Hare Krishna Beloved Gurudev,
Please accept my humble obeisances,
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada,
First of all, with a blade of straw in my mouth I beg your pardon for being so negligent and taking so long to answer your concern about steam inhalation for Covid. Please forgive me, I was going through some personal issues (another letter).
HpS - AGTSP. Personal issues take priority! 🙂
We are not very "concerned" with steam inhalation. For us these things are just like looking outside before going for shopping and seeing if we should take an umbrella because it might rain. Some care for the donkey, but the cargo is more important.
Second I would like to share some thoughts about your health issues (chest pains, arythmias, allergies and visual fatigue).
HpS - Yes, please. Donkey maintenance. We are noting today that the heart problems have very much gone away, as we adjust our life style.
Please understand that this is only with the purpose to help you, don't take this comments as instructions, but as reflections from a fool (ASA: Hare Krsna doctor). According to Ayurveda our body is a mixture of space (vata), filled with water and solid organs (kapha) and oil (pitta). Space allows movement which dries water and oil up. Oil allows neuron transmissions, liver, adrenal, bone marrow and pancreas function and lubricates joints and muscles for smooth movement. And kapha builds strength but also mucus, blocking movement, stagnation increasing heat. Balance of this three forces brings health, imbalance disease.
As I could observe in your lifestyle (this could be biased and not necessarily true), you have three situations where your vata aggravates. The first is that since you are a Sannyasi, you travel a lot, moving great distances. The second is that you demand your neurons to the maximum with the intensity of your lecturing and the third one is that sometimes you go long periods without eating. [HpS - Hmmm. I don't think this is true? So much]
These three conditions dries the body up, decreasing the amount of oil and water in the body, making movement fast and rough. (Chest pains, arrithmias) and dry eyes also. A low amount of fat in the liver affects digestion, increasing ama (undigested food) in the GI tract. This causes stagnation increasing local heat. Since you are pitta type, inflamation arises making bowels more permeable, so ama goes into bloodstream, stagnation, increasing of heat, causing migraines and allergies.
Since I think it is highly unlikely that you change your lifestyle, I think that these simple guidelines will help you balance your pitta:
* Avoid spending periods longer than 4 hours without consuming food. Between meals drink plenty of fluids, watery and oily.
* Regulate the consumption of raw foods (fruits and vegetables) and vegetables rich in fiber (broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cabbage, etc.), grains (cereals and legumes), dairy, especially cheese and vegetables that grow under the land.
* Increase the consumption of healthy fats such as nuts, seeds, coconut, avocado, vegetable oils and specially ghee.
* Perform a self-massage once a week with coconut oil on the forehead, behind the ears, on the back of the neck and shoulders, chest, lumbar region, on the hands and on the feet.
* Practice stretching movements periodically.
HpS - We will forward this to Rupanuga Das. We are constantly begging him to participate in this Blog, but so far it has not been possible. From his good advice for years, we already adopt many of these attitudes and recently, because "the machine" is like a 73-year old Mercedes we are learning and applying this in more detail. It is usually good for us to go like 6-hours between heavy meals because we have very slow digestion at times, but this can be spaced.
Really best is to chant HK/HR very nicely and then plan a menu for the day for Lord Nrsmhadeva and then honor His remnants. When we really do this we have very good health.
Third, some thoughts about proposed solutions for Covid.
Assuming that the only solution to death is Kirtaniyah sada harih.
Steam inhalation, seems to work, many ayurvedic centers in india used it. The problem with this is that success varies depending on how you apply the technique. I think this is not possible for mainstream cause in the west people are to rajasic to apply this method properly. But if one does it, it seems to have effect. Here I copy a link to an article about this.
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S002432052031554X?token=717FAF2995695C744FAB12890CFC43A68A1827664079289A981EF745014AE5E68CB2AB635B3C12DD9B7755A0DA6E8D01
Taking Two-doses of oral ivermectin (300 μg/kg given 72 hours apart) as chemoprophylaxis among HCWs reduces the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83% in the following month. There is not enough evidence to support this.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-208785/v1
Vaccination, I understand you are going to vaccinate next Monday. 190 million people have been vaccinated around the world and nobody died after getting the vaccine. Nobody had a lethal allergic reaction and nobody who was fully vaccinated (two weeks after the second dose of Moderna or Pfizer) died of Covid. So I guess having a light diet and rest during 72 hs after vaccination would be fine. Nobody knows about long term effects.
HpS - That seems to be the opinion of NgD, Amit and Visnu-carana Das, here, who are all devotees and doctors and others. It is like have screws put in for a broken arm. Allopathy.
NgD recommends have some Tylenol on hand.
According to Ayurveda, best way to prevent disease is to increase ojas, vital strength. Vaccines are a modern sanitary measure to decrease disease in an urban, unnatural lifestyle.
Ok this is kali yuga!! According to data, it is clear that main purpose of pharma to develop vaccines, is not altruism, but business. Thousands of millions of doses were sold in advance, 12 billion dollars from public funds were given to pharma to produce vaccines. 95% of doses are concentrated in 10 countries. Rich countries received vaccine doses between 2 to 6 times its population. 9 of 10 poor countries won't have access to vaccine during 2021. North America applied 25 times more dosis than South America.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/128ZF5948Rxw_Bi-Pu9Dz8WeIdL3w19BK/view?usp=drivesdk
I hope this thoughts can be of some help to someone.
Thank you Gurudeva, you give much more than this fool can receive.
Trying to catch your lotus feet.
Your foolish servant.
Nikunja Bihari das.
HpS - It is very nice. We see devotees buying, moving into, bigger houses so that the whole family for multi-generations can live comfortably together. This is the first step to village life.
A pure devotee sees this world as a puppet show of Vaikuntha and plays the parts with delight.
7.20PM - Got a little headach. Guess we will write the DTC now. See you there. The most 'personal issue' is with Krsna, no? As we improve that, then our personal issues with life partners become easy.
Thank you.
Thanks to all our readers.