Dr Stephen Cabral, Naturopathic physician and qualified Ayurvedic practitioner joins me to discuss The Rain Barrel Effect. Stephen combines his years of training with a personal approach to healthcare to effectively treat the individual. Stephen brings to light ancient wisdom in a modern setting to help his patients get well, lose weight and feel alive again.

Selected Links from the Episode

Stephen Cabral website

Unstress episode with Dr Shankardev Saraswati on mind and body connections

Unstress episode with Professor Grant Schofield on fasting

Unstress episode with Professor Marc Cohen on toxicity and extreme wellness

Dosha Quiz 

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm Dr Ron Ehrlich. The rain barrel effect. Well, you will hear it. It's a metaphor and your bodies are of the barrel but a bit of background before I introduce my guests. A personal approach to healthcare is where we're headed, and I think it's worth establishing a few definitions because you're going to be hearing these a lot. It's not just in this episode but in general.

Functional medicine. Now that is a term you will hear not just today but, in the future, and it refers to an individualised medical care that recognises the interaction between genetics and environmental factors and how they impact on the body's interconnected system. As opposed to the way 90% of our current medical system works which is just focus on an individual symptom as being somehow separate requiring some sort of pharmaceutical intervention. A drug to manage it. Well, as they are not separate those symptoms your body is a whole that is W-H-O-L-E with a nervous system, digestive systems, circulatory respiratory immune lymphatic system, the connections between mind and body between the gut and the brain. It's really a holistic approach to medicine. So, that is functional medicine. Nutritional and environmental medicine is I think pretty self-explanatory it incorporates nutritional and environmental factors that impact on an individual's health. Incorporating knowledge of how those factors might impact on an individual and really uses a functional medicine approach.

Now integrative medicine is another term you hear, and it refers to the treatment and care of the whole person. Again, a partnership between patient and practitioners. That's something that underpins a holistic view of health care. It's a common denominator in all holistic approaches recognising the interconnectedness of the mind, the body and the spirit but it integrates therapies of conventional medicine taking the best of medicine with other practices sometimes referred to as complementary and alternative medicine. So, there's another term. Integrated medicine really takes the best of Western medicine with other modalities like acupuncture, manipulative therapies meditation etc. And above all of these, whether it's integrated medicine, functional medicine or nutritional and environmental medicine, all of these methods facilitate the body's incredible innate healing response.

So, what about Ayurvedic medicine? Well, Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word that translates as the science of life. It's the world's oldest holistic healing practice, it's around, well, that's been around for thousands of years and it originated in India where the tradition is still widely practiced today. Ayurveda is based on the belief that everything in the universe is connected I like that idea because it's true. We're all connected so we're all affected. And Ayurveda refers to the universe being made up of five key elements earth, water, fire, air and space. Remember this was well before quantum physics confirmed that every atom in the universe is both mass and energy but I digress.

According to Ayurveda, everyone in the universe is unique with each of us made up of a unique constitution dosha. I think it's called dosha or body types and they referred to three doshas,