February 2010
By Vijaya Venkat
We continue our series of successful cases by therapists and healers with Dr Vijaya Venkat, founder of the Health awareness centre, Mumbai, and advocate of natural hygiene, who shares how a patient healed from asthma and eczema
Today, health has become a matter of verdict rather than choice. We go through symptoms – pain, irritation, inflammation, flatulence, weakness, and more. These are then classified by the doctor as a disease such as diabetes, hypertension, psoriasis, and others. Once we are branded with the right disease, we are told to live with it. Medication only manages the symptoms but cannot cure the condition.
Unfortunately, none of us is told that health is a matter of choice. The day we decide to take charge of our health, all illnesses are reversible. Our body is made only for wellness.
In 2004, Seema Malkani came to The Health Awareness Centre with asthma and eczema. This is the story of how she took charge of her health.
In Seema’s own words, “Since 1985, I was an asthmatic. Every year in the monsoons, I had wheezing attacks. These lasted from August to November. The doctors told me this was because my immune system had become overly sensitive to the humidity in the air. I could do nothing about it. The asthma attacks usually came in the middle of the night and left me gasping for breath. I had no energy left for anything else, and was usually in bed, my life almost coming to a standstill. When an attack came, I did not know whether I would be able to take my next breath, or die of suffocation. Not only me, but my family too was scared of the most beautiful time of the year – the monsoons. As if this was not enough, as my asthma settled, the winter brought along with it eczema. Compared to what I suffered during my asthma attacks, the eczema was mild and manageable.
“The only way I knew how to manage my attacks was through medication. Believing like many people, that homeopathy is safer, I preferred homeopathy, but resorted to allopathy when it felt out of control. I did not change my lifestyle.
“In 2004, I was advised to go to Dr Venkat. For the first time, I was told by her that my body was not against me. The asthma attacks were occurring due to my high stress (wrong eating and too much stress). I would feel better if I chose to take care of myself, and that is exactly what I did.
“Fortunately my family was highly supportive, so it was easy to make the changes. I shifted from tea to herbal tea. I had fruits till noon, followed by vegetable juice, followed by lunch, which consisted of a lot of salad, and a little of cooked vegetables, with very little mono grain (like makai, bajra, rice, jowar, and nachni). Evenings, I followed the same pattern – fruits, then vegetable juice and then dinner. I was off wheat, milk, processed and refined foods. Dr Venkat also asked me to be in gratitude for my life and my body. She asked me to give myself time to relax, to breathe, and to enjoy the beauty of life.
“After I changed my lifestyle, the first change I noticed was that my general sense of well-being, and energy levels increased greatly. My trust in myself, and my body increased. The congestion, which used to trigger off asthma attacks, started clearing out of my system as a runny nose. The asthma attacks slowly reduced in intensity and frequency and finally almost disappeared. My fear did not allow me to go off my medication completely.
“Since then I have had only one attack of really bad eczema, in 2008. My arms, legs, stomach and part of my face were covered with oozing scales. My hands and legs had swollen to three times their original size and had darkened to an almost black colour. Surprisingly, though my skin looked horrible, I did not feel sick. My energy levels were booming. My life did not come to a standstill and I continued to work.
“To Dr Venkat, I was not an asthmatic or an eczema-tic; I was Seema Malkani, who was not feeling well. She gave me the confidence that all my body was doing was trying to throw the medication out, and return to homeostasis, which is health. This gave me the courage to get rid of the medication completely, and I started following the lifestyle completely and whole-heartedly.
“It took about three months for the eczema to clear completely. It started by drying up; the oozing reduced and stopped. Then the swelling disappeared, and the colour returned to normal. Some particularly bad patches, though slightly discoloured, are clearing up.’
The only goal of our body is to achieve and maintain optimum health. Just like any machine functions only on the right kind of input, our body too functions best with the right kind of input. Our modern lifestyle creates a huge amount of stress on our body, leaving it no time, space, or energy, to perform its basic functions of cleaning and repairing. When the toxic load in the system accumulates, it finds a different exit (other than the bowels) to leave. In Seema’s case, this was the chest (congestion), leading to asthma attacks. When the asthma was suppressed through medication, the body tried to throw it out through the skin (eczema), as the skin is the largest surface area.
With the change in her lifestyle, she gave the body the energy, time, and space to clear the backlog, thus the eczema attack in 2008. Since the eczema was a body-initiated process, which Seema supported, her energy levels were high and she did not feel sick. With the right support, our body has the capacity to heal itself completely.
This is exactly what Seema did. She moved from a system focused on cure to a system focused on care. She addressed her symptoms, and gave the body what it wanted, reversing a so-called irreversible condition, eczema.
Dr Vijaya Venkat, well known health activist and nutritionist, is the founder of The Health Awareness Centre which enables people to look after their own health.