Underweight When there is too little body mass
“I am too thin.” “I can eat as much as I want to and yet I don’t gain weight.” “I’m just skin and bones.”
This or a similar experience is what underweight people report.
To be slim is often considered attractive. However, underweight people are often viewed as ill and less capable — although low body weight doesn’t necessarily mean malnutrition. Today we know that being chronically underweight is associated with a lower average life expectancy.
The cause of being underweight can be a lower assimilation of nutrients, which can lead to deficiencies such as weakness, easy exhaustibility, and early onset of osteoporosis, as well as many vitamin and mineral deficiency symptoms. It can trigger chronic illnesses or thyroid hyperfunction.
What is the Vedic medicine point of view on being underweight?
Unerweight from the Ayurvedic point of view
According to the Maharishi Ayurveda approach, being underweight starts with the loss of natural balance.
Metabolic residues and toxins, called “ama” in Ayurveda, are constantly produced – due to our way of life – which accumulate everywhere in the body in the case of underweight, in the thyroid gland or in the gastrointestinal tract. Often the metabolism is so disturbed by years of wrong eating habits that not enough food components are assimilated in the small intestine. Or the metabolism is increased in such a way that little fat and muscle mass is accumulated. But according to Ayurveda, no two patients are alike, and so every underweight person is different. The Ayurvedic approach in our clinic is based on holism.
During a Panchakarma cure, our doctors will adjust your cure plan to lose as little weight as possible. From experience, the build-up of extra pounds requires a long-lasting change in lifestyle, diet and restorative Ayurvedic herbal preparations following the cure.
What can Ayurveda do for you?
In Vedic medicine, underweight is addressed by combining various treatments into a multi-faceted approach adapted to your individual situation, as determined in a comprehensive diagnosis by one of our physicians.
An integrated approach
Increasingly, patients are finding that conventional therapies alone are not enough.
They recognize that healing must take place on all levels. In the case of being underweight, for example, an emphasis on elimination of toxins as well as balancing of the digestive tract and metabolism can be recommended. It is important to bring all natural regulatory principles back into harmony. Nutritional recommendations and helpful exercises, as well as specific herbal mixtures tailored according to your needs, support a health-conscious lifestyle. In this way, your natural self-healing abilities can slowly but safely re-establish healthy body mass.
