Recently, she came back to my office for a follow-up visit, looking trim and relaxed. She was back to her normal weight and feeling good. It took Jenny nine weeks to lose those eleven pounds permanently, but she did it without dieting or taking pills. She was delighted.

How did she do it? What advice did I give her? I suggested simple changes in her lifestyle and diet to help her recover the balance she had lost in response to her recent environmental changes – high stress and heavy workload. In short, I followed the 5,000-year-old holistic medical system from India called Ayurveda.

The word Ayurveda is an ancient Sanskrit word that is composed of two words – ayur and veda. Ayur means ‘life’, or more specifically, the length of your life; veda means understanding or knowledge obtained in a logical manner. Ayurveda is usually translated as ‘the science of life.’ This system has been in continuous use for centuries, and a large segment of the world’s population adheres to this system -- approximately one-fifth according to the World Health Organization.

Ayurveda focuses on how long you live and the quality of your life while you are living it. Unlike modern Western medicine, which attempts to suppress the symptoms of illness through medication, Ayurveda seeks to find and cure the cause of disease. The whole approach is different. Ayurveda treats the individual person. By determining your unique metabolic type, you will learn to support the choices that benefit your type and avoid those that upset your equilibrium. The result of this approach is not only longevity, but more importantly a high quality of life. In my fifteen years of practicing Ayurveda, I have seen remarkable recoveries when people follow the guidelines for their individual types. Many of these people have also been able to stop taking medication and go on living disease free for the rest of their lives.

This system stresses the importance of living a balanced life. It emphasizes nutrition and lifestyle as the basis of health. Medicine is given a secondary place next to these two pillars of health – eating right for your individual make-up and creating a life that incorporates exercise, creativity, joy, goals and challenges and a routine that optimizes your personal performance and creative ability.

Ayurveda is rich in its scope of understanding the mind and body. It is the original mind/body or holistic medicine and it addresses our human desire to know divinity in life as an important factor in health. Yet, Ayurveda is a science of health and is not associated with any one religion. It is practiced in different forms in Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim countries in the East as well as Greece in ancient times. Anyone can benefit from Ayurveda because it stresses the health of the body, the health of the mind, and the needs of the soul. It is a logical, scientific system based on a long history of observation and experimentation on living human beings. By following it, you will take advantage of the oldest medical system and the contribution of countless doctors and patients over thousands of years.

As a culture in poor health, we need to question some basic facts about our whole approach to food and nutrition. It is estimated that 97 million American adults are overweight today. The number-one killer of all people in the United States is heart disease, which can be prevented through diet and lifestyle more effectively than with any drug.

The state of our ill health becomes more alarming when we note that obesity among children has increased by 54% in the last thirty-eight years and that half of all children from the ages of seven to twelve have elevated blood cholesterol. Nearly 98% of all children (ages two-eighteen) now have at least one risk factor for heart disease. The news gets worse - 67% have three or more risk factors. The American Heart Association views the presence of three or more risk factors as highly favorable conditions for hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis). If the current best-selling diet books and fads are working, why are Americans becoming fatter and more unhealthy than ever? Why is the incidence of deaths due to heart disease not plummeting? Why are 60% of Americans spending 27 billion dollars on alternative medical treatments each year to prevent disease or maintain their existing state of health?

Clearly something is terribly wrong with our current approach to health and weight management. I think the biggest problem, which is not the focus of this book, is that the food industry as a whole is profit oriented. This industry is supported by a pharmaceutical industry that is also profit oriented. Both of these industries have an arm lock on your doctor - one on each side. Unfortunately, a segment of the medical profession is also profit motivated and this adds to our skewed approach to nutrition and eating. Some doctors actually earn recruiting money from pharmaceutical companies as a reward for sending them patients – without the patients’ knowledge. Money is controlling our health – and causing its deterioration.

The second reason our nutrition is so poor stems from the fact that our current medical system studies specimens out of their original context. Whether the substance is a food cell or a body tissue, it is removed from its original habitat and viewed in a test tube or glass slide. This approach fails to account for the interrelationship of the substance within the living organism. Its original environment is completely lost or changed. Modern science is based on the study of dead objects, not living substances interacting in their normal environment. Ayurveda, on the other hand, works with living people by observing the effects of food and nutrition on the body, mind, and emotions.

The programs I outline in this book will provide you with a clear, logical and objective alternative to modern nutrition. The alternative is the balanced Ayurvedic nutritional system, which is backed by more than 5,000 years of experience -- a system that is still in practice because it works. You will learn to make some simple but effective changes to your diet and daily routine. Regardless of your current state of health, I believe you will feel and see a remarkable change in your body, your energy level, and your well-being – changes that will last a lifetime.