Ayurveda for Kids: Nutrition, Sleep & Immunity Tips for Parents | Dr. Nidhi Bhanshali Pandya

[00:00:08] Is Ayurveda still relevant? It's not what you're eating, it's what you're digesting properly. The one thing I tell parents is you never want to use refined oils when you have orange juice. And this whole idea of vitamin C is a little bit distorted. Honey and hot water is a poisonous combination. Wellness and health is an investment. Like period, just don't use hand sanitizer. Can I just give you paracetamol? So I will say that the only problem with giving your kids a quick paracetamol,

[00:00:35] Ayurveda is just, it's not about taking herbs. When I Google some of the facts or things around Ayurveda, I think one aspect that repeatedly comes up is the use of metals.

[00:00:59] Welcome to The Parenting Pause. Today, we have with us Dr. Nidhi Bhanshali Pandya, a third generation Ayurvedic doctor and best-selling author. With Ayurveda running deep in her family legacy, she brings generations of wisdom into the way we understand health, wellness and parenting today. Let's dive into her world and discover what Ayurveda can teach us about raising healthier families. Nidhi, welcome to The Parenting Pause. It is honestly a pleasure to have you.

[00:01:27] I'm so happy to be here, Naina. It's such an honor. There's nobody else that I would have this conversation with and feel so excited about them. What is Ayurveda in this simplest form? And if they had to explain it to their child, right? Tell me what it is. So first I'll say Ayurveda is not something you explain to your child, right? Because the very definition of Ayurveda is the science of life.

[00:01:54] The use of herbs and herbal medication in Ayurveda is only, like that's the tip of the iceberg. The reason why you'd never need to have a disclaimer that this is Ayurveda is because it's the science of life. As long as you're talking about life and you're talking about the principles that create life and allow for life to thrive, you're basically talking about Ayurveda. So when you talk about sort of the science of life, right?

[00:02:21] The way I sort of look at it, it's not in silos, right? We sort of look at it as the body, right? We look at it as the mind. We look at it, you know, even from a spiritual sort of angle, right? And I think all these parts are sort of well-connected and need to be balanced, right? Sort of notice, even with our kids, right? You can be feeding them all the right things, right?

[00:02:48] But if they're not getting enough sleep, if they're not, you know, just getting their rest, etc. Or they are troubled by something in school, whether it's exam, stress, etc. It doesn't sync up, right? So again, just the integration and how does that sort of work? The scope of Ayurveda is very, very vast. Any tool that I use with the mindset of bringing myself back into balance comes into Ayurveda. Now, one of the things that becomes more and most important when you're looking at any person,

[00:03:18] the first two questions that I'll ask, and we're talking about children, is what is their life phase, right? But each life phase looks very different and the needs for every life phase look very different. So the first question that I'll ask is, what is your life phase? And in this life phase, how do you, A, need to respond to the cycles of the sun and the moon? Our circadian rhythms can be very different from like babyhood to childhood to etc., etc., right? So that's the first question that I'll ask.

[00:03:47] Then I'll say, based on this phase of my life, what are my nutritional needs? What is that my body is doing in this phase? What does it need to eat? How much sleep does it need? And what are the patterns that I need to establish? And I think that's where you start at the top. And it's fairly simpler than what people think. It will expand how much you can actually do. Your scope will be expanded. It's not restrictive at all. And then after asking these two questions, I will create a personalized approach into balance.

[00:04:16] And the reason why this approach is very, very specific and it's very life cycle oriented where you are. So you mentioned the sleep and the nutrition, right? For a parent, again, who is, you know, doesn't want to get very overwhelmed with sort of bring introducing, say, I'll be the wellness into the child's life. So aren't these two aspects, the one they should sort of start with is, okay, let's just get the nutrition for my child, right? And we'll get into it later.

[00:04:46] But nutrition and sleep, and maybe that's a low hanging fruit. And let's start off with that. You know, let's build on it slowly, et cetera. Make it a part of our life. And, you know, it's probably half the battle one. Is that fair to say? I would say that is absolutely a great approach. The only thing that I'll say is that even while you're doing these two things, the mindset becomes very important.

[00:05:11] So when I work with parents, I tell them that we're going to talk about principles of nutrition rather than making it restrictive. We're going to talk about principles of sleep. But what's very important is that when you're introducing something into your life, and especially as a parent, you want to do it in flow without stress. So for depending on who you are as a parent, right? Sometimes even introducing these two ideas can become very stressful. And then you continue to build. And when you start with the lowest hanging fruit, it becomes very easy. It's a sustainable lifestyle. But you're absolutely right.

[00:05:40] Our goal is to figure out the nutrition and the sleep first. And then we bring in other aspects. And honestly, if these two are done right, you actually don't need much else. That's actually very comforting for a very overwhelmed parent at the moment. But I think that's helpful. But again, sort of coming back to what you said, right? About sort of the science of life and sort of living this out.

[00:06:06] You know, when for I think a lot of people, when we talk about Ayurveda, right? It comes down to herbs. It comes down to something maybe our grandparents did. And, you know, that was a very different world, right? Extremely different, much slower. I mean, we didn't have all the excesses I sort of spoke about. Now, given our current sort of, you know, ecosystem. Yeah. Is Ayurveda still relevant?

[00:06:36] Is it not? Or more so even now? Timeless, it is beyond relevant. But more than anything, Naina, so much in the West, so much that is trending today comes from Ayurveda, right? It's like here you have what biohackers and longevity scientists are trying to explore so deeply. And what's really fascinating and reassuring is that every discovery that they're coming upon,

[00:07:06] every, you know, new fact that's unfolded has already existed in Ayurveda. The concepts of oil pulling, dry brushing, which are again trending. Like I live in the West, every single trend that I hear of has existed in Ayurveda, not as a trend, as a complete science with all its disclaimers and context for a thousand plus years. So why are we looking anywhere else when really the world is chasing us?

[00:07:35] We don't need to chase anything else beyond Ayurveda. No, that's absolutely right. I think even for me, when I sort of look at wellness for kids or my kids, I didn't need one more to do on my list, right? It's always never ending. I cannot add one more thing. But I started with the low hanging foods, right? So things like starting the day with warm water, ending the day with warm water, getting off fridge water over a long period of time.

[00:08:03] So it's these small things, you know, it's a little bit like atomic habits, right? You basically do these over a long period of time and you just see the substantial sort of change. You know, even a newfound thing is the oils. They found a new meaning for me, right? So just use of oils, you know, depending on the weather, etc. But I think just not overwhelming myself, sort of taking it, you know, as it comes is,

[00:08:32] as really, I think, and using it, say, over the last five, six years with my kids, I've sort of seen this drastic difference. So I think, you know, to your point on low hanging fruits, it's something that, you know, sort of really makes sense for me. And it's very easy. You know, Naina, I think people understand Ayurveda for its use of herbs. But you can, if you went your entire life without taking a single herb and you just follow the principles of Ayurveda, you're getting more out of Ayurveda than, you know, you're taking, let's say, just a Chavan Prash in the morning

[00:09:01] and saying that I follow Ayurveda. Ayurveda is just, it's not about taking herbs. It's about reconfiguring and reorganizing your life. So tell me, for a parent looking to sort of introduce Ayurveda to their kids, right? If they had to, so when we spoke about nutrition and we spoke about sleep, but if we had to just give them, you know, three or four things about introducing Ayurveda, the Ayurveda way of life, I don't even want to say Ayurveda, right? Just the way of life. Yeah. Can you name a few that would be helpful for parents?

[00:09:29] So the first thing that I tell parents is you want to be very careful about not giving your children cold foods. Yes. I remind people of the fact that refrigeration is very new on our planet. And since refrigeration, we have more allergies. We have more autoimmune conditions. We have all of that. Now, it doesn't mean you go and you throw your fridge or you plug it out and use it as a closet. That's not what I'm suggesting. All I'm suggesting is when you're giving your kids food, make sure that they are warm. That's the principle number one, lowest hanging fruit. Now your kids are used to cold milk.

[00:09:58] Listen, even if you have to go from a cold milk to a hot chocolate and start there, that is better than giving your kids cold milk. So the first thing is you start your day with something warm and you keep everything subsequently warm and you choose certain foods. And we can talk about what those foods are that are going to serve as good raw material. Everything you're giving your children at this point is raw material. And when you start looking at it this way, your entire philosophy changes for what you're offering your children.

[00:10:29] And is that related to, you know, wanting to keep the inner body and your digestive system to keep it warm and to make sure that this is something that, you know, just works with the inner climate? Is that what the sort of philosophy is of going down the warm path and not sort of using refrigeration? So, you know, Nena, our bodies are warm. We are warm-blooded mammals. And we're these metabolic beings.

[00:10:59] And anything you put into your body goes through a metabolic process. So, and you want to keep it that way. Like you would not want to, in the middle of cooking, you would not want to turn off your stove. You wouldn't want to have air conditioning in your kitchen. You want everything to be warm because you want to keep the process going. So similarly for our children, like I say, cold foods is like refrigerating their guts. So our bodies are warm. With children, especially because very quickly, you know, they don't have hormones. They don't have the same microbiome as we do. So they're anyway struggling with their warmth. And we're intended to be that way.

[00:11:28] But if they were metabolizing as quickly as you and me, they would reach adolescence when they're eight and nine, if their bodies were that hot. So while we want to achieve this gradual warmth from age zero to age 13, it has to be a very mindful process. So you want to take their body through that journey of adolescence when there's really warm hormones set in, in a very, very mindful manner. And it's easier and it's tastier. When you look at nutrition, it's actually tastier than what most parents make it out to be.

[00:11:57] At the same time, it doesn't always have to be Indian. I think a lot of parents think that being Ayurvedic means you only have to eat Indian foods. Completely untrue. I have raised two daughters and we eat Indian food, maybe two or three times a week. You can eat any cuisine. You can make it as tasty as you want, as long as you're following certain principles. A, keep everything warm. B, keep everything, cook it in a good fat. Use good spices. And the spices can be, they don't have to be Indian.

[00:12:27] And C, how you combine your foods become important. And when in the day you eat what also comes. So let's get into that a little bit, right? So when you talk about good fats, for me, I use ghee. That is my primary go-to for my kids. Secondary is cold-pressed oils. I also go between, you know, depending on the season, I will sort of take out a groundnut oil or a sesame oil in winters to sort of cook.

[00:12:57] I, you know, towards the summers, I basically use coconut oil, safflower, et cetera, right? But again, can you give some advice on, you know, how do we think through the good fat, how much should be added, et cetera, again? Because low-hanging fruit can be done in the kitchen. So of course, with kids, their agni is limited, right? So agni is this digestive metabolic ability that you're building gradually and slowly. So yes, good fats are important without tipping over because you do too much and they don't have the ability to metabolize

[00:13:26] and break those fats down, then you, then the kids get sick very quickly. You give them anything cold, they will get sick very quickly because again, that fire will stop burning. You give them anything too heavy, again, the fire will stop burning. So you want to have that right balance of what those good fats are. And it's very important to make the right choices. Now, like you said, right? The two, the starting point is, yes, you use some amount of ghee, especially if you're used to it, your body, what we call in Ayurveda, satmiyata, which means ancestrally, we've used ghee. If you're not Indian,

[00:13:55] I'd say you don't want to start with ghee. But otherwise, you can use some ghee. And yes, you want to use some cold-pressed oil. The one thing I tell parents is you never want to use refined oils. Refined oils are like fossil fuel in the body. Fossil fuels is really what's creating inflammation outside. They're basically, it's completely toxic and carcinogenic and your body has no idea what to do with it. It stays inside as free radicals, which are these elements that can create all kinds of diseases. So you want to use cold-pressed oils

[00:14:24] and you want to use small amounts of oil. What I have seen parents doing is saying, I'm giving my child khichri, I'm going to put three spoons of ghee in it because it's good for the child. It's a growing child. They cannot, while the ghee is important, your child cannot metabolize large quantities. And you can never give a fat without using a good spice in the fat. That every fat breakdown will create some metabolic waste, will create something that can hurt your body. And every spice will neutralize that impact.

[00:14:52] So you want to use good fats and good spices in combination. Now, I do want to say, right, like some of the oils that you've named, you know, they're traditionally used, like groundnut is traditionally used. In certain traditions and cultures, coconut oil is used. You cannot use coconut oil throughout the year. And not everybody can use coconut oil throughout the year. It has very thick lipids, which means your body can have a harder time breaking down coconut oil, sometimes even more than ghee. But if you're living in a very hot place or you're cooking foods,

[00:15:21] which are very tomato-based or spicy or lemongrass, galangal, et cetera, Thai foods, you can use coconut oil. Sesame oil, you cannot use excessively with girls. I want to say that because sesame oil is very heating and it can tip them over to the other side of puberty sooner than they need to go. But if you use some amounts of ghee, some amounts of olive oil, groundnut oil, if you can get an expeller-pressed or a cold-pressed version, you can use safflower in certain seasons, coconut and sesame sparingly.

[00:15:50] You can bring in some quantity of mustard oil, especially in the winter months. And is it okay to, you know, like I said, use an oil for three months, change it next three months, et cetera. So just sort of move with the seasons. Is that something which sort of works? Yeah, absolutely. You're always responding to the cycles outside, right? So if it's summer months, you can use a little bit more ghee. You can even use coconut oil sometimes. You can use olive oil 365 days of the year as long as you're not using it in high heat.

[00:16:19] So you're sauteing stuff, be my guest. Use olive oil. It is one of the safest fats of good quality. And then it depends seasonally. Like winter, you can still use. Like if you're living in Bombay, it doesn't really have a winter. But still, if you have a really cold day, you can bring in a little bit of sesame. You can bring in a little bit of mustard occasionally. But otherwise, you definitely want to circulate your oils. I also tell parents, and I also tell them, this is universally for the entire family. We buy oils. You know, we love buying things in bulk.

[00:16:49] Yeah. And really, I mean, if you're living in a place like Bombay or a southern part of India, it's very hot. And we buy things in plastic bottles. We leave them for a long time. Oils get rancid very quickly. They get spoiled. And if an oil is spoiled, it's a carcinogen in your body. It's going to create havoc. So you want to buy small batches. Buy it in tin cans as much as you can or glass bottles as much as you can. Use them in small batches. I tell people that you want to spend your resources for preventative care

[00:17:19] because what you will be spending in treatment will be 10 times what you spend in preventative care. So people find, like in the beginning, right, if you're used to buying oils, let's say you buy a big plastic bottle for 600 rupees and then now you suddenly, you don't want to pay 200 bucks for a small bottle, for a small glass bottle. But you want to, it's still, I would say, it's still more cost efficient because in the long term, you are saving yourself from the agony of getting sick. But you're also saving yourself from the expenditures that come

[00:17:49] with actually getting sick. You know, I think the way, if I just had to paraphrase what you're saying, it's really wellness and health is an investment. Don't look at it as a cost, right? I mean, so you just put in that, whether it's 30%, 40%, whatever, extra, and then it's an investment, right? Which will sort of re-benefit over your lifetime, right? Over your life. So that's how, that's how I'm sort of reading it. You also spoke about spices, right? Now, for a parent,

[00:18:18] give me some spices, which are in the kitchen. My daddy, nani used it. You know, our grandparents used it. We know it's there. Tell me something about what I can sort of put in my foods that work well for me and save immunity. So our definition of spices as Indians is a little bit, I would say, we've gone off. Right. So spices, a good spice is that, that is still found under the list of spices in a grocery store, but it's not super spicy on your tongue.

[00:18:48] So if you look at garam masala or you look at red mirchi, that's not the spice that I'm talking about. In fact, kids' tongues are designed to not take that spicy food because they need to continue to build and a lot of spicy foods will prevent them from building the right way. The minute they are 12, 13, 14, their body, their palate will change natural. It's a natural shift in their palate. When you're 12, 13, you'll automatically want more spicy foods. And then when you're older, when you're 20, 21, you may even want

[00:19:17] bitter foods. Spices are important, like we said, right? So the spices that I'm talking about are like literally everyday spices. Cumin, coriander, swadhania, jeera, cinnamon, fennel seeds, tejpata, curry leaves, black pepper can be used in small quantities, especially in the winter months. Dried ginger can be used in small quantities, especially in the winter months. But there are all these sweeter spices that we're talking about, which we use everyday in our foods. And you want to then limit, like I said, the garam masalas

[00:19:46] and the red milchi. Now what I find fascinating, a baby is born with almost no microbiome. Your microbiome is your digestive ability. It's really what supports your agni. And a baby is born without it. Breast milk is the first, when you're firstly, if you have a natural delivery, then the baby is born with a little bit of like just a little spark of that agni or microbiome. Breast milk is how you pass it on. Warm foods and certain specific foods is then how you continue to build it. And if you do that part right, and if you continue

[00:20:16] to live like this, your kids will rarely ever get sick. Four sicknesses a year for a child under four is normal. And it should happen because that's how your body builds immunity. From between four and eight, those sicknesses change to, now you start getting sick two to four times. After eight, that number goes down. So, you know, there's a math to this whole process. Right. So, parents shouldn't be getting stressed about sort of the illness or, you know, the seasonal, say, variation, flus, etc.

[00:20:45] It's okay. It's immunity building part of the growing process is what you're saying. So, you will be concerned as in you, of course, when you see your child getting sick firstly, you shouldn't be alarmed. This whole concept that, oh, my child is getting sick, they have low immunity is not true. They're meant to get sick. That's how your body builds something called T-cells, which actually hold memory to how do you fix, like, how do you, how would you react to this certain pathogen in the future? And your children do that and it's important for them to do that. That's also how, because we are these fluid

[00:21:14] phlegm producing factories, this can happen. However, when your kids get sick, you don't want to let them be sick for a very long time. You want to try and bring their inner climate back to equilibrium as soon as you can. So, yes, you want to be reactive to when they get sick, but you can't, no matter how proactive you are, they will still get sick and that certain number of sicknesses are important for them to build their immunity. And between 8 and 12, then the number changes again, of course, and then after 12, it changes drastically once their bodies are warmed up with those hormones well,

[00:21:44] especially when it comes to girls. Fair enough. And, you know, I think it's interesting you mentioned on the spice topic, right? I'll just tell you what has worked for me and, you know, what has worked with my kids. But when I travel now, I do have, and I think this is, you know, basic discussions with you, where I carry spices pretty much everywhere, you know? And I think one of the things which I found is like newfound value for me is clove.

[00:22:13] So clove is something, you know, in terms of if my throat is hurting long flights, you know, when we're basically exposed, kids are exposed. For me, I will just put it in my cheek pocket, right? And it's sort of, I think it helps. For the kids, they don't do that. I'll just infuse their water with clove, right? I'm also, and you can tell me if this is okay or not, I don't know the take on juices, but, you know, I will give them orange juices to basically help with vitamin C in a natural way.

[00:22:43] But, you know, between sort of the spices, which is, I think clove is there, travel, and even at home here, we basically do ajven and sauf. Sauf. So I'll just boil it, you know, warm water. They have it. They actually love it now. They've gotten used to it. But are some of these things that I do, you can tell me if, it's a strict no-no, but I think I go back to your book, which is, you know, about your body

[00:23:12] already knows that I delve into my intuition and I think this is how I approach and this is what I think is right for them and that's how I do it. When you are using spices as herbs, what you're doing now, so when you're using spices in your foods, they're called spices. The minute you start using them as remedies, I can give you like a hundred of those. And then they become, I start calling them herbs at that point because you're using them specifically for a targeted action in the body. So let me just check with you. So say a clove

[00:23:41] in food is spice, cloves used separately as herb? So it's still a spice. It qualifies as a spice, but you're using it as an herb, which means you're using it for a remedy. You're using it for its medicated impact. Oh, interesting. When you're using it in your food, you're using it to actually help you to balance your foods, to help you to digest better, to help you to break everything down. But when you're using it as an herb. So when I talk about the spices that you can use for your children and food, you can use all spices, just don't keep it spicy.

[00:24:10] When you talk about using it as remedies, there's a lot you can do. There's a lot that you can do to prevent sickness in your child. I would say the cloves are number one. You can start using it for a child as young as four-year-old, right? And so they're four or five and they can respond well to it. All you ask them to do is when their throat is feeling a little itchy, when they've been exposed tremendously, you take a small clove, ask them to keep it in their cheek pocket, literally place it on the side and go to sleep. Clove has this compound called eugenol.

[00:24:41] When you close your mouth and at night that eugenol is released, it really goes as an anti-inflammatory in your throat. It relaxes everything. You wake up mostly feeling like a new person. You can do this from that age four all the way to your entire life. So that's number one. Number two is I use ajwain a lot. And for kids, I say as much as possible don't use things internally. Like the clove, you would spit it out in the morning. You wake up in the morning, you'll find a soft little clove sitting in your cheek and you spit it out. They won't swallow it. Ajwain or carom seeds

[00:25:10] is another one. And the way you want to use it is you want to roast it on a pan. If you're traveling, throw it in a microwave for about two minutes. Depends on the microwave. Sometimes it'll be very, two minutes could be a lot and you could see it's clutter, but that's fine. You're not going to burn anything down. Put it in a clean sock. You make a little bag out of it and you use that even keeping it around a child's pillow is enough. Or you actually use it to foment the lymph nodes which can get swollen and you want to use it on the chest. So I would say that is number two when a child is actually actively getting sick.

[00:25:40] And the third thing that I would say is that you definitely want to get your children used to herbal teas. That is a gift to your children. So for example, with my daughters, I have always had tea parties and you get them introduced to this whole idea of a tea party where you can get chamomile tea, you can get peppermint, you can get lemon ginger and you do this on a regular basis. Because warm herbal teas, green tea is not the herbal tea I'm talking about because that's caffeinated.

[00:26:09] But any non-caffeinated spiced teas is one of the best way to bring in those herbs in their system which will help as an antidote to anything else that they're doing. But when you're talking about orange juice, Naina, I am not a big fan of it. I love orange juice, don't get me wrong. My girls love orange juice, but it's a beverage. It's a drink for joy because when you consume firstly fruit without the pulp and you're just consuming the fruit without its fiber, the sugar experience in the body

[00:26:38] is very, very different. In Ayurveda, we always talk about bringing in all the six tastes. So a fruit, a full fruit is the sweet taste and what we call astringent taste. They go really well together to slow down what we call gastric emptying. But when you have orange juice and this whole idea of vitamin C is a little bit distorted. I'm pretty sure in the next 5-10 years the world will start making a U-turn back from vitamin C. It can actually be very inflammatory to the system.

[00:27:07] But there are certain foods like amla, which is not just sour if you do it right. You know, like there's actually in Ayurveda, we talk about amla jams or Chavan Prash, for example, has a lot of amla. I wouldn't say there's anything better if you're really looking at that vitamin C from that lens and you're still not ready to believe that you don't just need pure vitamin C and you want to still use vitamin C, I would say use it in an amla jam, use it in amla ginger candy, use it as a Chavan Prash. But the orange juice is not quite going to work.

[00:27:37] It's too phlegm building for a young child and their bodies are already prone to phlegm. Got it. Okay, that's helpful. So for parents sort of introducing it, so one is what you've sort of spoken about. You've spoken about the good fats. You've spoken about the teas. You've spoken about the spices, herbs to sort of some extent and keeping it sort of warm and sort of to make sure the inner digestive system is doing fine. You're building it slowly. Yeah. You know,

[00:28:06] one other thing that I think has been helpful is just, I think you mentioned it a little bit, is around just sort of following the sun, right? And the sort of circadian rhythm. Now kids generally, you know, we wake up at school early, classes, you know, they're sort of back in time. Dinner can be done on time. Yeah. Is that, would you say that's another way to also sort of look at it where, you know, we start off with this warm breakfast,

[00:28:37] lunch, I don't know what they're taking when they do this in school, right? Yeah. And they want to eat quickly and sort of run off to play. It really bothers me when the dumb bars come back full. And then, you know, as a result, there is this, you know, overcompensating for, you know, in the evenings for the food or the nutrition that they've missed, right? But I think it's still a bit of a low-hanging fruit because just generally their schedule allows them to eat early, sleep early, et cetera, right?

[00:29:07] So, Anini, tell me in terms of the ideal date, you know, design for kids, what, you know, can you explain how that, what that would look like? So, I'm very mindful of the fact that our kids go to school. So, we're not in control of the entire day design. But when your children wake up, and I think most parents are obsessed with giving them, feeding them instantly, you want to be very careful of how much you give them in the morning because that's when the fire is the lowest. So, the first thing your child needs before they get food is they want to take a shower first.

[00:29:37] And then eat. Very important because shower first builds up their digestive fire. So, even if your child is a little hungry, that's good. You want them to come to the table hungry. And then, what is the first food you give them? The first food has to be something warm. So, if you're giving a hot cup of milk, sometimes that is enough for them. If you want an accompaniment, it cannot be a fruit. Milk and fruit will go into your body together if you do give it and create mucus in a way that it becomes very hard to come back. In fact,

[00:30:07] even allergies. So, what can you give with the milk? I'd say it's time to go back to the good old laddus. The entire West has taken this whole idea of granola bars and energy bars. They're nothing but the laddus that we were eating. You don't want to do laddus. You can do a small porridge. But avoid a salty breakfast for a child in the morning. You can do a small, a little portion of oatmeal. You can do a dahlia and you can spice it with some cinnamon or you can just do your milk and a couple of dates and almonds. Then, you can pack them a snack for school

[00:30:37] if that's what their school allows. I think a lot of schools have that first snack break. Let that be their breakfast. Lunchtime. And I am very mindful of the fact that kids eat lunch at school. Ideally, lunch is going to be a big meal at least on Saturday, Sunday when you can make that lunch a big meal. They don't need a lot of food in between. You want your child to be hungry no matter what the age is for at least two hours of no food at least when they come to the table. For most kids, between two to three hours, they have a natural hunger and you want to feed them then.

[00:31:07] So lunch, you go all out. Make sure it's warm. Keep it warm instead of giving a cold salad to your child. Children are not meant to eat salads. They're not meant to eat light foods. But foods like rice, sweet potatoes, good green fleshy veggies, bowls. If they're getting food at school, you don't have much of a choice. When they come back home, right? When they come back home and if your kids are going to take another shower, let it be. If they can wash their feet again, that's going to ignite that agony. So if your kids come from school and we are big on washing hands, let's start there.

[00:31:37] Let's start our kids wash your hands and feet. Let's make it about hands and feet both. Makes a big difference. Then I recommend to all the parents, the first food you want to give them when they come back from school is a soup or a stew. Most kids will crave something sugary. And you want to say yes to that. That's the one window you do want to give them because I think every child needs a window. And if you have a window, they're less likely to crave sugar all day long. But you say we start with soup and you start this habit on very early. And sometimes you can make it a stew,

[00:32:06] like you can make like a minestrone or a chickpea stew, etc. And then you give them a window of 30-40 minutes to say, now you can do a little bit of snacking. So you can bring in a little bit of that sweet soup. And then after that period, again you want to give them two good full hours to play, to jump, to do whatever they want. Because again, that will build an appetite. Now I very often talk about eating small dinners. For kids and for athletes, that is not true. They can still eat a good dinner. They can eat a good amount of dinner. But yet,

[00:32:36] you want to keep the dinner early. Do not stretch it to 7.38 as much as you can. Now sometimes as your kids get older, they're playing sports, they're coming late, so I understand. But whenever possible, get dinner done by 6-6-13 and call it a day. After that, what the child can end the day with, and even a 12-year-old child can do this, even a 13-year-old child can do this, is if your child is tolerant to milk, and most kids will tolerate milk, especially if you're from the Indian descent, as long as it's full fat, warm spiced milk.

[00:33:06] Then you want to end your day with a cup of milk, with a little bit of haldi or turmeric, a little bit of cardamom, elai-chi, and that's a great tranquilizer for the child to go to bed. And they sleep really deep and nicely. So this is how you want the day schedule to be. You want meals to be separated from two to three hours, and you want to organize it in a way that they get the most out of their system. And what about water? We make a big deal about water, and yes, rightfully so, but at the same time we do too much water.

[00:33:36] I think the world, again, modern nutrition is making a U-turn from water. Adults do need a little bit more water than children. Excessive water can again actually create more phlegm and mucus in the body. What I do like to do for children is infuse their water. Depending on the season, you can infuse their water with something. It actually makes it more digestible. It helps the water to break down. The journey of drinking water and being hydrated is a very long journey. But the minute you give the water like an herb or a spice and you don't keep it cold,

[00:34:06] if it's a really cold season, you can put some five, six, not a lot more than that, carom seeds, adjuvian seeds, you know, like a pinch or two of carom seeds, that's enough. Or you can put in one clove, again, if it's cold. If it's a warmer season, you can throw in some fennel seeds. So depending on the season, or even you can throw in mint, and even that makes it more hydrating and more refreshing for you. So you want to infuse their water. You want to finish most of the water intake right before four o'clock. And after that, you want them

[00:34:35] to only drink to thirst. So always, your children should always carry a water bottle with infused water so they can sip throughout the day. So you want to be careful. If they do ask for water, you want to give them a sip or two. Or you want to offer warm water so they don't drink a lot of water right before they eat. Yeah, so what we do at home is, so exactly, warm water if at all, I ask them to wait for about 30 minutes after they eat. So let me now, you know, I think this like segue this a little bit into certain very,

[00:35:05] you know, certain issues that we're sort of dealing with, right, as parents for our kids. I think the big one for me, and I think for a lot of parents, is immunity, right? Yeah. And in terms of, in just a little bit of, I think just two parts. So one is, are we born with a certain, you know, immunity? Can we improve it, strengthen it, build on it, right? That is sort of one part. Secondly, immunity building foods. Yeah.

[00:35:35] Is there something called immunity building foods that can help me as a parent? So I will say that, yes, the health of the sperm and the egg at the time of conception does play into how you heal. What happens in the womb as the mother is pregnant also makes an impact on immunity. And then when you're born and the food and lifestyle you choose is the third factor. Now, what are the biggest mistakes that parents make

[00:36:04] is the first question to ask because that's really what hurts immunity. Overfeeding our children, very important. You want to give them those gaps of two to three hours. Number two, giving too much yogurt and cold foods. And even when I say cold foods, yogurt and milkshakes are number one at the top of it. So by the minute you give cold foods, you give a lot of yogurt. Kids can have buttermilk but they cannot have excess amounts of yogurt which we think is a very healthy protein. It actually really hurts their gut and creates congestion. So that's another mistake parents make.

[00:36:33] Parents do a lot of jaggery thinking that jaggery is healthy. So you can give them small amounts of jaggery not a problem. But doing overdoing jaggery because you think it's a better substitute to sugar, big mistake. And there are two other important mistakes that I want to talk about that parents do. One is eating and then showering. A lot of kids, they eat food and then they go into the shower. Big immunity buster. Massive. And also, you cannot, I know kids love to jump after they eat. As much as possible after kids eat,

[00:37:03] you don't want them to be jumping, exercising, playing a sport. So I think first it's important to remove all those factors that will block immunity. So the cold foods, this order of events, etc. And then we can talk about what is going to help them to boost immunity. Right. So again, on that topic, right, for a parent who wants to start off today, is this what you would sort of suggest starting off and how do I cleanse my body? Is there a cleansing system

[00:37:33] for me to get my children back on track? So I will say that if you really feel like you've gone off, if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, oh my God, I will say one of the first things you want to check for is parasites. We don't do that enough. I feel like we don't check enough for parasites. Kids' bodies, because they're so slimy, and if you look at parasites in the world like mosquitoes, et cetera, they're all in slimy places. And kids' bodies are prone to slime. So you want to check for parasites. If your kids do have parasites, I would say Ayurveda has very effective measures

[00:38:02] to work on that. Of course, while I can suggest some simple like cumin water or Kalonji water, it's better to work with somebody to kind of make sure that you had some treatment for parasites. Once you've done that, you want to lower the number of meals that your children are eating. You want two big meals, you want a breakfast, you want a snack. And you don't need much more than that. Sometimes, some kids, if they're playing a lot of sport, they may want maybe a little bit, you know,

[00:38:31] maybe one or two small snacks in between, but they really don't need much more than that. And that's a lot more number of meals than adults eat. So you start there. Start by introducing those herbal teas. And those herbal teas will again start cleansing the system. So you can give herbal teas even two or three times a day. It doesn't hurt because it's a light. As long as you're not boiling it, as long as you're only infusing and steeping it, they can have herbal teas. And you'll start to see that makes a big difference. The other thing is how they're sleeping. And there's certain

[00:39:01] rituals like oil massage, etc., which can help, which we can talk about. And you'll see that the child actually starts resetting very, very quickly. I do want to warn parents of the use of honey and how they use honey. Because we've heard too many times, oh, honey helps with sickness. And yes, it can to a certain amount, to a certain degree. But you cannot mix honey with hot water. The minute you mix honey with hot water, you're creating toxicity in the body. And kids will actually keep getting a cough all the time. Kids who have

[00:39:31] a lot of honey will be the kids who cough the most. Honey and hot water is not something that is recommended. That is not recommended at all. Honey and hot water is a poisonous combination in Ayurveda. Basically, something that will build toxicity in your body. Now, that being said, if your child has a very phlegmy cold where mucus is dripping from their system, honey can help for 2-3 days. After 2-3 days, you want to switch away from honey. You have no idea how... I mean, this is actually quite exciting, but it's also, you know, it's not overwhelming,

[00:40:01] right? These are things that can be sort of done pretty easily, I would say, and get a little used to. Exactly. And like, people will see instantly, if the kids are not showering after eating, like, that's blasphemous. In my family, like sometimes, when I give my girls, sometimes we'll want to get their boba, we'll want to drink smoothies, and I'm like, once in a while, that's all fine. But they're never, never, ever allowed to have food in their stomach when they shower. Like, that's blasphemous. That's just never allowed. Yeah. Okay. That's a big one.

[00:40:30] It's like the biggest one, I would say, for children. Wow. Okay. That's points to be noted. Really? Cast in stone. So, let me talk, since we're talking about immunity, right, and basically extending it to allergies. Yeah. Right? Again, when I spoke about excesses, the pollution out there, the AQI, our kids are sort of breathing, and we also know that they're growing and their immunity is still building out, right? Right? How do, you know, when we look at allergies,

[00:41:00] and let's start with dust, for instance, right? Now, one is, you know, what are the ways that the body can deal with it? And I think, you know, your discussion on immunity would sort of come in here. Yeah. But is there a way to desensitize the body from these allergens, right? Because I cannot stop sending my kids to school. They have to breathe this air. They will play outdoors for their sporty kids. Yeah. Right? So, how, you know, is there a way to desensitize

[00:41:29] the body? Or, if not, how do I let them, make them cope? Yeah. And I think, I think I want to start also by saying that, which also goes back a little bit to immunity, is, do not use hand sanitizer. Like, period. Just don't use hand sanitizer. Because using hand sanitizer also kills all the good microbiome in your hands. Because we're not being enough in dirt, which also gives us some of that natural, good microbiome. And we're constantly sanitizing, your kids are going to get sick. So that's number one. But how, what are a few things that you can do? Look, you know,

[00:41:59] living in a city like Mumbai with all the pollution, it's a real problem. Children as young as four years old, my girls started doing neti at four. Now, it sounds like a big task because most adults are petrified of neti. Let me assure you, it is not as scary once you get to it. And it doesn't mean you'll do neti every day. But if your children do neti even just once a week on healthy weeks, and maybe more than once if you see them getting congested, right there,

[00:42:29] you're taking care of everything that's entering the nasal passages. Giving that nasal passage a cleanse can go a really long way. And especially if they get congested. So those are environmental allergies. You definitely want to follow it up with a little drop of sesame oil. Or even if your child is not comfortable with oil being inserted up their nose, just even a little small dab of sesame oil. And that again starts to build their microbiome in their nose. So you need to do both. You need to do the neti and you want to do the sesame oil.

[00:42:58] And that makes a very big difference. As kids get a little older, you want to start introducing them to some level of breath work. Now that breath work could just be looking like long inhales and exhales. Eventually it can go to an alternate nostril breathing. And the third thing that I'll say is you want to see if your child is breathing through their mouth. If they're breathing through their mouth, they will definitely have more allergies. So mouth taping is underrated.

[00:43:26] If you can work with your doctor, check that your child doesn't firstly have sleep apnea. If they have sleep apnea, you have to be careful with mouth taping. Most kids can mouth tape and you get really good mouth tape. So you want to train your children to be nose breathers. So those will help environmental allergies tremendously to begin with. So, you know, just to that point, right? So for my son, for instance, we had this issue. We've got an adenoidectomy done and removed the stonsors because there were,

[00:43:56] you know, there were issues with the oxygen flow, et cetera. But again, coming back, you know, in terms of managing the, you know, managing the allergens. In fact, Sanju showed him how to do neti. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did. And so he's taken to neti as well, which I think has helped. Even things like steam, right? With eucalyptus oil, not do it sort of very often, et cetera. I think even things like, you know, say the tulsi roasti. Yeah. Right? Those are sort of

[00:44:26] ways of managing. I found them to be effective. But over time, does your body get desensitized or is this, you know, for me, do I see this as, you know, over his lifetime, he's going to have to sort of manage these allergies? So you know what, your body doesn't really get desensitized. But Naina, what helps is like, look, I had severe allergies as a child. But as I just adopted this lifestyle, and trust me, I have no restrictions. I eat all foods. I live a very good life. I travel all over the world. You can do everything. But as long as you start

[00:44:56] making these tweaks of like how you're eating, you're picking warmer foods, you're drinking teas throughout the day, you're putting your clove in your cheek pocket. Another one is doing lymphatic drainage massage. Even for young children, you can start massaging their sinuses. You can start massaging their lymph glands, which are right here around the neck region. Make it very intuitive. You'll see that they start, they stop. Like I get no allergies now. Even till I would say 10 years ago, I used to come to India and I used to get my allergies again. But just living a certain type of lifestyle, they'll stop getting allergies.

[00:45:26] So they don't really get desensitized, but the immune system starts building to a point where the allergens do not have the same impact in their body. But as you start making more natural choices, as your body reaches that place, that internal warmth to an optimum degree, you'll see that the body starts responding much better. So I will say one of the biggest immunity mistakes is doing too much fruit. Children cannot digest a lot of fruit. It's very slimy in their body. Again, it's going to build mucus. In fact, in my household,

[00:45:55] I live in New York, so the winter is crazy. So we don't get fruits from November all the way to Feb. And I have to say, my kids have never gotten the flu, which is like technically the flu season back there. So that makes a very big difference. You can do small amounts of seasonal foods, fruits, if they're in season where you live. But in the winter, avoid fruits if it's a cold place. And the second is nuts. Doing too many nuts, you'll see that kids develop nut allergies very quickly because nuts are very hard to break down in the body. You can do some soaked almonds, you can do small amounts

[00:46:24] of nuts throughout the year, but doing trail mixes again can hurt their immunity. Got it. That's again very helpful and very counterintuitive, right, for a parent and especially say, you know, parents living in India, right, where fruit, et cetera, just are go-to is very easily. You're always thinking about this, okay, for children and for adults, but more so for kids. It's not what you're eating, it's what you're digesting properly. So we try and make nutrition choices, food choices based on this is good for you. Only that

[00:46:54] that you can digest is good for you. So another issue for parents right now is sleep, right? And you did talk about how important it is to get the right amount of sleep to, you know, for your body to sort of rest, recover, et cetera, right? In terms of, you know, how we sort of unwind, again, because our kids are so, you know, wired all the time, whether it's screen time, whether it's sport, et cetera,

[00:47:24] how do we make this unwinding time and sleep time, how do we go about that? So bedtime rituals are real and they're underrated as our kids get busier. Whatever, if they have a bedtime ritual, which means they could take a small quick shower, of course, two, three hours after eating, a small cup of milk, reading, you could start this habit right there. It can be very simple, it doesn't have to be all of this, but just you want to give yourself a cue that it's going to be bedtime and you can start as early as you want.

[00:47:53] And the minute your body has that cue and the lights are dimmer, your body remembers and this can serve them even into their late adulthood, even when they're 50s, 60s. So you want to give them a bedtime ritual and you want to emphasize on the bedtime ritual. Make it fun, don't make it stressful, make it like the most relaxed time, the most present time of the entire family. But there are certain things that specifically help children and adults to sleep really better. Like a quick warm shower, dimly lit, which means you don't want all the lights in your bathroom to be open, keep it dimly lit. There are certain

[00:48:23] classical music, so pick anything classical, pick anything soft. White noise can also be very useful. Dimming the lights today we all know is useful. Giving a little foot massage that really helps to ground and settle the nervous system. I give my girls a foot massage all the time. Keeping the room slightly cold, slightly cold. Giving them warmer clothes. So let the clothes be cotton, let them be cozy. Give them a heavier blanket if they're using a blanket. But keep the room slightly cold and keep it dark. If you want to add

[00:48:53] something that they can eat or consume right before they go to bed, give them a small cup of milk, which is a tranquilizer. If they don't want to do a cup of milk because they may get, you know, they may not be tolerant to it, you can do a small cup of chamomile tea. But all of these start cuing the body and the nervous system to settle down so that they can rest. What time do the kids sleep? It's never too early. Even if your child can sleep at 7pm, so be it. My girls, I tried till they were eight or nine years old for them to sleep

[00:49:22] at 7pm at night. Now, they don't always get sleep but they can get into bed and then get sleep by 8 o'clock and that's fine. So keep that bedtime as long as you can for as long as you can. So my 13 year old, for example, she still goes into, she goes to bed by 8.39 and then wakes up at 7. So if you only talk about the number of hours that kids need, honestly, as many hours as you can get them is good because very soon before you know it, they will be teenagers and they will not get that sleep. So bedtime ritual, warm milk,

[00:49:52] cold room, heavier blanket, dark, darkness and the length of sleep counts. Is there something as a minimum number of hours? Look, I would say most kids need at least 8 or 9 hours and when I say kids, I mean like even up to, even to the time you're 16, 17. Even adults sometimes need 8, 9 hours. Before we had electricity, human beings were sleeping. There's some research that suggests that human beings were sleeping for 11 hours in the day because it became sunset. How many hours after sunset are you going

[00:50:22] to light your oil lamps and stay awake? So because we live in the modern day, I would say 8 hours is a minimum but otherwise I would say even as much as 11, 12 hours for young children is great. Got it. You know, one additional thing that I think has worked for us as a family, right, in terms of bedtime rituals, again, because Amit is working, I'm working, kids do that, extracurricular sort of come back. After dinner, we sort of, you know, once we're ready for bed, we sort of go in there.

[00:50:52] It's a little bit of chitting, you know, chit-chatting, talking about your day, etc. But however bad the day has gone, we sort of talk about one thing we're grateful for and it, I've realized, you know, earlier, it was difficult because if you've had a bad day, you honestly just want to go to sleep, right, and you're like, let's get over with this day. But something as basic as having a home, right, or basically having each other, everyone's healthy.

[00:51:21] one small thing I've realized just changed the tone of things, right? So if I had to add anything to what you said, I would add that little gratitude piece which I know has really sort of helped us, you know? And it's so comforting for the whole family to be together so that you're absolutely right that it's a great part of the ritual is for everyone to become really present. When parents are very distracted, when kids are sleeping, it's very unnerving for them.

[00:51:51] It's very overwhelming for their own nervous system when the parent is not emotionally present, even if it's just for five minutes. So that is such a great practice. The other thing that I've started asking my girls is what do you want to heal from in the day? And the reason why that becomes important is also because sometimes, you know, kids don't process their own feelings and their own emotions and that becomes unresolved trauma. But a very safe place where kids can do that, where you can have mini therapy sessions, you don't have to say anything, and the kid just has to express

[00:52:20] what they want to heal from in the day. And they don't always do it, but you'll see a lot of things come up. And then once they've offloaded it, they can sleep much better. In terms of, you know, the other issue that we sort of, again, deal with as parents is stress and anxiety. Yeah. All right? So when you look at books like The Anxious Generation, when you read it, I actually got anxious. Yeah. Because it is, it basically just talks about, you know, sort of some of the harsh truths, right?

[00:52:50] Yeah. Which we're sort of surrounded with. And I think as parents, this is not the world we grew up in. So we are as, you know, under-equipped, if I may say so, to deal with them. We're also just figuring it out and winging it as we sort of go along, right? But when it comes to anxiety and stress, right, for kids, now say as, you know, as young as maybe four years old, right, to older kids, are there ways to deal with it? Yeah. It's a real problem

[00:53:20] and we're all struggling with it. I will say that, firstly, sleep is when your nervous system repairs. So we are going to start again at what we just ended is sleep. That sleep will help anxiety a lot. But there are some other things that help anxiety that are underrated. If you can get into the practice of massages and I understand as kids get older and they get busier, oil massages they don't have time for it. But even if they simply oil their bodies after they take a shower or before they take a shower, that self-touch releases oxytocin

[00:53:50] which is very grounding for their nervous system. On holidays, on breaks, if you can get somebody else to give them a nice full massage, again, very grounding for your nervous system. It is a practice in Ayurveda we highly recommend for multiple reasons including the synthesis of vitamin D. So oil massage is a whole practice with its set of benefits and helps the nervous system. Showers do help the nervous system and that's why I used to never believe in showering in the evening because it's not the right time of the day but when it comes to your nervous system

[00:54:18] it really helps to unwind. Physical human touch, right? Earlier when we lived in communities we were not half as anxious because there's so much safety. You know, people actually add safety. During the pandemic the people who were the most alone suffered the most, had the most anxiety. People who were locked in with their families that they loved, they felt very safe, they didn't get sick as much because your nervous system will also impact your immune system when your body feels threatened. Everything feels threatened. Your immune system is under a threat in fight and flight. So as much touch, hugging, cuddling,

[00:54:48] there's never enough of that. Having a pet at home can make a massive difference to anxiety because the pet, they have a certain electromagnetic field and a certain heart coherence which is really settling to the nervous system. When you're in the presence of somebody who has more of a coherence in their heart than you do, you actually, it's contagious. You develop the same electromagnetic field and you develop that same heart coherence. So having a pet at home and these are the lowest hanging fruits, right? Let me tell you, those are the easiest things to do.

[00:55:18] Oil massage, sleep well, get a pet, cuddle, take a shower. Amazing. Warm foods will absolutely help anxiety. Chamomile tea will absolutely help anxiety. Of course, limiting screens which is hard. The only way you can limit screens for children is by modeling. There's no other way. When I say modeling is what the parent does is what the child does. You cannot have a different set of rules for yourself and for your children. So if from the start, they've never, like I've never turned on the television in my house. Like we just,

[00:55:48] I don't even have a TV right now. But when my kids were growing up, I just, I don't watch TV. I just never like watching TV. TV watching a movie is a community activity. So we will watch movies. We will only watch it in a group. So my kids, they just don't have this concept of watching TV by themselves because we've just never, ever done it. But then invaded the screens which are different from TV. And the only way to do it is to model it. Now it's challenging enough for parents to stay away from screen. So you create rules around it for yourself, which is, I don't get my phone outside my bedroom.

[00:56:17] I don't get my phone on my dining table. So you create rules for yourself and those rules become family rules. And you always address them as family rules. When you say this is your rule and this is my rule, especially when it comes to screens, they don't work. But the minute it's family rules, they become very non-personal and kids are more likely to follow them. The more information your nervous system has to deal with, the more anxiety will build because now it has too many things. And being on screens gives you that excessive information. But even our own attempt

[00:56:47] to burden our kids with excessive knowledge, excessive information, teach them too much, will also create anxiety. And then the last piece of this puzzle that I would say is conversations about what they're actually experiencing. So when I said, you know, I asked my girls, what do you want to heal from in the day? It is important to have that conversation. Very often when kids are sleeping during their bedtime is when things that make them, you know, a lot of kids, first day, I'm going to say this again, many times kids will experience

[00:57:17] a stomach ache during bedtime. Their kids, every night, they'll be like, suddenly I have a tummy ache. That's usually anxiety speaking, right? Now, if a parent can become present during bedtime, usually when they go off from that fully awake state into a relaxed state, it's very natural for a child to talk about what's troubling them, provided the parent is present. So I highly recommend, I do this even for my 13-year-old, you get in bed with them, you know, caress their back a little bit, give them a foot massage,

[00:57:47] play with their hair, get them in that half-asleep state, and very quickly, you'll see that they talk about what's on their chest the most. And just sharing it with the parent is very, very comforting. So all of that really helps, as well as our idea of discipline, the way we were disciplined, right, is very different from the way our kids can be disciplined. Like, the word discipline is very tricky now. When we were disciplined, for example, I grew up in a joint family, if my mom was upset at me and she disciplined me a certain way,

[00:58:16] I had 30 other people in my family who were cuddling, who were happy, who were loving. Our kids are going through a lot. So discipline has to be done very differently. It's a lot of modeling. It's a lot of understanding. It's a lot of less rigid rules and open conversation and negotiation. And all of this starts creating openness for dialogue at home, starts creating safety in that nervous system as well. So the answer to how do you deal with anxiety, in my experience, has been

[00:58:45] it has to be multifold. Everything from physical tools like touch and having a pet, etc., all the way to foods, to even dialogue and conversation and to using sleep at that time to rebuild their nervous system and its safety. Interesting you say that, right? Because there's actually research which says as parents where I'm actually spending 3x the time with our kids these days, right? So we are just, I think,

[00:59:14] overcompensating with time but with that also comes a lot more anxiety for parents, right? And that also sort of rubs off. So when we talk and then I think screen time is something that comes in as a buffer for us, right? To basically give us either a break from the child and sort of try and fill our own cup if I may say so. What is, you know, what is, and you spoke about the hugs, etc., but what is your take on reducing screen time and increasing

[00:59:44] the social aspect of kids, right? And spending time with their grandparents, play dates. Yeah. You know, I feel our kids are overscheduled right now, you know, mine are to some extent, etc., but spending time with, you know, grandparents, play dates, like, what does that do? Is that, you know, are we saying we're wasting or whiling away their child? I also think that what does add a little stress is when we phrase it like, spend time with your grandchildren. Like, that didn't happen. You know, it just, it should happen as a result of being in

[01:00:14] their space. So kids do process that when you tell them, hey, you have to spend time with your friends or you have to spend time with your grandparents. It again becomes another have to versus it being natural. So it definitely, it helps a lot to have a grandparent around in their ecosystem. It adds a lot of sense of safety, of course, playing and what I call Newtoning. Like, when the Newton discovered gravity, when he was sitting doing nothing under a tree. So just having that time to do nothing, to just figure it out, to like play with coins, to play

[01:00:44] with the coaster, to just look around, to be bored out of your mind is really those times of healing and repair and kids grow a lot. And that's really undervalued today. So yes, creating people in there, you know, finding people to be in their ecosystem, inviting friends over, all of that is great without putting pressure, but also really Newtoning. You know, that's become a term in my household. It's like, what are you doing when you're doing nothing? It's your Newtoning. You're waiting for a great idea to drop into your -system. And our kids don't do enough of that. So over-scheduling,

[01:01:14] yes. And I think it's also like, I think parents, you know, we feel entitled and we also feel very pressured. So we feel like, hey, I'm filling my cup. And I think it's very important for every person to fill their cup, but how do you fill your cup, right? So keeping humor alive. Screen time, doom scrolling, doesn't really fill anybody's cup. It just distracts you from the pressures of your own life. But also keeping humor alive. I think one of the biggest tools that you can continue to use with your kids is humor. I'm a complete goofball. When my kids are eating, I will be

[01:01:43] doing a dance, I will have a funny poetry, I will tease them. If you can keep humor alive in your family at the end of any difficult day, if you can come back to a dinner table and have a joke and laugh every day, one question you want to ask yourself is were we laughing as a family today and not looking at a screen? Then you really are keeping that environment safe. And as those pressures build, home will always be their safe space. Your goal is home always has to be my safe space. And we don't have to be parenting our children,

[01:02:14] we only have to be reparenting ourselves. So we cope with our way of living, we model the right way, we keep safety in our nervous system so that the kids follow. So let me now play devil's advocate. When I Google some of the facts or things around Ayurveda, I think one aspect that repeatedly comes up is the use of metals. And when it comes to herbs, etc. How do I make an informed

[01:02:43] decision around giving, say, herbs to my child or even as an adult to consume it? When there are news articles around lead poisoning, say, extra metals and metal poisoning, etc. How do I form an informed decision and get comfortable? So I will say you don't have to start there. And I think the way you want to first start bringing Ayurveda is through the lifestyle and the food changes. So do not reject Ayurveda because you've heard that certain herbs

[01:03:13] have that lead. Now let's talk about actually heavy metal used in Ayurvedic herbs. There are absolutely certain herbs that use heavy metals. Now traditionally these formulations were used and those metals were processed, refined in a way that they would not have that impact on your body. In fact, Ayurveda is very, very careful about that. I do understand that as time has progressed and this whole science has become more commercialized, it's not being done right. Look, colloidal

[01:03:43] gold and colloidal silver is used globally for its medicinal benefits. People really benefit from colloidal gold and colloidal silver. So Ayurvedic use of metals is similar to that. It's kind of broken down into the particle form. It's processed in a way that it's broken down to the smallest particle. But yes, it's absolutely okay to not trust every Ayurvedic pharmacy. How do you know who to trust? I'd say if you want to be safe, just don't use formulations that have those heavy metals. There are a lot of formulations. I would say

[01:04:13] 70 to 80% of the formulations don't have those heavy metals. Today we have Google search. Today you have Chad GPT. If you're planning to use an herb, like for example, if you're using seetopaladi, there's no risk at all of those heavy metals. So if you're using for example dried ginger and honey, there's no risk. If you're using something called trikatu, which is just three spices, there is no risk. You can use your spices as herbs first. Start there. Then you can use more formulations with that informed choice that I'm staying away from heavy metals.

[01:04:43] I'm never going to convince you to use something that you're not convinced of. If you have studied Ayurveda, if somebody in your family practices Ayurveda, then you have the first-hand knowledge of why this is safe. But you never have to. Ayurveda will always give you options. So I tell people that yes, we do use heavy metals in some formulations. Traditionally it's done very safely. But it's okay, you don't have to trust it today. Is there a way to find trusted sources? Are there enough Ayurvedic practitioners out there? Are there enough sources to get the right

[01:05:13] kind of formulations? So I will tell you that there are certain brands that I trust more. There's a brand called Dhootpa Peshwar, which is a traditional brand, which I really trust a lot more. There's Unjha, which I again trust a lot. But if you can find a local Ayurvedic pharmacy, even go and visit it. There are all these places, not just pharmacies, but people that make the factories where they actually make those herbs or little workshops where they make those herbs. Go and visit them. You'll see it's not as scary as you think it is. In fact, you'll see there's a

[01:05:42] great science in the process and you'll be very, very comforted. But even for somebody like me, I don't use herbs extensively. I don't. You don't have to use them extensively. Certain things that I say are very beneficial. For example, it's a immunity builder. You can only do chawanprash when your child is healthy. You cannot use it on sick days. There's something called which I use with my children. There's something called which I

[01:06:12] use for my clients as well. But there's not much more than that, especially when it comes to children. And you can find these are the trusted sources, these couple of brands and then actually going and finding a allopathy. As a parent, sometimes you want a quick fix. If my

[01:06:41] child has a fever, I need to travel, I have work, can I just give you paracetamol, move on. And it's sometimes easier for me to just open that medicate them, move on with life. And I'm guessing that is probably the case with a lot of people. Now, again, take on usage of allopathy. And now I think, I don't even

[01:07:11] want to say use of Ayurveda, but it's basically the Ayurveda way of life. How do the two coexist? So I will say that the only problem with giving your kids a quick paracetamol is this, right? They feel better temporarily, they have an artificial hunger, and they end up actually doing things, right? They'll end up playing more, or they'll end up eating more, and their body does not have the potential to break it down. So they will feel it's just a symptom relief, temporary relief, which will actually create a further pathology. Now, that doesn't mean that you never ever use it, right?

[01:07:41] If your child is sick, and they have high fever, and you want to bring it down, of course, there's other things that you can do in Ayurveda very quickly. But if you want to try to have a restful sleep and you use it sparingly, you absolutely can use it sparingly. Personally, I know that there are so many other ways to get your kids to break that fever. That's my first resort. When I work with my clients, I always tell them, let's do this for 24 hours, and then you can make a decision. If the fever goes up very high, if it goes to 100 and 304 degrees, I say, absolutely, if you need to use it,

[01:08:11] you absolutely use it. So you want to be very judicious about its use. I do want to say when it comes to fevers, there are some simple things that you can do which almost will break a fever within a day. I don't think that I've seen, especially with my girls, because it's high compliance, they're with me, you can imagine, that even the worst fevers, they can break in 24 hours. There are certain things I will say that I want to mark out right now, even without you asking, is that when your kids are sick, do not overfeed them. They do not

[01:08:40] have the digestive strength. We become very nervous about, like, I want to feed my child, they need to be better. Your body cannot break it down. One of the first reasons they get sick is because their agony stops functioning. So, giving them any more food is going to further the pathology. Don't give them plain water when they're sick. You can give them chamomile tea. If you can get a powder called which is the ultimate fever breaker, it has a mixture of six herbs, and you can infuse that in their water, great, only one sip at a time. They never drink more than one sip. I personally keep a thermos,

[01:09:10] give one spoonful every 15 minutes. And to eat food, you only give them rice broth with a pinch or two of ginger powder. And this is all you do for first day. They will be hydrated, they will be nourished without taxing their agony. And usually this is what breaks their fever as well in that first day. There are other things you can do, like you can use some camphor and ginger paste, etc. We don't have to get into that technical, but do not overfeed your kids. Do not give them coconut water, do not give them vitamin C, thinking that oh,

[01:09:40] I'm going to give them vitamin C, it's actually going to further their pathology. And do not over-medicate, over-treat them, even with herbs, because you will dry their phlegm if they have a cold, and then they will develop a cough which will last for the next two weeks. This is very, very helpful. I'm going, you know, one of the segments that we wanted to sort of touch upon was I reached out to my friends, I reached out to, you know, other parents, etc. And we sort of have this segment called Ask Me Anything. So I'm going to put out a few questions and we can

[01:10:09] do this sort of, you know, quickly in terms of your take on some of these, you know, trends that sort of people are following these days, right? The first one, what's your take on food trends, right? So going gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, I mean, fun-free, I think. But what is your take on, you know, all these restrictions for kids? I don't believe in giving up something completely unless you have an established allergic reaction to it. And even that,

[01:10:39] in most cases, when I work with my clients, I'll see they'll start to introduce those foods in small quantities when they do it right. And what about refined sugar? Refined sugar, giving up is a trend. No, refined sugar itself is a trend. We consume sweet foods in forms of rock sugar, cane sugar, khanda sharkar in our traditions. And those are fine in small quantities. Refined sugar is really what the modern day has brought. And it is absolutely as harmful as people make it out to be. Got it. So your take is right now,

[01:11:09] no refined sugar ever, but we can work with substitutes. Substitutes also, listen, where kids are living in this generation, they will consume some amount of refined sugar. You have a sugar window, you have sugar sparingly, and you absolutely want to have a sugar break day if you can, because that will train the blood to not crave so much sugar if you have a break day. Got it. Next question, what's Ayurveda's take on junk food? Should parents, you know, allow kids to have junk food, etc.? I'd say you have a junk food window. Now, junk food window in my household

[01:11:38] will look like kettle cooked chips instead of Raffa's Lays. So you buy the right type of junk foods. You don't keep junk foods in your home and say that my kids cannot eat it, that's not happening, but you want to give them everything that they want, but you'll make the right choices. So healthier options of chips, healthier options of bars, you know, those natural fruit candy, and then you give them a junk window. Active sporty kids, what's Ayurveda's B1 protein should parents be supplementing? If you eat a traditional diet, you'll get enough protein to begin with.

[01:12:08] But I will say that more than protein, it's the oil massages. If your kids are playing a sport, their skin is a channel of consumption. Give them enough oil massages. They will build tissue better. Whatever they're building will be much of a great quality. That being said, yes, absolutely. You want to microdose protein. You don't want to dump it all in one meal, and you do not want to use artificial proteins for kids at all. But consume proteins the way they were traditionally consumed, whether you're grilling or making a lentil soup

[01:12:38] or a dal. We have enough proteins. We have chana, we have satu. So the way that your grandmother did it, if you look at that diet, you're probably giving your child enough protein. That's a good compass to go by. Any common or daily habits that can be debunked, which are fat, or go against Ayurvedic practice. Smoothies and protein shakes. You just talked about them. And people say, wow, I gave my child one smoothie and they're set for the rest of the day. The reason why they're not asking for any more food is because their digestive fire has gone off.

[01:13:08] As well as overdoing bananas for children, I will say that banana is a quick go, you know, it's a mess-free snack, but most kids cannot break down bananas. You do bananas in summer months, sparingly, you know, one banana a day. Don't do banana five times. Now we move on to something called the Ayurvedic Swap Challenge. So the Ayurveda Swap Challenge. I love it. Okay. You tell me what would be the right swap. Chocolates.

[01:13:38] Ladoos. Or hot chocolate, honestly. Instant noodles. Rice noodles. Fried snacks. Fried snacks. Ayurveda loves fried. It's not a problem. You just fry it in the right fat. Cold drinks. Warm drinks. There is no substitute to it. Ice creams. Ice creams of good quality, followed by a cup of chamomile tea. Energy drinks for sporty kids. Coconut water, rice puddings, kheer. Syrups for coughs.

[01:14:08] If it is a cough, cough, then you can use seetopaladi, which is an herb with a few pinches of ginger drops and some honey. Chicken nuggets, frozen foods. You never do frozen foods. Fresh foods is the only replacement for frozen foods. Cheese. Use good quality cheeses, use good soft cheeses, fresh as much as you can, and always paired with something that's like a warm beverage. Biscuits. Homemade biscuits, like your traditional naan, khatais, chickies.

[01:14:38] I'm finally out of questions for you, Nidhi. Okay. This has been a complete, complete pleasure. I actually don't know where time has sort of flown. Absolutely. I think as a parent, you have really helped simplify and demystify a lot of things for me. You've given me practical tips on how I can inculcate the Ayurveda way of living into my life, which I already do, but I think for

[01:15:08] parents out there, I think that everyone is going to find this very, very helpful. I know we need to extend this at some point, but today I'll let you go. So Nidhi, thank you so much again for coming by. This has been a very, very helpful session and discussion. This was such a pleasure, Naina, and I hope this is helpful to all the parents for watching.