Episode Details

Food, drink and sleep. That's my dream for every vacation. And yet this trip to Goa, India was quite the opposite. So what did I learn that almost turned my life around? That's what this podcast is about. And it might just turn your life (and health) around as well.

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Sometimes life takes you down a diversion. And you end up exactly where you need to be.

This is the story of my trip to Goa, India. It's where my grandparents came from. Where I spent many summers under the mango trees in the sweltering heat.

It's also the place that has led me back to where I need to be.

So what did I learn? I learned a few things:1- The importance of digestion (and sleep) 2- The importance of food and types of food 3- Breaks are not enough to avoid extreme stress.

Part 1- The importance of digestion (and the avoidance of sleep)

"When you turn 40," my dentist said to me, "you should go for an annual medical checkup." There I was on the dentist's chair having a bridge fixed and my dentist wasn't giving me dental advice. Instead, he was telling me to go see my doctor, even though I hadn't been sick a day for almost 20 years.

And since my negligence with my flossing was causing me a small fortune, I decided to take the dentist's advice. I went and visited my doctor and did my first ever medical test.

It wasn't good.

My blood pressure wasn't high, but it wasn't normal either. My cholesterol and blood sugar was creeping up too. And like clockwork, year after year, those numbers edged upwards. Sometimes, they nudged their way downwards, but the general trend was not looking terribly good.

You know me. I'm the 3-month vacation, take weekends off guy.

I work hard, but I take a lot of breaks to rest, think and just do nothing. And yet all of that nothingness wasn't dropping the pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar. And then I did something that made a huge difference to my life and health. I went yet again on vacation and this time to India.

I have a love-hate relationship with India

I grew up in Mumbai, vacationed in Goa and travelled through many parts of India before I finally moved to New Zealand. India seeps within you as you hang around that sub-continent. The food, the culture, the languages, history and science going back thousands of years. This trip was about the monsoon (something that's worth experiencing), the food and most of all to see my parents (who I hadn't visited in five years).

Yet within days of landing in Goa, my agenda was hijacked

Oh sure I started out with the food and drink, but we also wanted to get a few massages. And that search for massages got us to an Ayurvedic centre. Now you've probably heard of Ayurveda, an ancient system of natural healing from India. Some think it's 5,000 years old, others believe it to be older, going back a whopping 10,000 years.

But I wasn't there for any medical checkup—I was just there for the massages… Yet life takes you down this diversion, and it's just where you need to be.

It was July, the rain was coming down in torrents and the doctor at the Ayurvedic centre was available. And we found out that my blood pressure and cholesterol was pretty high (conducting the article writing course and working through 12,000 posts helps, I guess). But even as he was telling me about the course of action to take, he brought up one important, yet obscure point.

"The reason why we have a lot of problems with our health isn't the food we eat," he started.

Food makes a difference, but the bigger problem is digestion. If we don't digest the food completely, it sits in our system and it becomes like the inner side of a kitchen pipe. It's got all this junk that starts to accumulate over the years. And it's that junk that causes a huge number of problems. So he put me on an Ayurvedic course to get rid of the junk.

It was interesting, this course

Spanning over 11 days, it started mildly. All I had to do for