Eating Well with the Aid of Digestive Herbs

There are 10-20 species with the mauve and red varieties quite commonly found in India. ​
There are 10-20 species with the mauve and red varieties quite commonly found in India.
There are 10-20 species with the mauve and red varieties quite commonly found in India.

Have you ever wondered how you can eat that large portion of butter chicken and feel quite comfortable afterwards, whereas you have eaten only a small portion of paneer and feel heavy and uncomfortable? You eat a little spicy food and you have acidity and burping that would do a baby proud. How is it that your Andhra friend can eat those spicy mango pickles and feel no discomfort while your stomach starts to burn at the sight of all the chillis?

While part of the explanation is your prakriti or constitution, it can greatly be improved by increasing your digestive power. There are many digestives in the ayurvedic repertoire. I have already written about ashtachuranam, which is a churanam you can have at the start of a meal and even with your idlis.
Chitrakadi vati, another powerful digestive suitable for non-pitta constitutions, is great stuff. After a heavy meal, one chitrakadi vati greatly reduces discomfort and the heaviness you feel at the end of a lavish meal. I always tell my friends to have one after wedding meals where we invariably eat too much.

From chaats to biryani to ras malais and ice creams, there is an intermingling of too many items which is not really how we should be eating. Somehow there is a notion that eating a bit of everything is good for your health. Not really. Eating foods with the six rasas namely madhuram (sweet), amla (sour), lavana (salty), tikta (bitter), ushna (pungent), kashaya (astringent) is what a healthy person with a good agni or digestive fire should have. For the digestive fire to be well-stoked and being just right, one should have simple foods and less variety. To start with, simple rice kanji or rice gruel is good to get one’s appetite going.

Once you have a reasonable feeling of hunger, then chitrakadi vati can be used to improve the digestive power and also to better the appetite. Chitrakadi vati is a powerful deepana pachana drug.
Chitraka or Plumbago zeylanica is a pretty flowering shrub quite popular with landscape gardeners. It is also called Cape Leadwort. I had planted these pale mauve flower-bearing shrubs long years back in my garden without knowing that the roots were a powerful digestive.

There are 10-20 species with the mauve and red varieties quite commonly found in India. The red variety is called Plumbago indica. Most vaidyars use the roots of the mauve variety of Plumbago zeylanica. Once planted, Plumbago spreads by rhizomes and flowers which are found near the ground. It is quite disease-resistant and has no major pest problems.Chitrakadi vati consists of many ushna dravyas most of which are used in equal proportions. However, the drug is named after chitraka as it is a powerful digestive.

The other ingredients are roots of Piper longum or long pepper, Piper chaba, chavya or Java long pepper. Kshara or an alkali comprising yava is yet another ingredient. So is swarajika kshara. In addition, there are the salts, sauvarchala lavana (sochal salt), saindhava lavana (rock salt), vida lavana (vida salt), samudra lavana (sea salt) and audbhida lavana. Then we have the juices of lemon or pomegranate in which the fine powders of all the ingredients are added and a paste is prepared. This is then rolled into a tablet form, then dried and used.One such tablet the size of a peppercorn taken after meals greatly improves digestion and as an added benefit eliminates smelly flatus that may sometimes embarrass us.

The writer is retired Additional Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu. She can be reached at sheelarani.
arogyamantra@gmail. com/arogyamantra.blogspot.com

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