The whole truth about Gut Health: Food, Lifestyle, and Sustainability | EPISODE 94
In this episode of A Gut Story, gut health expert and author Dimple Jangda with Shreya Ghodawat shares her holistic approach to digestive wellness, blending Ayurveda, naturopathy, homeopathy, and modern medicine. She stresses that gut health goes beyond probiotics and fad diets, encompassing lifestyle, circadian rhythms, food combinations, and mindful eating. Dimple warns against the overuse of antibiotics and painkillers, which damage the microbiome, increase infertility and heart risks, and suppress the body’s natural signals. She criticizes processed foods, refined flours, and long-shelf-life products for introducing preservatives and microplastics that disrupt digestion and contribute to chronic illness. Instead, she advocates a whole food plant-based diet rich in farm-to-table fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and millets, while avoiding dairy, meat, and packaged items. She recommends eating within an 8–10 hour window, preferring warm, cooked meals like soups, and avoiding water during meals to preserve digestive fire. Ayurvedic practices such as pranayama, proper sleep cycles, and detox routines like Panchakarma are central to her approach, along with gut-healing ingredients like jaggery, cumin, fennel, stewed fruits, and coconut milk. Dimple explains that plant-based living can improve digestion, sleep, energy, mood, and creativity, while integrating Ayurveda’s personalized care with modern medicine’s diagnostics provides the best of both worlds. For her, sustainability means caring for one’s health without harming the environment or others, minimizing one’s carbon footprint, and making ethical choices.