(To spread the knowledge of Ayurveda and to help the people for
their health problems, this is an humanitarian service to the society)

Quote

Happily may I walk. May it be beautiful before me.

May it be beautiful behind me. May it be beautiful below me.

May it be beautiful above me. May it be beautiful all around me.

In beauty it is finished.

- Navaho Night Chant

From Classical texts ( Samhitas) :

Relation of Agni and Dhatus ( Body Tissues ) Agni affects Dhatus ( Tissue Metabolism ) - Increase and Decrease of Dhatus are due to Pachakagni as well as (slowness or acuteness of) Dhatvagni. Ultimate it results in increase or decrease of all seven Dhatus.

Home Remedies:

Home remedies have definite scientific background. Here are some home remedies, which are timely tested by many Indians. We do not claim for curability, but many of us can avail benefit from these day-to-day herbs. Please inform us about your experience, if you try these remedies.

THANK YOU.

Many friends asked me last month for stammering. For those who have this kind of problems, here are my suggestions for home remedy.

- First of all you have to avoid fear of stammering and inferiority complex.

1. Tablet Mentate ( Himalaya Pharma ) - 2 tablets in the morning and 2 tablets at bed time.

2. Take Triphala powder 5 grams with lukewarm water at bed time.

3. Take little sesame oil ( Til Tail) nearly 25 ml. + add 3 gram salt, make it lukewarm and do 2 Gargles ( keep the oil in the mouth for maximum time, when you feel that you can not hold the oil in the mouth, just spit it out ) This is to control Vata dosha in mouth cavity, also it will work as a recharging process to tongue "Indriya".

* More, if you can get a small piece (stem) of licorice ( Yastimadhu in Sanskrit, or Mulethi in Hindi), chew it for 2 min. 2 times a day.

FREEZE-DRYING OF HERBS

Ayurveda is a way of life. If the relatedness of life is up front and the wholeness of life well perceived, then a sound and homogeneous relationship between Self, Nature and Herbs can be developed at the source and the whole exercise of an Ayurvedic preparation can become Yagna and the product would do wonders like Rishis have guaranteed.

Adequate supply of natural herbs with all its ingredients intact is a challenge in a situation of ever growing demand at diverse geographical points. It has posed major problems in the past and continues to be at present. The obvious solution thought was to process and preserve herbs in dried, frozen or liquid form. I will focus on drying and particularly freeze Drying of herbs.

Dehydration

The drying of herbs/food as a method to preserve them has been practiced since time immemorial. The most practiced method in the men's history is drying of herb/food by the use of sun's energy. Improvement in drying technologies was based on to improve the quality of the end products, which has been dried.

The importance of drying to a stable moisture level and adequate packaging were understood. Our knowledge of relationship between water activity and storage deterioration in regard to nutrients, volatile content, flavor in herbs/food has given way to newer ways to process herbs/food.

Herbs are very delicate to handle and the volatile contents are very important to use it effectively for any disease. The method employed today for herbs in India is mainly Sun drying and Extraction of oils. Sun drying is too crude a method and there is no guarantee of quality of product as well as its effect while consumed. The dosage requirement of these herbs will never be accurate and effective.

Extraction again uses hot process to extract the essential oils from the products, which definitely reduces the volatile content of the products, and some times it changes the chemistry of the product. Extraction is to extract particular ingredient from the product and it misses lot of other volatiles which are useful in one or the other way.

FREEZE DRYING OF HERBS

Freeze drying was introduced on a large scale in World War II to produce antibiotics, especially penicillin and for the preservation of blood plasma. This process was used because it had less detrimental effect than any other drying procedure on heat sensitive biological material.

Freeze drying is the most suited method to process herbs as they are delicate and has different volatile materials that too in very minute quantity and each volatile content is important to have real effect of the herb. That is the very reason Ayurveda recommends to consume the herb in its most natural and whole form . The availability of the herbs in fresh from is not sufficient in this era looking to the region of growing and the geographical spread to distribute the end product. This has made it compulsory to distribute and sale it in the processed form.

While processing, the product is received in a natural form and than cleaned & cut to the required size. The product is than blast frozen to convert the water content in the product into ice crystals. Due to freezing pure water gets crystallized and the volatiles gets separated and becomes one with the mass of the product. The blast freezing also helps to keep the ice crystals as small as possible due to quick freezing and avoids the deterioration in quality of the end product.

The product is than transferred to a drying chamber. In the chamber vacuum is created to the extent of 10-1 mlb. The hot water is circulated in the chamber by a closed loop system. This gives radiant heating in the chamber due to vacuum and the product temperature remains sub zero at the time of drying. In the process of dying three systems are working simultaneously one is vacuum, second heating and third refrigeration. Due to high vacuum and radiant heating the ice crystals are vaporized without passing through water phase, this process is called sublimation. The vapor thus created is condensed due to refrigeration in the condensers. The product normally gets dried during the period of 8 hours.

The volatiles in the natural products are normally part of the water content in the product. The volatiles are preserved in this process as sublimated ice crystals are pure water without any volatiles. Thus volatiles are retained in the dried product.

The structure and the other volatiles are also preserved as the product is dried at a temperature well below the freezing point. The dried product has very low residual moisture (2% to 4%), thereby helps to maintain lowest level of microbial presence and chances of growth of microbes are minimum. This offers much longer self-life without deteriorating the quality of the dried matter. This also helps the stability of the herbal preparation.

USES

Freeze drying can be effectively used to dry herbs which has volatile contents sensitive to heat e.g. Garlic. The allicin content in garlic, the main ingredient, which helps the cardiac patient can be preserved only by freeze drying process. Honey can only be dried with freeze-drying method.

This process has distinct advantages over herbs processed by other methods such as

* They are more stable * It reduces the dosage requirement as it's potency is much higher. * Herbs have much lower microbial content and have much lower chances of contamination. * It has much longer self-life. * It is processed in the most hygienic environment. * Easy transportation as it is lightweight. * Availability throughout the year. * It offers total contents of the herb. * It guarantees the real fresh herbs in processing

This method of preserving herbs improve the effectiveness of the herbs for specific uses and also the stability of the herb until it reaches to the consumer. This also reduces the dosage (quantity) requirement. There is a common belief that freeze-drying is very costly. The fact is it is quite economical looking to the effectiveness of the drug, the reduction in dosage and total effect of the herb used in freeze=drying.

With increasing use of herbs for medicinal use in India and abroad the demand for freeze-dried herbs is likely to increase manifold in our country for local use as well as for exports. This will allow the pharma industry to market the products for the grater benefit of the general public.

From: Jayesh Patel