Welcome to the libido lounge where we focus on all things love, lust, and libido. We believe that fabulous sex is important to health as exercise and good food. Hey, everybody. Your libido expert, doctor Diane here. Welcome back to another libido lounge interview. I am really thrilled to introduce you my friend, my colleague, Amish Shah, who is an Ayurvedic expert and also the producer of a amazing documentary on Ayurveda and more called the natural law.
In this particular interview, we're gonna really talk about libido and the uniqueness of your lifestyle choices. One of the things I love so much about Ayurveda is how much it really identifies that the things, the choices we make on a day to day basis regarding food and exercise and herbs and more really is dependent upon our uniqueness of our makeup, and that trickles down into libido.
So as I introduce Amish here, we're gonna go kinda down some very interesting interesting road, really get you under understanding Ayurveda and more. And just hang with us till the end because we're gonna tie everything we say throughout this interview. We're gonna tie it back to libido so you understand how this fits for the uniqueness of you. So welcome today. It's so great to have you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So amazing. Yeah. It's so wonderful.
And I know so many of our listeners, this word Ayurveda for some, they've heard of. And for other people, it's gonna be like, are you what? Like Yeah. Just like, what is the word? Right? So can you just introduce this? You're gonna introduce the concept, why this is so passionate, and how this type of medicine and and really, like, lifestyle approach is different than a lot of what else is out there. Yeah. So Ayurveda comes from India, ancient India.
It's a medicinal science, not just a medicinal sciences. Ayurveda translated means science of life. Ayur meaning life and beta meaning science or wisdom. So it's the wisdom or science of life. Now thousands of years ago, five over five thousand years ago, they had cataloged eight different branches of this science from psychiatry to, to surgery, to immunology, pediatrics, geriatrics. And they're like, wait a second. Like, wow. And so this comes from India from, over 5,000 ago.
And in the Indian subcontinent, it's been tested across billions of people across thousands of years. So it's time tested. And the time always will, you know, keep the truth. Like, if something doesn't isn't real and doesn't work, it eventually goes away with time. Right? But so this is timeless wisdom, and that's what I love about Ayurveda. Now I learned through Ayurveda through my own experience. Now granted, I have, I I my parents are from India.
I grew up in New Jersey, and now I live in California, but they would always, like, give me concoctions growing up. They didn't understand how it worked. They just knew that it worked because their mother told them and their grandmother told them and their great grandmother told them. And so it was just passed down through lineage because, hey. You have a stomach ache, do this. You gotta you gotta sprained ankle, put this on it. You know?
So it's always, like, take something from the earth and and use it. That's how they always thought. So growing up, it was just like, do these things. And I was like, okay. I I battled a major sickness throughout my whole entire life, and ten years of those in my twenties and thirties were just excruciating pain. It ended up that I had eight ulcers, and I reversed all of the damage that it done to me with leaky gut and, like, you know, the left side of my body was stopped functioning.
My high cholesterol, elevated white blood cell counts, prediabetic, pre thyroid. I was like, what what the heck is going on? Ayurveda literally helped me reverse all that.
Through my ten year journey of filming the documentary, I filmed experts like Deepak Chopra and doctor Basant Laud, and, you know, this science just started to prove to me that I just saw so many different, like, use cases for it from, you know, things like ADHD and and just general rashes on the skin to cancers to MS to ADH I'm sorry. I said ADHD to, you know, things that we chronic fatigue, chronic issues, autoimmune type conditions, you know, cancers.
And so I was just like, this is the most amazing science I've ever stumbled across because it works. And the more I learned about it, the more I was convinced. In the beginning, you're like, I what? Right? And then I can kind of get into how it works, and that starts helping, like, this kind of, woah. Like, that makes sense, and that makes sense. I can get into it if some of it. Yeah?
Yeah. I definitely wanna get into it, and I definitely want people to have an understanding of some of the, you know, like, the dosha's like we talked about offline and some of the kind of those principles that really help people understand that, oh, the uniqueness for what their genetic makeup or their, say, tendencies are is so different.
Because I think even in, like, day to day, like, one of the things I imagine you see, like, that I do is it's so easy to get online and be like, oh, this is the supplement that's gonna help with everybody with chronic fatigue. Or this is like Yeah. Everybody needs keto or everybody needs paleo or it's global. That's exactly it.
That's the in the West, we've created this system where it's just like, here's the magic pill or here's the magic food or here's the magic diet or here's the magic workout or here's the fill in the blank. Here's the magic whatever you want it to be, it will solve whatever your issue is. In Ayurveda, it's a little bit of a different approach. Right? In the West, we're like, oh, you have a stomachache? Let's fix something to fix the stomach. Ayurveda says, let's look at the stomach.
Yes. But what's causing the issue in the stomach to happen in the first place? So it's the science of prevention as much as it is the science of reversing. So the way that Ayurveda works is they try to look at a balanced approach of the universe and the human body. My documentary is called the natural law.
And the reason why it's called the natural law is because there's certain laws that exist in nature that if we go out of bounds of these laws, we can get sick, we could get disease, and and things go wrong. So nature as we know it is all around us. We're born in and of nature when we are nature. We tend to kind of isolate ourselves sometimes from nature. Like, oh, yeah. We're not a part of that world. We live in the box and we drive a car and we don't you know? But we are. We are nature.
And so we and the universe and the whole entire universe, Ayurveda says, consists of five basic elements. That's ether or space, just empty space, air. Right? There's air going in our lungs, and there's air from clouds. There's air, you know, all different kinds of ecosystems. There's fire, like a big fireball in the sky right now that's warming up the whole entire universe or at least our galaxy. There's our top our body temperature is 98.6. There's some kind of heat element there.
Water, we're made up of 75% water. The Earth is 75% water. And then there's earth. Right? There's structure to us. There's plants. There's shrubs. There's buildings. Right? There's, you know, things that have structure. Earth, like solid, sedentary.
Those five elements are what make up everything in the whole entire universe from the galaxies to the stars to the planets to the black holes to our bodies, to the ground, to the shrubs, to the plants, to the trees, to the cats and the dogs and the horses and everything. Everything is made up of even this table in front of me and this light in front of me is made up of the five elements just in different combinations.
Me and you are also made up of the five elements, but in slightly different combinations of it. Now those five elements then combine to create physical forces. So ether and air, when combined, creates movement. Right? Everything moves in the universe. It's constantly moving. Breath, food, planets, ants on the ground, moving. Fire and water together create transformation. Right? What happens when you boil water? It turns into steam and it disappears. It's gone.
What happens to food when it goes in our body? Well, it comes out very different than the way it went in. So it's constantly transforming. The universe is constantly transforming. When we mix water and earth together, that's structure. Well, you know, why aren't we a puddle of water on the ground? Because we have structure. We have tissues and ligaments and skin and bone, and we have structure, so do plants and so do buildings. So ether and air combine to make vata or movement.
Pitta and water combine to make transformation, which is pitta, And then kapha, which is the last physiological kind of force, is water and earth. And go back to pitta because you actually said, you use pitta in the description. So what makes up pitta? Oh, sorry. Water and, fire. Water and fire. Okay. Fire and water. Yeah. Perfect. So that's pita, and water and earth is kapha. So that is anything that has structure. So everything moves, vata.
Everything transforms, pitta, and everything has structure, kapha. Now those three forces that exist are what make up the whole entire universe, just like I said, the five elements. So between the five elements and the three forces, we all contain a certain amount of each of these to some extent. And it's something we're born with, something that's cons that's upon conception that we actually achieve.
And then when we come out, we live in this world, and we're taking in the toxins or things that are maybe not good for our body, and that balance gets thrown off. So I have a certain amount of pitta. I you have a certain amount of pitta. I have a certain amount of vata. You do too, and the plants do, and the animals do, and elephants have every everything's slightly different. So they're saying that when that gets out of balance, then we get we'll start noticing something. I'm like, oh, wow.
That's a rash. And then there's six stages to the disease. So Ayurveda knew this thousands of years ago that first, you might get something like, oh, I have a migraine or, oh, man, my neck hurts or I have a I have a rash. And then from there, it progresses. And so Akrita respects the body's inner intelligence by understanding that if my pitta is elevated, I can use the natural environment to heal me. I can reduce pitta causing foods and increase pitta pacifying foods.
I can take pitta pacifying herbs to bring my heat in my body down. If I'm Vata and I feel cold and there's air moving around me, I can take, I can eat warm foods. Right? Something that's gonna be the opposite of vata, something that's gonna bring more grounding energy to me. Potatoes, heavy foods. Right?
And kapha if it's like you're slow and you're lethargic and, you know, maybe you wanna, and you're having trouble digesting, maybe a little chili pepper or something spicy a little bit, something to bring the heat up in your body. And so Ayurveda looks at this very uniquely, and everyone is very unique. Right? There's no one size fits all approach. It's like, oh, for you, paleo, and for you, you can do South Beach, and for you, you know, do something else. It doesn't work like that.
Everyone is some person might need more carbs. Some person might need protein. Some person might do better with more vitamins and or more minerals of a certain kind. That's how Ayurveda works, and that's the beauty of it. Thank you. I and I wanna go, like, a little bit deeper into that and to help people just kind of start connecting this on a layer to libido. Right?
Because in the you know, when we're talking about libido and sexual health, we're talking oftentimes about the body being vital, the cardiovascular system working. Somebody is not in flame state. The psychology is good. The nervous system's good. So all of these things, right, can be impacted by these day to day lifestyle choices by what their dosha is, whether it's kapha, vada, or pitta. Right? Right. So how does somebody, if they're hearing this and you're saying, okay.
Well, if you're cold, eat warm foods. So that part's obvious. But how does somebody begin to understand what their tendency is, Right? Their their tendency that they came into the world with in order to say stay you know, choose on a day to day basis how to stay grounded, how to keep their inflammation down, those sorts of things. Yeah. And, you know, the best way is, you know, you can take a quiz on our website, which will give you a basic foundation of what your doshas may be.
It's just a quiz. It's for informational educational purposes. We always recommend to see a practitioner, for, you know, getting a true analysis of what's happening. But libido is very specific in Ayurveda, and libido has to do with a couple different things. Right? In Ayurveda, first is that there's the mind. Right? They say the mind plays a very important role in Ayurveda, and the the mind can make a lot of things happen to your libido, stress being one of them. You know?
That can cause libido to completely not function. It can cause ulcers. I mean, stress literally can cause ulcers. So imagine what else it can do to the body. Right? Depression can affect libido, anxiety, fear. These are all things that we want to reduce. These are all things that we want to bring down. We want to reduce, like, the, you know, the there's a lot of that happens in anxiety, for example. Right? So anxiety is. So what do we do to kind of reduce that?
Well, you could do things like breath work. Right? They have different kinds of breath work that you can do to help that. You can do massage, self massage helps so much. You know, there's so our body needs touch, and and massage helps so much. There's certain yoga poses that can help such as camel pose, rooster pose, and, you know, meditations can also work. Meditations, there's there's, in yoga is a sister related science to Ayurveda.
In fact, yoga is within contained within Ayurveda, to some extent. It's their sister sciences. Yes. But what Ayurveda and yoga say is that there's, chakra centers, I guess you could say, or energy centers in the body. So when you're meditating and you and you can move your attention to that area of your libido, you can actually move prana or there. So this is where it starts getting into energy a little bit. And they say that ojas is what ojas is what, it's vital force.
It's the force in our body that allows us to, have a libido and to to have, to be excited about things, to be happy about things. Right? It's it's vital force. It's energy. It's for us to be able to live and do the things that we do every day. And it's that that we need more of. So dates, for example, food. I'm talking about dates, not just going on dates. But Both. Right? Yeah. But maybe there's something to that, dates and dates. Right?
So, so eating dates and and sprouted almonds and, you know, there's so many things in Ayurveda, warm golden milk, for example. There's so many things in Ayurveda that can help from breath work to yoga to food, even herbs, for example. You know, ashwagandha can help, calm and strengthen the nervous system. Saffron is great for a it's a very kind of moving kind of blood, kind of libido enhancing kind of, herb or, spice. I don't know. I'm not sure if it's one or the other.
And then for males, Shilajit, it it increases testosterone. It's not that saying that women can't use it, but it has testosterone, increasing effects. And for women, there's Shatavari, which helps, regulate hormonal balance. So thousands of years ago, they knew that these are the small things that we could do to help our loved eat it. From the mind, remove the stress, anxiety, fear, depression. You can do that with breath work and through meditation. Right?
Through the body, you wanna reduce the foods that are causing perhaps more vata in your body. You wanna, take herbs that are calming for the body that produce more blood flow in the body as well, and more hormones, the hormones that you want. And then there's yoga, where yoga, you're doing specific poses, and you can meditate on certain areas of your body to help that flow of energy, to move that prana, to move that into the area, to to enliven it, to make it alive, to make it work. Amazing.
Yeah. And I unfortunately, I know we could go on and on and on, and we're already out of time. This goes so fast. But, you guys, I wanted to have Amish on today because everything that he's talking about, like, getting to these uniqueness the uniqueness of you, right, the uniqueness of you and what is going to help really restore your libido. We're gonna go into way deeper in an upcoming summit that I interview him on in in much more detail. So I'm really excited about that.
We're gonna have all of that in the show notes of how you guys register. It's totally free to register. We're also gonna give you information on how to find his natural law documentary because that's gonna go into this a lot more. And can we put that quiz link on the in the show notes? Is that Absolutely. Absolutely. You can. Thank you so much. That'll help people a lot too. So we'll include that in there for you guys as well. And thank you so much for being here.
I think it's just really important to open people's awareness to the uniqueness of not only this medicine, but of themselves. Right? Mhmm. Are there any concluding comments you have for everybody today? You know, there are many more solutions than what's out there. Our ancients knew how to live in the natural world, and I think it's very important for us to start reflecting upon that and using some of those solutions in today's modern world. And, I just implore you to go explore the documentary.
Check out our talk on the summit. I think you'll truly get a lot of benefit out of it. And, yeah, I'm just excited about the future. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you everybody for tuning in to another episode of the lounge. I'm your host, doctor Diane, reminding you to always stay classy, sexy, and a little badass y. Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge. Please don't keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends.
You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at mylibidodoc.com.