By Juhi Singh
Last Updated: January 23, 2019

When I was 16, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and was prescribed medication to treat it. Even with medication, I dealt with flares that caused severe bleeding, debilitating pain, nausea, vomiting, and muscle cramps, among other symptoms. For three years my mother and I visited one specialist after another on the East Coast searching for answers. When a doctor told me I was going to need a colostomy, surgery that diverts a part of the colon to an opening in the abdominal wall to bypass damaged parts of the colon, my family and I said enough.

My aunt Asha Wollman is an Ayurvedic doctor in Mumbai, India, and a practitioner of Chinese medicine. She recommended that I spend some time with her and seek help from Eastern medicine. 

I was skeptical. But after considering life-altering surgery versus a more holistic approach, I decided I had nothing to lose.

I packed my bags and flew back to my birth country. The scents of jasmine, sage, and sesame hit me as I marched up the long white stairs into the flat where my aunt kept her practice. Inside, on Asha’s desk, sat one of her books on the Chinese philosophy of Oriental medicine. It was entitled Go With the Flow, and that’s what I intended to do.

Asha began treating me with Ayurveda medicine. Ayurveda is the traditional Hindu system of medicine that seeks balance in bodily systems through the use of diet, exercise, and breathing. It’s a highly personalized yet highly scalable form of medicine with scriptures dating back 7,000 years.

Asha assessed my doshas (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha), which constitute balance between the mind, body, and spirit. When a person’s doshas are unbalanced, they create disharmony and can cause problems like disease.

Through analysis, my aunt found that I had an increase in Pitta and Vata, which meant that my constitution was out of balance. When a constitution is in excess you can experience emotional, mental, physical complications. Autoimmune diseases are powered by an increase in the fire dosha of Pitta. Vata controls blood flow and the elimination of wastes. She concluded the increase of Vata was causing my IBD to flare up. She built a highly detailed plan formulated specifically for me, which included acupuncture, a balancing diet, and exercise.

I did acupuncture three times a week for two and a half months to address the inflammation. Asha gave me a Vata and Pitta balancing diet that consisted of foods like lots of orange cooked vegetables, mung dal, and basmati rice. I was not allowed to eat anything raw or gassy. (Although the diet was temporary, I still turn to it when I feel a Crohn’s flare coming on.)

In addition, she guided me through meditation and yoga, which I was required to do with her two to three times a week to help me learn to be better in tune with my body and how my mind affected my stomach. (I realized through meditation practice and mindfulness that when I was nervous, I had to run to the bathroom.)

All these things helped me to learn that my illness was more than a part of my body: It was related to my thoughts, my mood, my behavior, and my lifestyle.

Within two months my IBD had calmed, and astoundingly, has been mostly in remission ever since.