better by someone else. And so we formulated we put it together, I put the brand together and so up here above my head, that is the line from Fusionary. And so we have four products in the yellow line. That's our turmeric baseline, and the one that the doctors recommend all day long is turmeric gold and inflammation.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I have a number of orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, acupuncture physicians, functional medicine doctors those are the main people physical therapy who I work with who recommend it to their patients, and that was the whole ethos of what I built.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I thought let me just change how the practitioner handles the patient, because the patient is showing up at their door in pain and ready to take something, and if they'll take something, let's give them something good. And then, a few years ago, I thought you know what? There's this whole rest of the world that believes in prevention, in optimal health and vibrant health, vibrant immunity, and so I became more of a speaker, author and shared that message. And so Fusionary is available on my website at FusionaryFormulascom. My code, Dr Shabani, can give everyone 15% off, and my goal is really to show everyone how we can optimize sleep with a sleep tea and sleep formulas, how we can eat better, how we can balance our hormones, how we can use adaptogens and, of course, use turmeric as our daily support to reduce that inflammation, because the world is constantly I don't know putting its stuff on us and I think it's our job to be a little more on the defense with it.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned a couple other herbs that you really like you know. One of the ones I've seen you talk about before is ashwagandha. Can you talk about maybe your top three or four favorite herbs that maybe you personally use or why you like them in general?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Sure. So my number one is turmeric. Obviously I'm like the turmeric girl and I'm happy to like do I would bathe in turmeric and rub it on my face and everything if I could. I just think it does everything.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

So, that's my number one. My number two would be ashwagandha, because ashwagandha is an adaptogen and if you're stressed or anxious, it calms you down a few notches, and if you're low or feeling depressed, it'll lift you up. So I consider ashwagandha and all the Ayurvedic adaptogens to be amazing. And what's interesting about ashwagandha was I added it to one of my turmeric formulas, turmeric gold a few years ago and a certain group of people. It makes them so calm, they get sleepy, and what I realized is ashwagandha is not one of those across the board. You can have everyone take it to be a more calm, focused, human kind of ingredients, and so I backed out of using Ashwagandha as much and I'm utilizing other ones. So when I designed a hormone rebalance tea this year, I made it for those going through menopause, perimenopause or any sort of hormone imbalances which I feel like. Every single one of us who has kids has some sort of issues post kids Um. But I used adaptogens like shut the buddy and three types of full C and things like that. So for me, I just want to play in the adaptogen world because I think our bodies need that calibration support that the body can naturally do and just need that extra support with Um. So that's my number two. My number three would be all the different ingredients that help with sleep. Like when I picked everything for deep sleep tea, I put in rum me. There's so many ingredients in here that are so yummy. I put in osmanthus and things like that, but rum me is for the brain. That's also a very good ingredient, and I find nowadays brain health is such a trending topic because it's so off. Gut health is off, that's brain health is off. We have a lot of work to do, I think, as a country for these types of issues, absolutely, and so that's why I approach it a lot from that gut health standpoint. Yeah, and then my last ingredient I would say is Triphala. Triphala is one of our favorites in Ayurveda for gut health, and so I put Triphala I believe it's in the titles. Let me check. Yeah, it's this one. I was confused. This one in part control. I put it into here because I wanted to give people a way to heal the gut and then as we age, our metabolism slows down. So can we give ourselves the gut healing ingredients we need and then slowly, as we're going through, because gut is healed, metabolism is able to move and churn and burn again. So those are some of mine.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I'll share my last one with you. There's one called a hing. It's a really stinky spice and we use it in India in our cooking. So anytime you cook a dish you take oil, heat it, add a pinch of hing, add cumin, and then you start cooking the dish once you heated the oil. But because you're doing that, you're reducing all the gas producing qualities of the food. And to reduce the gas producing qualities in lentils and beans and all these things is almost to help you pre-digest them.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And so I have a lot of friends who say they can't eat lentils, they can't eat beans or any of that stuff. But when they come to my house they can, and I said I'm just using the spices from Ayurveda that allow you to feel better. And so I have so many people. When they have GI distress, I'm like just come over and grab a Ziploc baggie, a ping and a Ziploc baggie from me of galanamac. It's kind of like our purple salt. It's very sulfuric, but a pinch of each, make a tea out of it and you will be healed. And they're like no, can you just make me a pill? I'm like no, I can't make you a pill. These are two spices and you all need to own them and have them around for all your IBS and stomach issues, and I've been taking it as a kid. It's like one of my favorite home remedies for people to use.

Nika Lawrie:

I love that and I think it's important to understand. It's like how you use the spice too right? It's not just like we can't just throw all these things in our body and, you know, supplement our way out of health, like there are specific practices and use for each of these herbs and spices and it's important to understand how to use them Exactly.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Food is medicine and so, if we can do everything through food, people ask me like should I take your supplement forever? I'm like no, please find a way to get to the healthiest optimal lifestyle. But when you're going through periods of time where you know you can't be awesome with your food, okay supplement, but let's talk about really healing the body and getting you to vibrant health. So everything is those. Things are not even necessary for you.

Nika Lawrie:

So I have a couple of quick fire questions for you coming up here at the end, but, but based off of your vibrant health, what are your top two or three things that you would recommend people do?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

number one move your body every single day, like to move our energy physically, to move into Vata energy. So, in Ayurveda, we have the three doshas, and those are your mind body constitution, and so I love to illuminate people on what their mind body constitution is. Inevitably, though, it's so important that we all create movement in our lives to move our energy, move our lymphatic system, create peristalsis through the gut and make sure we're not constipated. Those expands of bowel movements. In Ayurveda, it's a big thing to us. So I want movement to get all those goals that I have for people's health.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

My second one would be take amazing supplements and teas, obviously, because usually we're not getting everything from our food, and so I encourage everyone to do really deep blood work and know where you are lacking in nutrition. I'm always B, d and a couple other things deficient, so if your diet is not going to give you what you need, know that at least, and give your body your building blocks that it needs to run properly. Otherwise, I look at it as burning the candle at both ends. Your hormone system's not supported, nothing is supported, gut health is not supported, and then five, 10, 20 years down the line, you see the repercussion of not giving the building blocks, absolutely yeah.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

And then my number three tip is something called tea time is me time. So I teach tea time is me time as a way to pause in your day and drop into your own parasympathetic nervous system and just calm down, take the pause, sip the tea and really check in with yourself and what you need to have a healthy and balanced day. I think a lot of times we just run thing to thing, thing, meeting to meeting. We never stop. So even before you and I talked today, I got in bed with my tea for 10 minutes and just checked out and chilled and paused and breathed. And so I'm a big fan of people remembering that self-care matters in all forms and the more self-care you do, the more productive you can be.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I think that's, I think that's really important too, because we think about you know I mean, I know I'm I'm guilty of it too is that you know I'll stop for lunch or you know I'll take a little break just to stand up and walk around, but then I still find myself looking at something on my phone or watching a little YouTube video or doing you know, and that isn't time, that isn't me time, like that is still me being connected to someone else or somebody else or doing something else, and so you don't have that time to just give your mind and body the space to just kind of breathe and to just be in existence instead of moving and constantly being stimulated.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Totally, absolutely. A lot of times when I drive I do no music, no phone calls, and that's a way to build in that total quiet time, and when I'll get tempted for music and different things, I'm like no, your brain needs a rest, like every other part of your body. It needs a rest so that you can focus, so that you can be on for the next thing.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I think that focus thing everyone's talking about, you know brain fog and not being able to focus and feeling kind of unmotivated, and I think it's it's brain exhaustion One. It's lack of nutrients and vitamins, minerals, but it's also it is just brain exhaustion. We have too much stimulation going on.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Yeah, we do, we do and and and. To that I always say get out in nature. Ayurveda believes that we are human beings living amongst nature, so my homework every day is get the kids outside to the park at five o'clock. Let's move. Let's move, let's be in nature, let's calibrate to nature. We just went through, or are in, a pandemic and so, as we're easing through it and moving through it, I should say I have used nature strategically. I said nature, please take everything from us, all the stress, all the worry, any anxiety, pull it from us and let us just be clear of it. Because you're mother earth, you can take it.

Nika Lawrie:

Right, yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of grounding, just in the sense of, you know, walking around barefoot where you can, and if you live in a big city that has just cement, I mean, that's still better than nothing. But you can get a grounding pad and for inside your house just to have that, um, you know, the electrical uh system in your body kind of change and and heal itself in a sense too, Absolutely.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

It's so important. It's so important these tools, when used, they don't have to be used perfectly. I tell everyone, whatever I say, do it two or three times a week. I do not need perfection, I don't need five days, seven days. But the more you do, the more you'll crave it. And the more you crave it, the more you'll do it on your own or fall off and come right back.

Nika Lawrie:

Right, yeah, so it's. It's all about kind of adding the good things in and then, over time, you want more and more of those good things, exactly, yeah, so. So, shivani, where can listeners connect with you? How can they find you online?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

I think the easiest way is Instagram. I'm on Instagram as drshivaniguptha or Fusionary Formulas RX. I'm also on Facebook. I love both as my name, dr Shivani Gupta, or Fusionary Formulas RX. I'm also on Facebook. I love both as my name, dr Shivani Gupta. So those are the best ways. And then I have a Facebook group called Natural Remedies for Vibrant Health, and so in there I teach a lot about Ayurveda and these things.

Nika Lawrie:

Perfect. I'll link to everything in the show notes to just make it as easy as possible. Perfect. So are you ready for the final quickfire questions? Sure, okay, perfect. So what is your favorite or most impactful book, podcast or documentary, and why?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Okay, dr Lodd wrotea book on Ayurveda, I think it's called the Science of Healing. It's a tiny, maroon book and it's only 10 bucks. I remember reading that book in my intro to Ayurveda course and being like this is a lifetime of knowledge in one book because it can go so deep. So I always give my book away to everyone. I have that book, I bought it 10 times and I keep giving it away Because even if you read it once and just capture the top surface level of it, it just gives you that outlook and even the spirituality of Ayurveda that can completely shift your mindset.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah, I haven't read the book. I've seen the book and I've always heard really good things, so I'm going to have to pick up my own copy and make sure that I actually read it. Yeah, so you've kind of given some already, but if you can add to it, what is your best toxin-free or eco-friendly living tip?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Oh, that's a good one. I believe in healing the gut constantly so that, because it's so healed, it can transmute, transform, excrete everything that does not serve. I think we live in this world where we're sometimes going to use different products or be surrounded by products for performance or for whatever reason convenience between cleaning products and bath products and self-care products and all those things. So I don't see perfection in that. I do see consciousness. We can be conscious about what we're buying. We can definitely lower the toxic burden. As we're trying to do that. I also believe in the stronger the gut, the better. As we're trying to do that. I also believe in the stronger the gut, the better. So I teach everyone if you can start your morning with ginger lemon tea, if you can start your morning with aloe vera juice, igniting the digestive fire into like a healthy, robust campfire will allow it to do what it needs to do. The body's going to get rid of whatever's poison and the body's going to keep whatever's good.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, If the body is functioning at the optimal level and that's the key is is making sure that you're healing the gut and the kidneys and the liver and all the other organs that function yeah, exactly. Yeah. So my final question for you today what does living consciously mean to you?

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Oh, living consciously. To me, it means living a life where you are treading the earth as a being who's co-creating life with mother earth, so remembering that we are not separate, our mind and body is not separate, our heart and mind is not separate and we are not separate from the earth Absolutely. If we can live with that awareness from the moment we wake up, throughout our day and when we're ending our day, then I think that's truly consciousness and I think that that comes through self-care. Taking pauses like tea time is me time to me. Is that pause to remember okay, I'm here for great things, not to be on the rat race? Yeah, to me is a conscious life.

Nika Lawrie:

I love that Fantastic answer. I love that. Thank you Well. Shivani, I want to thank you for coming on the show. I want to commend you for all the amazing work that you're doing to help people heal their bodies, and everything that you're putting out there to support physicians as well, and I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to connect with you. So thank you.

Dr. Shivani Gupta:

Thank you, thanks for doing this. This has been wonderful.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely, thank you.

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Nika Lawrie

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