Senior US District Judge Charles Breyer says he wants to know the timing of the effects and plan payments to buyers by April 21. It is 1230 aid. This is midday edition. There is a growing body of medical evidence suggesting the balance of microorganisms in your but -- that can affect your health. Healthy digestion can boost your immune system and digestion and brain function. That will not come as a surprise to practitioners the practice emphasizes digestion as the key to health and even to losing weight. Recently our health reporter spoke with San Diego neurologist author of the new book the prime. Here is that interview. You grew up in India. When you were a little girl you spend a lot of time with your grandfather who was a town doctor and print session are of medicine. How did that influence your decision to become a doctor when you grew up? I was the apple of my grandmother's eyes. He used to take me to his clinic. When I solved was something really markable not something we are trying to re-create in the United States. That was a position that was able to engage an entire community or village. That had profound influence on me. I saw the power of medicine in the ability to transform an entire community. In what way did you react to his patients? There was a tremendous amount of love and support. It was not the type of love for everything came up roses. It was the type of love where he got engaged and involved in their lives. That is hard work to practice medicine that way. He knew what was happening in their lives in terms of what they were eating, what was happening in the family, it was just amazing to me to see how every single patient came in knowing that they were going to be taken care of and be, not only made to feel better physically but mentally and emotionally and spiritually engaged with him. In later life after completing medical school and having your own practice, there came a point where you decided that Western medicine did not have all the answer. What made you come to that conclusion? It was forced upon me. I developed migraine headaches. As a neurologist, I could not treat my own migraines. It was a come to God moment. I spent a couple decades trying to learn how to do this and I could not figure it out for myself. When I became a patient I had to look for other ways of treating my headaches. That is what brought me to this type medicine. How would you explain Hydro phonic medicine? It is a simple premise. We are only now beginning to appreciate this in Western medicine. Food as medicine. It can either be medicine or poison. What we are putting in our mouth impacts our health dramatic leap. Our habits have the greatest say in whether we thrive or we fail in life. Your book, the prime Talks about the crucial importance of digestive health. Why is that so crucial? What we are starting to learn in medical research today is exactly what they knew in ice erotic medicine thousands of years ago. Gut bacteria in your G.I. tract have this tremendous impact on your body. Specifically on your nervous system. Once you start to appreciate the global influence that these little bacteria floating around in your G.I. tract have on your body, you realize digestion is the cornerstone for health. That is the ASIC premise. How does one improve one's digestive health? There are several different things. Traditionally we talk about changing your diet first. What I found is that because our modern food supply has been so modified and people have such strong food addiction you can't change your diet first most of the time. We've fail and we see this over and over. My approach in the book is to first change the body. Overcome the hurdles and then the changes in diet occur spontaneously. I'm changing the gut flora and breaking the addiction cycles to food first. Your book says being overweight is a biochemical issue not a personal flow what you mean by that? We look at conditions like diabetes and we say there is a problem with insulin in the body. Now we look at things like depression, we used to say it was something you could think your way out of. It is actually a biochemical issue. Weight is the same thing. There are several things that happen in the body that make weight game inevitable. When you understand those steps and a lot of those steps are occurring in the gut first or brain first. When you understand those steps, weight loss become something that is a spontaneous result of reversing the biochemical shifts taking place. I understand your book is not about weight loss per se. In fact, I think it came out of a byproduct of what you were doing. I'm a neurologist. I created this program over 10 years to reverse neurological disease to help people increase energy and bring -- decreased brain fog. Weight loss was an unexpected side effect. Once people knew they would lose weight, they became more excited about the program. I embraced that side effect of the program and put it center stage. Yes, this program makes you lose weight really it is a program for brain health and energy and overall health. At another point you say you're not what you eat your what you digest. What is the difference? This is also essential theme. It is really a function of how strong your digestion is. This say you put in good foods but you can't digest them. They will accumulate in the G.I. tract. This results in a shift in good to bad bacteria. The key is to improve digestion. The ability to break down foods and assimilate them. Then digestion is not spontaneous but your taste in food and preferences also change spontaneously. Lastly, how do you view the connection between Western and iron aesthetic medicine. Is it one versus the other how would you see that? It is not one versus the other. It is the combination of the two that I think will provide us with one of the most exciting revolutions in medicine. It is really taking the best of what we knew from the past with the best of what we have now and essentially creating resources for patients that have never been present before. How likely are we to see that anytime soon? We are starting to see that now. Even this research, we are going back to the heart of most of the ancient traditions. We're seeing this through new eyes but we are coming to the same conclusions. I think this century is going to be the most critical century for this renaissance in medicine. I am so excited that I get to live to participate in it. I have been speaking with Dr. coul reach out rate a neurologist and author of the prime.
It's not what you eat, it's what you digest.
That's a key principal of Ayurvedic medicine, a system that originated in India more than 3,000 years ago.
It's also one of the underlying themes of "The Prime," a new book by San Diego neurologist Kulreet Chaudhary. In the book, Chaudhary talks about using Ayurvedic methods to improve gut health, which, she says, will improve one's digestion and overall health and well-being.
Chaudhary lived in India when she was young. She spent a lot of time with her grandfather, a town doctor and Ayurvedic practitioner. She later attended medical school in the U.S. and became a neurologist.
After failing to see improvements in some of her neurology patients, and after suffering from some nagging health issues herself, she began to question the value of Western medicine.
That's when she started to explore Ayurvedic medicine and discovered some of its benefits.
Dr. Chaudhary talks about the importance of using Ayurvedic methods to detoxify the body and improve the digestive system on Midday Edition Thursday.
