Understanding ama and disease is critical for health. Many people outside of Ayurveda have no idea what ama is. If you google it, you get references for the American Medical Association funny, huh? Is there any understanding of the impact of ama in Western Medicine?
Functional medicine, a branch of western medicine, is catching on to the destructive nature of toxins in the body. I love it when western medicine figures out what Ayurveda has always known. How do you feel the effects of ama, the symptoms it causes and what do you do about it?
Do you see signs of ama and disease in your body? I think about digestion, agni, and ama a lot, specifically how it contributes to my state of health. For many years I lived and ate in ways that promoted a build-up of ama deep in my body. To some extent, I still overeat for my agni. I believe an ama build-up made me extra vulnerable to the Lyme infection that derailed my health. More and more, I prioritize eating for healthy digestion.
My Thoughts on Ama
Ama is toxic material that can and will collect in the digestive tract then tissues. It is the result of agni overwhelm. The engineer geek in me often thinks of it as an equation. You balance this equation and to keep ama low by choosing your inputs (food, drink, drugs, personal care products, and environmental toxins) with care and protecting your agni.
Inputs digested by Agni becomes self (maintenance and growth), Wastes (feces urine and sweat) + Ama(undigested food, ect)
Agni’s (Digestive and mental) job is to examine inputs food, drink experience, and transform them from “not-self” to “self” and waste. When there is too much, too little, or the wrong input, the digestive fire burns too quickly or gets confused, quenched, and overwhelmed. Excess ama can result.
Too much food is when you eat to the point of fullness or beyond day after day, or you eat all day grazing and giving your agni no downtime. Too little food deprives the body of the necessary nutrients to run the ship. There are wrong food options everywhere you look. Dead foods made with chemicals fill the ads on TV and aisles of most supermarkets. Foods that are out of season and foods that disrupt the dosha also disturb agni generate ama and make you feel off in a variety of ways.
Recognize And Reduce Ama
If agni is out of balance, some material can’t be digested or shunted into waste disposal channels. This under-cooked food is not-self, and the body can’t use it to grow to maintain and repair tissues dhatus or figure out how to package as waste. Ama builds in the gut then flows out into the bloodstream to find a weak spot a place to land and cause problems.
Toxins Ama and Disease
Ayurveda has always linked ama and disease. The medical world outside of Ayurveda is just starting to realize that incompletely digested materials like environmental toxins in the body will cause inflammation and contribute to disease. New connections forming in functional medicine describe the effects of excess toxins (ama) in a western mechanistic way.
More and more functional medicine talks about toxins as an underlying factor in inflammation and disease. Toxins disrupt the nervous system, the endocrine system, and confuse and tax the immune system. The list of symptoms from excess toxins and excess ama overlap.
Leaky Gut
Functional medicine describes two fundamental mechanisms that allow toxins out of the gut and into the body at large. Intestinal permeability, aka Leaky gut, represents one possible pathway for ama to enter the body and tissues. Undigested materials move or leak into the bloodstream through the small intestine lining. Toxins damage probiotic bacteria and endothelial cells tight junctions (entry ways) that line the small intestines. The damaged cells lose their ability to act as smart doorways.
Here is a rough analogy. The damaged junction space is wider than usual, like a full-sized door with no sensor (probiotic organisms). A healthy gut junction acts like a cat door with an intelligent sensor. The cat door only allows things to pass through that fit through and are recognizable by the sensor. If a front door is open, all manner of stuff can get into the house or the bloodstream. Your immune system sees foreign material (ama, bloodstream) and goes into defense mode, attacks, and generates inflammation to isolate the problem. The disease process progresses from there.
Liver Issues From Toxins
The second pathway described by functional medicine involves the liver. We all know that too much alcohol, in particular, hurts the liver over time. New information shows that fatty liver, cirrhosis, and other liver diseases relate to leaky gut. This makes sense; the liver has to detoxify blood from the intestines.
In western medicine, one of the liver’s jobs is to isolate toxins and package them for routing out of the body as waste in the feces and urine. The liver breaks down the harmful substances and excretes by-products that can be safely disposed of as waste . Bile encased wastes leave the body in the feces. If the liver is overloaded, toxins can leak back into the bloodstream and wreak havoc on tissues and organs like the brain and kidney.
In a healthy body, the ama stays in the gut, and over time either get digested or passes from the body through the digestive tract, up onto the tongue or down and out through the feces and urine. I think of toxins as part of ama and see the beginnings of a connection between the eastern and western view of toxins or ama and disease. When there is just too much ama for the bodies’ agni to burn, ama builds and contributes to inflammation and disease. If you feel the early symptoms of ama (see chart above), take action to support your agni, and eliminate ama.
Ayurselfcare’s purpose is to educate on the benefits of Ayurveda. This article is not a substitute for professional medical care, treatment, or advice. All the material here is for learning purposes only. Always share strategy and work with your health care team.