And here are the answers:
1) Almost all forms of nature stop drinking mother’s milk after infancy. So the question here is why do we, as humans, continue to drink milk? We continue to drink milk for its nourishment on all levels…from mental to physical to emotional to spiritual. Milk alone has countless benefits and a strong healing power. Milk promotes Ojas, your strength, immunity, and intellect. Ultimately, milk provides us with those benefits and nutrition that is pretty much hard to find anywhere else. To simply phrase it, we are supposed to drink milk throughout our lives for its nutritional values that nourishes and enhances our quality of life by increasing the strength within our inner core and supports our immunity.

2) From birth till about two years of age, human’s milk is best. As we all know, babies, especially newborns, are very delicate and require a lot of nutrition and nurturing. Human’s milk is light and easy to digest. It is a blood purifier and contains all the nutrition that a baby needs to grow and develop…especially in the most critical years. The first two years pave the way for the rest of your life.

Human’s milk only has nutritional value up until about the age of 2. After that, mother’s milk will be Kapha aggravating, which means that both Kapha and Ojas will become imbalanced. Mother’s milk is easy to digest for a delicate newborn and best for newborns and infants to build strong immune systems. But as you get older, you require more fat and more nutrition and that is why most people typically switch to cow’s milk.

3) There are many types of milk, but I am going to cover the most common ones that can be found in most grocery stores. They are cow’s milk, goat’s milk and soy milk.

First of all, I do not consider soy milk to be real milk. For those that are lactose intolerant, its fine to drink, but personally, I do not advocate soy milk as being the same nutritionally or healthier than cow’s or goat’s milk. Real milk comes from the mammary glands and soy milk is processed through machines and various chemicals and therefore isn’t naturally produced milk.

With that said, goat’s milk is more suitable for those who are weak and ill. It helps with nourishing the Dhatus, or tissues that have become weak. It is easily digestible and is excellent for fevers, bleeding disorders, and diarrhea. Goat’s milk is more recommended when there is an imbalance and the digestion is weak.

Cow’s milk is what majority of the population drinks. As mentioned earlier, cow’s milk promotes Ojas, promotes a longer life span, increases intelligences, improves strength, and the list continues. There are only benefits after benefits from drinking milk. If you pay close attention, those children who grow up drinking lots of milk, have a tendency to be healthier and have stronger immune systems. Milk is an excellent source for calcium, phosphorous, iron, carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins A, B12, and C.

Also, intuitively, for centuries, the human race has been drinking milk. Just like we eat our vegetables, we should drink our milk. Our ancestors drank their milk and it’s pretty much a tradition that has been passed down from one generation to the next.

Health and happiness,

Varsha

I often get asked, why drink milk? These days, even drinking milk has become a controversy. There was the time when “got milk?” was huge and today, there is supposed preliminary research that shows that milk has no nutritional value for anyone past childhood. I dispute the research because milk is one of the best forms of nutrition out there and it is for all ages. There is also strong evidence in favor of all age groups drinking milk from both Ayurveda and modern scientific studies.

There is no strong evidence in disputing the benefits of milk, because the research has been mainly done on lab animals, such as rats and rabbits. Biotechnology companies, such as Fonterra, have funded many of the research studies. Their research, done on rabbits found that drinking milk can lead to heart disease. But according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, studies have shown that drinking milk can improve kidney functioning and reduce the risk of heart disease. In another study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, ”Boosting calcium intake by drinking milk could reduce healthy adults’ chances of a debilitating bone break. Healthy men and women supplemented with 1,200 mg of calcium per day – the amount in four glasses of milk – reduced their risk of bone fractures by 72 percent.” These are just a couple of studies out of thousands that have been conducted over the years. And with that said, why wouldn’t you want to drink your milk?

Ayurveda has also laid out the countless benefits of drinking milk. Ojas, as you may already know is the finest product of digestion and it represents your immune system, strength, and vitality. Drinking milk promotes and enhances the Ojas. Milk directly nourishes the life forces and also nourishes all the tissues of the body. It increases strength, promotes life span, excellent for the eyes and intellect, reverses the aging process, heals wounds, and increases virility. Furthermore, milk is used for irritable bowel syndrome, excessive thirst, is good for hyperacidity, great for heart disorders, urinary tract problems, hemorrhoids, and bleeding tendencies. Milk is excellent for emaciation, anemia, and fatigue due to excess physical exertion. Milk can be hard to digest. Therefore, if you have trouble digesting milk, boil the milk with some fresh ginger and then drink it. Boiling the milk makes the milk lighter and easier to digest. The ginger will aid in the digestion of the milk.

There are many more benefits than what I have mentioned. Milk is one of the greatest nutritional drinks out there and it is recommended for everyone. Ayurveda continues to say that milk is the first drink of life and therefore, it should be continued throughout life. In a follow-up article, I will discuss the various types of milk and why cow’s milk is most highly recommended after infancy.

Health and Happiness,

Varsha

These are just some of the most common questions people ask when they all of a sudden find themselves to be “sick.” How in the world can you fix something when you don’t know what’s broken? According to Ayurveda, the answer is simple. Ojas. Ojas, is not only the finest product of digestion, but it is also your immune system, vitality, and energy. You may have the worst of diseases, but as long as you continue to promote Ojas, you will recover from anything that you may have.

Some factors the diminish Ojas are excessive physical exertion, fasting or skipping meals, excessive hunger, rough or inadequate diet, emotions such as anxiety, grief, and worry, loss of sleep, trauma, excessive fatigue, stress, excessive sexual activity, and excessive loss of blood. The odds are, your illness could have begun with one of these factors. These factors are important to know for prevention, but it is even more important to know the factors that promote Ojas for maintaining good health. The factors that enhance Ojas are keeping the channels of circulation clean, a balanced wholesome diet, proper digestion, avoiding negativity, proper amount of sleep, regular exercise, and of course…happiness!!!

If you are sick and want to get better, go through the factors that diminish Ojas. If any of these are a part of your life, then its time to change it and bring it to the positive side. Begin to practice all that which enhances and promotes Ojas, because Ojas is your vitality and your strength. Without the proper functioning of Ojas, you will have excess fatigue, headaches, spasms, and so forth. Ojas is the vital energy that governs our physiology and therefore it is essential to keep Ojas in balance. With Ojas in balance, you will have the clarity of the mind with all the energy you need to accomplish any task.

Where do we see Ojas? Ojas is the glow we see on a pregnant woman’s face. Ojas is the innocence the children express. Ojas is the bliss and laughter we often see when we are around our loved ones and friends. Anytime you see true bliss, true love, true laughter, and/or a true glow or radiance, you are seeing Ojas. These are just a couple ways in which Ojas expresses itself.

When you can intake any sensory perception and be able to metabolize it into bliss, you are promoting and creating Ojas. No matter what you see, hear, taste, touch, smell, you should be able to metabolize all experiences into bliss and then only will you have a perfect digestion and therefore be able to create Ojas. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says, “The ability to metabolize all sensory experience into the experience of bliss is the ability for prevention. All the five channels of perception – the five senses – must be so clear that all experiences through any of the five senses always inspire bliss.” Absolute bliss is directly correlated to Ojas.

If Ojas is the final and most refined product of digestion, then that means that diet is also correlated with the promotion of Ojas. Maharishi continues to say, “Diet is anything that is taken in from any field of perception, through any sense of perception, any mode of mind, and any mode of intellect.” Therefore, if you are happy with what you eat, when you eat, where you eat, and how you eat, then you should be able to metabolize your meal into bliss, which means the end result of your digestion is Ojas. But remember, diet is more than what you eat. Diet includes any experience you have, because your body must digest and metabolize all that you intake.