Have you ever noticed some people seem to age more vibrantly than others? Even into their 80s and beyond, they move with energy, their minds stay sharp, and they maintain an inspiring independence. Meanwhile, others become frail and struggle with decreasing vitality year after year. It makes you wonder – what’s their secret? Is it just genetics, or is something else going on? What if there was a way to unlock your body’s natural ability to reduce inflammation, repair cells, and thrive as you grow older?
My guest today has uncovered ancient wisdom that could help all of us age with more vitality, health, energy, and ease. Avanti Kumar-Singh, is an internationally recognized Ayurveda and integrative medicine practitioner, and traditionally-trained physician. Her unique approach brings together the best of Western medicine with the ancient knowledge of Ayurveda from her South Asian lineage. After navigating her own journey with breast cancer, Avanti realized the importance of not just preventing future illness, but actively protecting our health and wellness in the present moment.
In her new book The Longevity Formula: Ayurvedic Principles to Reduce Inflammation, Increase Cellular Repair, and Live with Vitality, Avanti shares a five-part blueprint for igniting our body’s innate healing ability. Imagine moving through life’s later decades with sustained energy, sharpness of mind, and independence. This conversation will open your eyes to what’s possible when you start living in harmony with nature’s rhythms.
You can find Avanti at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
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Episode Transcript:
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:00:00] I think the goal really is to get our healthspan to equal our lifespan. That I think, is success. That’s living a beautiful life, that’s living a good life. Right. That when you can live however many years you’re going to be on this planet, you can live all of those years or most almost of all of those years with health and vitality. I’m. Sign me up. That’s what I want.
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:27] So have you ever noticed that some people seem to age more vibrantly than others, even into their 80s and beyond? They move with energy and their minds stay sharp and they maintain an inspiring independence. And meanwhile, others become frail and struggle with decreasing vitality year after year. It makes you wonder what is their secret? Is it just genetics or is something else going on? What if there is a way to unlock your body’s natural ability to do things like reduce inflammation, repair cells, and truly thrive as you grow older? My guest today has uncovered ancient wisdom that could help us all age with more vitality and health, energy and ease. Avanti Kumar Singh is an internationally recognized Ayurveda and integrative medicine practitioner and traditionally trained physician. Her unique approach it brings together the best of Western medicine with the ancient knowledge of Ayurveda from her South Asian lineage, and after navigating her own journey with breast cancer, Avanti realized the importance of not just preventing future illness, but actively protecting our health and wellness in the present moment. In her new book, The Longevity Formula Ayurvedic Principles to Reduce inflammation, Increase Cellular Repair and Live with vitality, Avanti shares a five-part blueprint for really igniting our body’s innate healing ability. So imagine moving through life’s later decades with sustained energy and sharpness of mind and independence. This conversation will open your eyes to what’s possible when you start living in harmony with Ayurveda and Nature’s rhythms. So excited to share this conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:11] You and I have been rolling together a little bit professionally as friends for years now. Have been fascinated on a multiple levels. One, as somebody who started out in a very Western medicine setting and emergency medicine in a major city, right, doing the whole thing and then really having an awakening to Ayurvedic practices. Right. And then that now being informed in a much more personal way through your own journey through breast cancer over the last couple of years. Yeah. So I want to dive into all of this because it’s really informed what I see as sort of like an emerging and different approach to how we step into the second half, the third half, whatever it is you may call the later seasons of our lives as we have this conversation. How has the last year or two shifted your perspective on really what it means to be well?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:03:05] I would say it has shifted it in so many ways. I set out to write this book on longevity right before I got, well, I should say, my body got this diagnosis of breast cancer. I’m really careful to use that language just because I’m so much more than my body. And I really was thinking about longevity because I was approaching my 50th birthday. I’m now 53, so it’s been a couple of years since I started this project. And, you know, for me it was about how are all of my elders, my, you know, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents living into their 80s and 90s. So. Well, I mentioned this because I think that my perception and sort of idea of wellness goes beyond sort of what I’ve been thinking about for so long, which was sort of like preventative in the future. And all of a sudden when I turned 50, it sort of was like, oh, it’s not in the future. It’s it’s now, you know, and really thinking about how does that play out? And what was the secret sauce that my family members were sort of using to live in this way where they were so vibrant, you know, living independently, not really in pain, able to, you know, do all of the things of life, whether it’s going to the grocery store or cooking for themselves or bathing themselves.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:04:30] Things that, you know, we take for granted as we get older, that we’re going to be able to do all of those things. But they were able to do this and they were so sharp cognitively, they’re so invested and connected to their families and their communities. And so I really started thinking about wellness from this perspective of like, how am I going to continue this wellness now as I’m going into my 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, right? And then I get hit with this diagnosis four months into writing this book. And it really shifted my perception again, because then it became not just about prevention, about wellness necessarily, but I had this realization over the course of the year that it is about protection, protection of your health today, every day now, not again, that it’s something in the future, but that what we are doing through a healing system like Ayurveda, with all of these amazing practices that we’ve been doing for 5000 years, that it’s not preventative. It is preventative, but it’s not just preventative, it’s protective. So that’s sort of the lens that I think really sort of emerged for me from this experience in the past two years.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:50] I wanted to dive into that a little bit more, but I don’t want to skip over a correction that you just made to yourself. When you were describing this. You started by saying, I got this diagnosis and then you corrected yourself and said, my body got this diagnosis. And that seems like a really important distinction to you. I’d love to tease that out a little bit.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:06:07] Yeah. You know, it was something that one of my spiritual teachers taught me many years ago. And yeah, I would, you know, use that language, you know, sort of really try to practice it. But it became really, really important when I was first told that my body was diagnosed with breast cancer. And the reason it was so important is that it allowed me to understand myself to be so much more than this physical container, this body. I realized that I am the I am that I’m so much more. I’m a soul within this container, which is something I’ve always believed. And it was really, really sort of very ever present to me is like, okay, so you’ve believed that for a long time, but now do you really believe it? And so can you really lean into this idea? Because I will tell you, Jonathan, when I found out and this all happened very fast, you know, I went in for a mammogram and the mammogram took a little longer. Then there was an ultrasound and I knew what was going to happen. I mean, I’m a doctor. I knew what was going to happen. And within three days I got this diagnosis back, right? I was pissed off. I was really, really angry. I’m like, are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? I have been taking care of people my whole life, like since I was a kid.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:07:28] Family, roles, responsibilities, being the elder daughter of an immigrant family. My nature is such that I love to help people. I always want to take care of people. And then I chose a profession that is helping people. I’m an MD, right? I literally have been taking care of people my whole life and I’m like, this is what I get. And I’ve been practicing an Ayurvedic lifestyle since I was a child and went back to Ayurveda from from Western medicine. And I’m like, are you kidding? And I think the only way that I could figure out how to move forward was to have this understanding that I am so much more than my body, because if I had just stayed in that place of I and continually identifying with my body and saying I have breast cancer, I think it would have been really, really difficult for me to get through it. And so I had to really sort of sit with it and change the language and realize I’m so much more. And that is, I think what really helped me get through all of this. So it was really important for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:30] I mean, it’s a subtle but a powerful distinction. And as we know, you know, like the language, I mean, the research is clear that the language we use, not just with others, but the language we use with ourselves to ourselves, sure has a very real impact. I mean, I was never somebody who sort of like overly woowoo or metaphysical, but you actually start to see like, interesting. No, actually, there’s this real thing about the chatter that we actually, like, actively spin in our heads. Right? Has a very real and measurable effect physiologically, psychologically. So this is one of those like tropes that actually has some real power behind it.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:09:05] Absolutely. And I think it’s so powerful because I think that we forget how incredibly expansive we are as human beings. We are beings, right? We’re not just humans. We’re beings inside of this human form. And when we limit ourselves to this body, we’re limiting ourselves. We’re not tapping into that expansive nature that we have and the connection that we have with the entire universe, which, you know, sort of goes into what Ayurveda is really about, right, is connecting with all of nature, with the universe around us. And so I think that there’s just a limit that we put on ourselves when we identify too much with the physical body.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:50] So I want to acknowledge something here also though, and get your take on this, because I have no doubt, you know, we have a large global audience. There will be somebody listening to this who either has navigated a diagnosis or has recently diagnosis or is in the middle of this. Who’s listening to this? And I don’t want that person to feel in any way that what you’re saying is minimizing the reality and the hardness of the experience that they’re in or that they’ve been through.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:10:18] No. And I absolutely I would never want to suggest that. I think what I’m maybe sort of saying is that, yes, the pain is real. The discomfort is real. Distress is real. When you receive a diagnosis like this, when you’re going through any kind of a symptom. Right. But and like, you know, you can hold two truths is that and you are so much more than that. I mean, that’s my belief, right? And it’s again, not to minimize that, but also to say, is there more to this? Can I lean into the possibility that there is more than what I’m feeling physically in my body? And so again, it’s not to dismiss anything that anyone’s feeling or to make light of that at all. I think it’s just to maybe broaden how we look at it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:11:08] Yeah, that makes sense to me. When you start with your Western medicine background, you bring in the Ayurvedic traditions that have been with you for part of your life, but but became a much more centered thing in your professional life as well. In recent years, what you’ve been navigating in the last few years, and then all this simultaneously is happening while you’re sitting down, like writing a book about how do we age beautifully and well and and live, like, really well. And this is something you write to actually early in the book is sort of like this notion of like, we need to also broaden the lens here and really understand like there’s this paradox about there are some myths and some assumptions that we make about what it means to actually age in this country that aren’t necessarily true or helpful.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:11:53] Yeah, it was that sort of realization, like I was telling you before, when I turned 50 or was on the eve of my 50th birthday and remembering my grandfather and sort of how much he influenced me and this understanding of like, what he was when he was turning 50, 60, 70 is not the picture that I was given growing up in America. I was born and raised in the States. My parents came here from India. The pictures were so paradoxical in a way for me of what I saw in Western culture and adds, you know, about dentures and orthopedic shoes and walkers and all these things that were not my personal experience because I’m seeing my grandfather in his 50s and 60s and 70s with no problems. I mean, he’s walking, you know, 5 or 6 miles every morning, and he’s fully cognitively there and really sharp. And I think it’s just it was it was such a different picture. And so I started thinking about aging in the East, in South Asia, in India, it’s looked at as such a different experience than what it is in the West. We really look at it as the idea of wisdom hood, right? We have childhood, then we have adulthood, and then we transition into this beautiful space of wisdom hood. And I love that term because it’s it’s so much about we are more than our physical body. You know, it’s sort of getting into that realm, but it’s also adding this piece, this layer of the importance of elders and the wisdom that we have as we go into our 50s. 60s 70s and it makes it a beautiful time. It makes the process of aging a very empowering time. It makes it a time that you actually have even more importance to the people around you, your friends, your family. And that’s also been my experience, too, of what happens as you age.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:57] There’s that level of the experience, but there’s also the very real practical level, sort of like on the ground that it feels like in Western culture, in Western medicine, we’re figuring out a lot of ways to extend the number of years on the planet. Right? So like we’re adding time, but at the same time, we’re also experiencing levels of chronic illness and disease and disability, where you start to tease out this distinction. This is something you speak to between lifespan, like simply having more time on the planet and healthspan like, how are you actually feeling during that time on the planet? It seems like so much of the focus is more years, and I feel like we’re just coming around to. But how are you actually feeling during those years?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:14:42] Yeah. You know, I mean, Western medicine is so good at extending our chronological lifespan. We’re going to get older every year. That’s just a fact of life. We can’t stop that from happening. And Western medicine can make those years keep going and going and going. We can live longer and longer and longer. But the question is, how are we living those years, those extra years? Are we living them with disability and disease and illness, or are we living them with vitality and energy and connection and participation in life? Right. I think that’s the real question. And that’s the difference. And that’s really healthspan that vitality. You know, I think the goal really is to get our healthspan to equal our lifespan that I think, is success. That’s living a beautiful life, that’s living a good life, right? That when you can live however many years you’re going to be on this planet, you can live all of those years or most almost of all of those years with health and vitality. I’m. Sign me up. That’s what I want.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:51] Yeah. I mean, it’s so powerful. It’s interesting. I remember, you know, years back stumbling upon Gawande’s book on being mortal and, you know, really being introduced to this notion of a, quote, a good death and how it’s also kind of foreign in Western culture to really even think about this. Sure. And it’s really focusing around sort of the time fairly immediately before when somebody passes and the decisions they make and how they want to be sure. But, you know, we also don’t even look at that in the larger context of the whole final third of our time here. You know, like what is what does it actually mean to spend that time well and to feel well along the way? So when you start to zoom the lens out a bit and you’re bringing in all of the different worlds and expertise that you sort of like look at to figure out, okay, so how do we look at this time and really age beautifully? You it’s like you create your own model here basically that brings together different worlds. You have a form of the longevity formula, which sort of says, okay, so what if we actually pulled from all these disparate places, took the wisdom and the intelligence and the science from them, and saw how they came together in a coherent framework, and they’re sort of like these two macro focuses. One is the notion of cellular repair, and the other is the notion of reducing inflammation. I’d love to sort of take them one at a time and explore them a bit.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:17:11] I started thinking about, from an Ayurvedic perspective, what’s happening. Like, how is it that my elders are aging in this way? And I sort of went back to all the books and sort of started looking like, what are we really trying to do here? And what I came up with is that we’re trying to nourish the tissue layers in Ayurveda. There are seven tissue layers that we talk about or dhatus. And really, what I was finding over and over again is that when we nourish those tissue layers, we will age vibrantly, we increase our longevity, or we support our longevity. And so then I had to start thinking, okay, well, what does that mean from a Western standpoint? Right. Because I always want to bring those together. I’m so integrative and I’m I’m Western trained and a scientist. And I also know that the Western mind wants to know why they want the proof. And so I was like, well, how does this line up? And what I found is that this idea of tissue nourishment, of nourishing the tissues increases longevity. So the opposite is also true, that tissue depletion causes physiological aging. Right. And this sort of morbidity and mortality that we talk about in Western medicine. And what I saw is that the tissue depletion happens from these two things, which is decreased cellular repair and increased inflammation. Okay. And that’s important because what we’re doing is we’re having this accumulation of cellular damage in the tissues, which causes all the problems, which causes the depletion of the tissues. And so there’s where I saw the bridge. Right. That the tissues become depleted because we have all of these cells lying around that are not getting cleared, that are causing more inflammation.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:19:05] And that’s what causes the depletion of the tissues and physiological aging. So that’s where I made those connections. And so cellular repair is just that. It’s like how do we as we age our cells don’t repair as well as we get chronologically older. So how can we increase that cellular repair or decrease the cellular damage, which we talk a lot about. And then the second part of that longevity formula is how can we decrease inflammation. And actually both of them work together, because when you have a lot of junky cell parts, like sort of just lying around because we’re not clearing them, we’re not repairing them, that also causes this chronic low grade inflammation. And we know that low grade inflammation and problems with our cellular repair are both linked directly to sort of the nine mechanisms of aging that we talk about in integrative medicine. There’s these nine mechanisms that are pretty sort of widely agreed upon as mechanisms of aging. And so this kind of all just sort of came together for me. And I was like, oh, I get it, I get it. And I started to look at, well, how is it that we are nourishing the tissues through all these things that we would do in Ayurveda that I grew up seeing my grandfather do every day, that my elders do, that I’ve written about in my other book and we’ve talked about on this podcast before, that. How does that really play into sort of this idea of longevity? And that was sort of the aha light bulbs that went off for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:40] I mean, it’s so interesting, right? It seems like there’s either a benevolent or destructive cycle that can spiral around between cellular repair and inflammation, you know, and it’s sort of like if you don’t address both, then you almost have like a broken cycle. And if you have this, you know, sort of chronic low grade inflammation. You mentioned a couple of times this notion of cell parts or dead cells or old cells. Yeah, I have heard in different conversations this phrase zombie cell repeated a number of times over the years, or senescence. Is this what we’re talking about here?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:21:16] Yeah, that’s one of the ways that we have these sort of zombie cells hanging around, you know, these cells that should be cleared that are not. But it’s also, you know, cells that are damaged through genetic damage. Right. The DNA damage that will happen or the protein damage that will happen, mitochondrial damage, like all of these things are related to the cell, and it will cause the damage in the cell where it’s not going to get cleared. As we age, the clearing repairing process slows down. And so they’re kind of hanging around. So it’s not just the zombie cells, but it’s all these other mechanisms of aging that cause damage to the cells and then cause the inflammation. So it’s kind of all of those.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:58] That makes sense. And as you’re describing those, I’m like, oh, but wait, aren’t those all the things that just happen naturally with aging? And it sounds like you’re saying, well, some yes, some of this is just the it’s some of this is going to happen at an accelerated rate, but maybe not at the rate that many of us are experiencing.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:22:17] Exactly. I think that’s the point is that as we age, as we get chronologically older, these processes accumulate, right? Whereas when we were a little bit younger, chronologically, we can sort of repair all of those problems that are happening all the time that are natural, right? Dna damage, protein damage, mitochondrial damage. These are things that happen all the time when at every age, it’s just that we don’t repair it as well as we get older. And then on top of that, if we’re not clearing it and it’s hanging around, it’s causing inflammation in the tissues. So we have like a double whammy from that. That’s what’s happening.
Jonathan Fields: [00:22:58] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You mentioned these nine biological mechanisms of aging. Can we walk through those a bit. Yeah.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:23:11] So the first is genetic or DNA damage. You know that’s really damage to our genetic blueprint. That can happen through all types of misreading of the DNA. When it replicates, you’ll have all these problems and and how the DNA is unreplicated and that causes damage to the cells. That’s the first one. The next one is telomere shortening. And you can think of telomeres like these little caps on the end of the DNA that protect it. And what happens is as we age we start to lose those protective caps. And then that causes problems. So that’s another mechanism of aging. The third is epigenetic changes. Right. Epigenetics is sort of gotten a lot of talk over the last, you know, 20 or 30 years. The original, you know, by Bruce Lipton, the biology of belief when he talked about this. And epigenetic is just that. It’s epi on top of our genes. And it’s the idea that we can turn on and off the switches for genes through lifestyle. And that’s why lifestyle medicine and all these practices quite you know, these things that we do in Ayurveda are so incredibly powerful because they have the power to turn on and turn off genes. So that’s epigenetic changes. The next is protein damage. Right. Damage to the building blocks and messengers of our DNA of our cells.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:24:40] The next is dysregulated nutrient sensing. I mean, there’s been a lot of talk about those. There’s sort of four main mechanisms as of today when we’re recording this podcast, which really talks about how food influences our genetic expression, how it switches on the longevity switch or switches off the longevity switch. Another mechanism. So the sixth one is mitochondrial dysfunction, right. Mitochondria are the powerhouses in our cells and they can get damaged. So then we have decreased energy sources and that causes problems in physiological aging. The next is senescent cells. As you talked about the zombie cells that kind of just hang around too long. They don’t go away and they cause all this inflammation. The eighth is stem cell exhaustion, which is, you know, stem cells are the potential for us to become anything. And so we start to lose that potential for differentiation. And that can cause aging. And then the last is something we called inflammaging, which is sort of this wrong kind of inflammation. And you know, we have too much inflammation that is harmful and less of the inflammation that’s protective. And inflammaging is related to all of the other eight mechanisms. So that’s just kind of a really quick I.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:02] Mean, but as you’re describing them, it really sounds like, like these are all things that are influenceable by the choices that we make and the behaviors that we engage in.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:26:13] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think that so many of us feel that we are sort of doomed to whatever our genes are, you know, whatever we’ve sort of been given, you know. And I don’t think we understand how much we can influence it exactly is what you’re saying, because all of these mechanisms we know we can influence through lifestyle, through diet, through stress management, through all of the things that we talk about in Ayurveda that we’ve been talking about for 5000 years, and that we now have the proof that it works.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:49] Do these nine mechanisms you were saying you sort of saw a corollary between the seven layers of bodily tissues, do the nine mechanisms of aging from a sort of a more modern, a more Western lens also have sort of an Ayurvedic overlay that kind of matches? Or is it a different approach to understanding?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:27:12] I think it’s a little bit of a different approach, and I think it’s more of the nourishment of the tissues. Right. And so I think these mechanisms of aging come into that, the formula. Right, that we can actually nourish the tissues by increasing cellular repair and decreasing inflammation. And so that’s where these nine mechanisms connect to nourishment of the tissues. So if we can influence these nine physiological mechanisms of aging we will nourish the tissues all seven tissue layers and therefore support longevity. That’s where they connect. So there’s not a correlation of, you know, nine mechanisms and something in Ayurveda. But that’s where they connect is in the tissues the tissue nourishment.
Jonathan Fields: [00:27:55] Got it. You mentioned you used the word earlier tattoos. Is that roughly like what the name of a layer would be like the seven. Yeah. Okay.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:28:03] So tissue is thought through. Yep.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:05] I’ve also heard and probably a lot of other people who’ve had any level of exposure to Ayurveda have heard this word. Dosha. Does this tie into this conversation in any meaningful way?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:28:15] It ties in in the aspect of, you know, the doshas are about the five elements. Right. And this idea that everything in the universe is made of five elements space, air, fire, water, and earth, and that each of us has a unique mind, body, constitution, or those constitution that we are born with. That is sort of our natural state of balance. When we start to move away from that state of balance, then we start to have symptoms illness, chronic disease. And it can be really subtle. It can be really, really obvious. It just depends on how far you are away from your natural state of balance. So how does that connect to the tissues? It’s a complicated set of connections, but I’ll try and make it simple. Is that based on your dosha you also have a propensity to have certain tissues that will not be nourished as well. That’s one one mechanism. The second is, is that all of these tissues are nourished by the elements, by the doshas in different ways. So you have sort of this dual mechanism happening where if the tissues are not nourished completely by these doshas, by these elements, they can also become depleted. So it’s the more complicated connection. But yes, they are connected.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:40] On a meta level here. If the big idea is that in order for us to not just extend our years on the planet, but also live well during those years, be as healthy as we can during those years age well that we have to replenish our tissues, we have to nourish our tissues. Then the big obvious question here is how? Where do where do we even begin? Um, and you lay out a number of different things to explore. Um, so maybe let’s touch into some of those things, you know, and one of these is a conversation around toxins. And I think this is, again, one of those areas where when some people hear the word, they roll their eyes and they’re like, oh dear. Really? We’re like, we’re going there again. Isn’t just this part of like, this sort of like kind of strange wellness culture? Take me into this conversation around toxins in a way that feels more grounded.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:30:35] The idea of toxins is that when you have a toxic load in your system, it’s not going to function well. Okay. So that’s sort of the grounding principle there, right? We can all agree that if you have a lot of garbage sitting around, it’s going to cause problems, right. And that’s really what toxins are. The problem is, is that toxins is a word that has so many multiple meanings. And it’s used so many different ways in Western culture that it kind of confuses things from the Ayurvedic perspective, we have a digestive fire, or agni that is sort of a metaphor for digestive capacity. And when we have a strong, healthy digestive fire, which we now know in Western medicine is the gut brain, right? We know that digestive health is connected to every health issue, that there is right in, every connected to every organ system, every organ, every cell. It’s all connected. We have this Agni, and Agni is a metaphor for our ability to keep what we need and get rid of what we don’t. When we don’t have a healthy Agni, we’re going to have a build up of a lot of toxins, a lot of garbage, a lot of stuff that we don’t need, which causes problems. So that’s kind of where this toxin idea in Ayurveda comes from. It’s not specifically like the toxins in our environment or in our food? It includes that, but it’s so much more. It’s about the toxins that we’re taking in and not releasing from our relationships, from the conversations that we have, from the work that we do, from the spaces that we live and work and play in. And it’s not just like the environmental toxins and the paint and the construction, but the toxins from just having a messy environment or disheveled or disorganized environment and how that affects you. Right. So it’s toxins in. So it’s such a broader perspective than the idea that we have in Western culture of toxins.
Jonathan Fields: [00:32:42] It’s interesting to think of it that way as you just described. It’s the toxins that may emerge from a particular relationship. Right. Bridge that gap for me a little bit, though, because somebody’s going to hear that and think we’ve all heard the phrase a toxic relationship, right? Yep. But how does that toxic relationship land as being a toxin in my body.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:33:03] Anything that is going to cause a stress on the system. Anything that is a stressor that is going to cause a sympathetic stress response in your system is toxic to you. It is going to cause problems. So the connection is if you have a toxic relationship where there’s a lot of arguments or bad feelings or hard feelings, right, or hurt feelings, at some point that’s going to start to affect your emotional health, right? It causes stress. Just being around somebody who you have a toxic relationship or a difficult relationship with causes anxiety. You know, how many times do we feel so anxious when we’re in the presence of, you know, maybe a difficult boss or a difficult colleague or a difficult family member? Right. We’re coming up on the holidays, right? Thanksgiving is like a huge trigger for so many people for this exact reason, right? Relationships cause a lot of stress. It puts us into a sympathetic response, which when we’re in a sympathetic response, we’re releasing all these hormones. Now, those are actually a good thing at a modulated pace. The problem is, is that in our modern life, we’re in that stress response 24 hours a day. That’s not how we were designed and that’s what causes problems. So pulling back, right. A stressful toxic relationship causes stress, causes the release of all of these hormones at a pace that is detrimental to our health. That’s the connection.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:44] So when we’re thinking about the experience of toxins in our body, then we really need to think more expansively. It’s not just like, what am I eating? What am I drinking, what am I breathing in? Which is part of it. Like that. Maybe like this. Measurable things. These are particles that come in that are, you know, actively toxic in our system. But we also need to think more expansively as how am I spending my days? Who am I with? What is the nature of my relationships is, you know, like, am I exerting myself in a way that is devoid of purpose and kindness and dignity? Or like, am I being nourished by the things that I’m doing and that these things can, all through the cascade you just described effectively become sources of toxins?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:35:26] Yes, absolutely. You hit it on the head. Absolutely. And I think that that expansive view is so important for us to think about, because we get so sort of fixated in Western culture on the toxins in our water and our food. And again, those are all really important. But here’s the thing. You can be eating the cleanest, most organic, pesticide free diet in the world, and you’ll still be sick if you don’t fix the relationships that you have in your life. If you don’t feel a sense of purpose and connection to other people, those things will affect your health. And so the focus on just the food that you’re eating, without thinking about relationships and career and purpose and kindness and connection, you’re going to miss something. You’re going to have health issues.
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:19] And I completely am on board with that, too, which, you know, as we move further into life also, and it sounds like part of what you’re arguing is that like over time, this will accumulate and really affect how you age.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:36:29] Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think that that’s so important as we step into those wisdom years to really consider, what do I want this period of life to look like? And even for people who are in their 20s and 30s, they should be thinking about this also. You know, the earlier you start, the better off you’re going to be because you’re going to you’re going to have those processes just, you know, going sort of, you know, humming along smoothly. I would encourage everybody who’s even younger to really think about this because it does affect your health in the future, but especially for those of us who are, you know, sort of stepping into this next phase or next era of life, these are important things to think about. It’s really important.
Jonathan Fields: [00:37:11] Beyond thinking about them in the context of toxins. Yeah. What can we start thinking about on the doing side here?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:37:20] Before I get to that, let me just talk about the longevity switches. And removing toxins is one of those. Right. There are five sort of longevity switches that I identified. And I kind of grouped the different practices that we do in Ayurveda in those different five longevity switches. And removing toxins is one of them. The second is adding prana or life force energy. The third is to move that prana because we need to move that prana around, we can’t just add it. Gotta move it. Cycle it through so that we’re moving it through the energy body. We’re moving it through the physical body. The fourth is to sync with nature. We know about circadian medicine and how important that is. And then the fifth is to feed or nourish the system. Some of what we were talking about with connection, community purpose. And so there’s those five, you know, longevity switches. And so the doing part becomes, well, what can I do to switch those switches on? That’s the way I like to think about it and to even talk about it with people, because I find that when people understand the why and how these simple practices we do every day are related to switching the longevity switch on to like, oh, I’m going to do that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:38] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So before we go to the to how to the how to switch some of them on, then I do want to spend a little bit more time understanding what we talked about. Like one of them. But you know, you use. The second one was was adding prana. Yeah. Anyone who’s taken a yoga class in the last ten years has heard the word prana, and probably had no idea what it meant, or worn the clothing brand as you like it. And you describe it as. And I’ve heard it described as as life force again, in the name of trying to speak to the broadest number of people here. Talk to me more about what you actually mean by this.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:39:16] The most important sources of prana are the air, the sun, and water. Now, we know from a Western standpoint that those are all really important for our health, right? We need water. We’re mostly made of water. We need light and sunlight for many reasons, you know, including circadian rhythm, which controls everything. And we need air. We have to breathe it. Right. Those are all sources of prana that are so important. They’re not just life force energy, they’re actually components of things that we need to function and to live. So there’s the connection, right? So if you if you sort of have a hard time thinking about prana and energy, you can think about it as these elements that we just need to live. That’s how I would bridge the gap there.
Jonathan Fields: [00:40:08] I mean, it’s interesting when I think about it, that’s sort of like, so there’s an energy within us that we derive, at least in part, from energy or from the natural environment around us. At the same time, we are also bioelectrical beings. There’s like a little measurable, you know, like current that moves through us. Do you equate or do you make any sort of like overlay there between the eastern notion of prana and the little electrical fields that move through our body?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:40:37] Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think the electrical fields are sort of the scientific way of explaining life force energy that we can’t see, and that I think that they’re actually one and the same. I mean, Einstein said energy is not created or destroyed, right? And this he’s talking about a mathematical equation, but it’s actually about energy that we’re talking about from a prana standpoint, from the life force energy. They’re one and the same thing. It’s just how do you think about it? See, again, this is where like the words sometimes get in the way because the way we use it in Western, it’s like.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:17] We just want to lock it down. We’re like like, just give me the rational, scientific, like granular description so I can just like put it in my head. And it’s like some things actually aren’t that simplified.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:41:29] Right, exactly, exactly. I mean, you know, when you think about it, the Earth has a resonance called the Schumann resonance, right? It’s a frequency that we can actually measure on the Earth. It’s like its heartbeat, actually, because there have been studies that have been done. You know, there was a study that was done back in the 1960s. I want to say I may be wrong. I have to double check. But there was a scientist who basically put a bunch of people in a bunker where they did not have access to sort of the Schumann resonance, as it was called, this frequency of the earth. And they found that these people just went a little bananas. They really started to have health issues because they were not connected to the heartbeat of the earth. They then took a speaker and put it into that bunker with the frequency and everyone’s health issues resolved.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:19] Mhm.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:42:19] We quite literally are connected to the energy of the universe and it impacts our health. So again, it’s not always easy to understand how these equate but they do.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:32] You also described one of the switches. And now that we have a little bit more understanding around prana as moving prana like this is another switch. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about this notion of actually, like taking this feel this life force, this energy, and being able to intentionally move it.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:42:52] So the idea here is that energy is the blueprint for the physical body according to Ayurveda and and even yoga. So the energetic body is a blueprint in Ayurveda and even yoga we believe, and even in Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, we believe that when there is a blockage of energy flow, there will be issues. So you’ll have symptoms, illness, chronic disease, depending again on how big the blockage is, how long it’s been there, has it created blockages in other areas of the body? That’s why, you know, we have things like acupuncture and marma therapy. These are all things to help with unblocking energy blocks. When we’re talking about moving prana, it’s exactly that. It’s to increase the flow of that energy through the body so that we can get rid of those blockages so that we can resolve the symptoms, and then we have better health. So that’s where that idea of moving prana comes from. Now again, we can equate that to something very simple to understand from a Western standpoint, which is to just move the breath when we breathe. If we breathe better and we consciously breathe, we are going to really help to increase the flow of that oxygen. For all the physiological reasons, our cells need oxygen to live, but we’re also moving energy through the body and we’re decreasing those, the blockages. So it’s sort of like we’re doing two things at once. So the breath is really a way to understand prana, to understand how to move energy through the body.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:29] And along those same lines, I would imagine that physical movement is also one of these other ways. I wonder, maybe you can clarify something. I remember years ago reading some research on the lymphatic system, which is one of the core systems in the body. That helps really sort of like cleanse a lot and also move around. Sure. It’s critical in immune function. But unlike the respiratory system which has a pump, the lungs, unlike the cardiac or cardio respiratory system which has a pump in the heart, it was my understanding that the lymphatic system, which is really critical to move things around through, actually doesn’t have a designated pump, and that things like physical movement and breath are actually the pump. Exactly. So it sounds like this is sort of like another overlay there. Right.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:45:14] It’s another way to get rid of toxins. Right. To the lymph system is the lymphatic system is the way that we get rid of stuff that we don’t need. Again, when you are moving, when you’re walking, when you’re doing yoga, when you’re swimming, when you’re doing any kind of movement dancing, any of those things are going to help. They basically are squeezing the muscles, which is helping to move the lymph because they’re all connected. They’re all in the same area. It acts as a pump to move that lymph through the system and get rid of toxins.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:47] Yeah, sort of like you’re flipping a couple switches all at once. Exactly. So one of them is also what you described is syncing with nature. And on the one hand, I can see, you know, probably folks saying, well, that of course I can go for a walk. I can be around nature, I can be around trees. I could put plants in. But there’s something bigger that you describe here, which I thought was interesting, which is also syncing with the rhythms, the rhythms and the like, the micro and macro rhythms of nature.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:46:14] Yeah. You know, this goes to circadian medicine. 2017 The Nobel Prize for medicine was given to a group of researchers that discovered the mechanisms of the circadian clock. And so we know that living with the cycle of nature on a daily basis. Let’s just start there with the path of the sun through the sky is absolutely connected to our internal body clocks, our circadian rhythm. Why is that important? Well, because it actually connects to all of our hormonal control. The two big pieces, the two big sort of characters in that story are melatonin and cortisol. Melatonin is our sleep hormone. It helps us go to sleep. Cortisol wakes us up. Those two hormones have a downstream effect on all of the hormones in the body. When you have a dysregulation of that system of the release of those two hormones, you’re going to have problems. Light is actually one of the primary controls of those two hormones. When the brain senses that there’s decreased light, it says, oh, nighttime is coming, daytime is over, nighttime is over. I got to get ready to sleep. It’ll start increasing melatonin to help us go to sleep. And then the flip side is true in the morning as our brain starts to sense that there’s more light, it says, oh, it’s daytime, let’s turn off the melatonin and let’s increase the cortisol.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:47:39] When we live in harmony with that path of the sun, we wake up when the day is breaking, when the sun is waking up and we, you know, are awake during the daytime when the sun is awake. And then we go to sleep when the sun is going to sleep, we are in harmony with nature. We’re living in harmony with that micro daily cycle of nature. At a macro level, when we start to live in harmony with the seasons of nature through seasonal eating, seasonal living again, we’re harmonizing with the cycles of nature. We’re going to have better health, like why we go inside and stay indoors in a warm area when it’s cold outside, right? We’re living in harmony. We’re not just sitting outside in the cold weather and not protected. You know, we’re bringing, you know, warm clothes or right. These are all things that we’ve known to do over centuries. As human beings, we just know how to live with nature. The problem is, is in our modern life and our modern world, there are so much technology that can help us not live in harmony with nature. And that’s where the problems start.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:50] So if you were to look at the technology that is most disruptive to our ability to live with nature right now, what would you point to?
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:49:00] Computers. So I think it’s these computers. I mean, you’re talking over a computer, but it’s the blue light from these little phones that we carry everywhere with us and read on tablets and work all day on a computer. So it’s not only the blue light, but it’s also sitting still and not moving. Right. Moving the lymph, moving the prana. It’s the neck position that we’re in when we’re looking at our phones, right. These are all I feel like it’s so much a part of this story with our computers, I don’t remember. I mean, me and you are pretty close in age. When we were growing up, we didn’t have all this stuff. I feel like we were so much healthier for so many reasons. And, you know, emotionally from social media and all these things. But we didn’t have laptops. I mean, I remember typing my college applications on a typewriter and having correction ink, right. It’s very different. I feel like we have so many health issues because of the technology that we have.
Jonathan Fields: [00:49:56] It is so interesting, right? We have this like incredible technology that allows us to flatten the world and connect with each other and on one level, and do so much and accomplish so much and learn so much and, and have these incredible breakthroughs. And sometimes in medicine. Right. And at the same time, they are at absolutely disconnecting us from so much of the natural rhythms that humanity spent thousands and thousands of years developing wellness, supported by. And now the pace of change, you know, like we’re not keeping up with it. Like, that’s just a Western overlay. Like, then if you like, zoom out to the Ayurvedic overlay. It’s like we’re talking about thousands of years. Like, this is, you know, living in harmony with the rhythms of nature is just so important to overall well-being. When we talk about the the final switch that you described, which is this idea of sort of feeding the system, which feels like it’s also the the embodiment of everything that we’ve been talking about to a certain extent. And then we reflect on all five of these switches. How can we start to wrap our head around? Because it can feel overwhelming for sure. So how can we start to wrap our head around okay, how do we start to step into this? How do we start to take little actions like what are the biggest levers that will flip these switches? You know, given that I’m not going to blow up my life right now. Yeah. For sure. How can I start to step into to take action on what we’re talking about here, in a way where I feel like it’s actually going to make a meaningful difference.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:51:27] Yeah. So there’s a couple of things that come to mind. The first is to remember that you want to start with a quick win, what I call a quick win. So start where it’s easy. We have this weird obsession in our Western culture of doing things that are really hard or making everything hard. We feel like we have to overhaul everything in our life all at once for it to make a difference, and that’s just not true. So start with something small, like you said, and start with a quick win. What’s going to be easiest for you to incorporate into your life to link to something else that you’re doing? So that would be the first thing I would say. The second thing to remember is that when you actually go through all of these practices and kind of read through everything, you’re going to realize that every single practice and I go through, you know, 15 or 18 different practices in the book, they switch on every lever. So you really can’t go wrong. Okay. They’re all going to switch on all five levers in some way, so don’t worry about picking the perfect one. That would be the second thing I would say. And the third thing I would say is give yourself some grace. Do the best you can on a daily basis. Yes, these are important things to do every day.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:52:40] Consistency is key, but also give yourself some grace. And if one is sort of not feeling really well or you’re not able to sort of connect with it, switch to something else, that’s okay. Just start somewhere and make adjustments as you go. So the three things that I would say that you could really start with, the first one is to fast overnight, simply do not eat when you should be sleeping or when the sun is sleeping. So when it’s dark outside, don’t be eating. Have your last meal you know as early as you can 7:00, 6:00, something like that. At least 2 or 3 hours before bed and then don’t eat for 12 hours. So if you stop eating at 7:00, don’t eat until 7:00 in the morning. Really simple. Why is that so important? It’s because nighttime is when we can kickstart autophagy. It’s when our body can clean up. It’s a cleanup time. It’s not a time to eat more food. It’s for us to sort of repair and get rid of toxins. Also, fasting is the best stimulator of autophagy. It actually kick starts that process. Autophagy is this process. We have natural process in the body that basically cleans up all that old junky stuff that we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation. Old cellular parts, debris, cleans it up, gets rid of it so that we can have less inflammation and increased cellular repair.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:54:07] That’s what autophagy does. So when we fast overnight, what we’re doing is we’re kickstarting that autophagy every single night. So that’s the first thing I would say. Just don’t eat at nighttime. Easy. The second one is to in the morning, as close to the time that you wake up. Try and get outside and get some natural sunlight into your eyes. So that means no sunglasses, not through a window. You’re not looking directly at the sun, but it’s. You’re in natural sunlight. Why is that important? We talked about circadian rhythm. Your brain will sense that light and say, oh, it’s daytime. Let me reset my circadian clock. Right. Increase the cortisol. So again, when you do this every single morning, you’re resetting that circadian clock on a daily basis. And that has all those downstream effects. That’s the second thing I would say. Really simple. And has I mean again, these are things that are going to switch on all five longevity switches. And the third is kind of a twofer. Meditate and breathe. Why are those important? It’s because it shifts you from a sympathetic stress state stressor state into a parasympathetic or relaxed state. And that is important again, because we know that stress and a stress response is connected to pretty much every chronic illness that we have.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:55:29] It is one of the biggest factors that causes physiological aging. So if we can learn to modulate our stress response and continually go in and out of stress and relaxation, we’re actually going to support our longevity. So something as simple as meditating for three minutes, do the dishes and focus on the warm water. Go for a walk, go for a run, sit and just breathe and drink your coffee. Any of those things can be meditative. It’s just basically creating a point of focus that then takes you inward. That’s what meditation is, right? And we know that that has all the effects in our brain of neuroplasticity. It helps to reroute old patterns. Write all of these things that we know are really good for us and also shifts us into that relaxed state. And then if we can breathe, as you said, we all tend to breathe just up here from the neck up. We need to breathe into our bellies, and we need to extend our exhale to be longer than our inhale. And that will put us into a relaxation response. So again, that it’s so important. And those are simple things you can do any time of the day. You don’t have to go into this like fancy breathwork. Just remember to make your exhale longer than your inhale.
Jonathan Fields: [00:56:48] No, I love that. I also love the, um, the three sort of setup pieces of guidance, especially the third one, which is give yourself some grace because some folks will hear this and they’ll be like, okay, I’m going to do it. I’m doing the three things. I’m going to not eat for like 12 hours, like when the sun goes down, then they’re going to get a little bit of sunshine in the morning, and then they’re going to do meditation while I’m folding my laundry, and then I’m going to just slow my breath for a little bit, and then they’ll get a week in, and then they’ll fly somewhere and they’ll miss a day, or they’ll miss a weekend and they’ll come back to like, oh, I blew it. I’m so frustrated. I’m not like, okay. Like I messed myself up and now I’m causing myself harm. Which then if I’m reading it right, actually becomes potentially like a form of toxin, because now you’re actually triggering your sympathetic nervous system to kick in and say like, like not okay. So the notion of just like your human being, give yourself grace. Like the standard here is not perfection. It’s just like, do the best you can. Exactly. And then forgive your humanity along the way.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:57:44] Yeah. Just be kind to yourself. You know, we’re so hard on ourselves about everything, and it creates more stress. I often think about all these, you know, wearable technology pieces, you know, the rings and the watches and all these things that are supposed to help us, right? Monitor our health, make better choices. But I do find that they can cause a lot of anxiety for this exact reason of like, feeling like you’re not perfect if you don’t get the perfect number of hours of sleep were the perfect reading on your CGM, your continuous glucose monitor, or whatever it is. So many people get so anxious because they’re like, oh my God, I’m doing these wrong things. And so I feel like it’s all a balance of like using this information and even thinking about the things that we’ve talked about on this podcast episode or in my book, but sort of taking it with a sort of, okay, these are things that can be helpful to me if I approach it with this kindness and love towards myself of like, all right, this is good information. I’m going to try my best and then we’ll see what happens, right?
Jonathan Fields: [00:58:45] I love that it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So I’ve asked you this question in the past, but it was years back now and you’ve been on a journey since then. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:59:00] To live a good life is to be connected to yourself, connected to others, connected to something larger than yourself. I don’t think I could have gotten through the breast cancer healing journey that I went through, without really realizing how important connection is for our health and well-being. And so, yeah, to live a good life is to be connected.
Jonathan Fields: [00:59:27] Mm. Thank you.
Avanti Kumar-Singh: [00:59:28] Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:59:31] Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Karen Walrond about embracing the grace of age. You’ll find a link to Karen’s episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fieldsb editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven-second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.