John Douillard - Perfect Health for Kids: Ten Ayurvedic Health Secrets Every Parent Must Know

Copyright 2004 by John Douillard. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Perfect Health for Kids: Ten Ayurvedic Health Secrets Every Parent Must Know is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Douillard, John.

Perfect health for kids : ten ayurvedic health secrets every parent must know / by John Douillard.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58394-596-4
1. ChildrenHealth and hygiene. 2. Medicine, Ayurvedic. I. Title: Ten ayurvedic healing secrets every parent should know. II. Title.
RJ61.D724 2003
613.0432dc22

2003017003

v3.1

I am truly blessed in this life to have such a wonderful family of six children and a loving and beautiful wife. Without them, I could not have written this book.

I want to thank Felicia Tomasko for her help with editing the Ayurveda and science aspects of the book, and Kate Fotopoulos for copyediting and catching all the little details that might have slipped through the cracks. Thanks to Samara Frame for her administrative support.

Thank you to Brooke Warner, Richard Grossinger, and everyone at my new publisher, North Atlantic Books.

Thank you to all my patients and students who continually show me and my family the way to Perfect Health.

In America, before the general use of antibiotics in the 1940s, parents raised their children proactively. They did not wait until their children were sick; kids were treated each day while they were healthy as a part of their normal daily routine. Nature provided the medicines. Even today, 80% of our pharmaceutical drugs come directly from, are derived from, or are copied from natural substances. The seasonal harvest of foods and herbs was always the medicine of the day. Throughout history, people were connected to their neighborhood farmer via the local harvest and were therefore attuned to and lived in harmony with the rhythms and cycles of the land. In this book, Perfect Health for Kids, I will reintroduce the now lost wisdom that once kept our kids healthy.

During my post-graduate studies in Ayurvedic medicine, I realized that what I was learning as a part of this 5,000-year-old system of medicine was fundamentally the same as what we in America have lost in our own medical tradition. As we have focused on hunting down the cures for diseases, we have slowly forgotten the fabrics of good health that this science of life so clearly deemed paramount. Ayurveda, which means science of life, emphasized prevention by proactively treating people when they were healthy and focusing on who had the disease rather than on the disease itself.

While raising my six children and practicing natural medicine with kids for 18 years, I have rediscovered ten ancient healing secrets that will change how you raise your children. You will effortlessly treat your kids while they are healthy, and identify and take care of a cold weeks before it arises. You will learn the early warning signs of an illness-in-the-making and how to inspect your kids each morning for those signs.

One of the cornerstones of Ayurveda explained in the book is that each child is unique. Each has constitutional differences that explain the childs unique health, behavior and emotional make-up. I will discuss how, when, and what to feed your children, the amount of pure water (not soda pop) they should drink, the insidious toxic chemical levels in your home, and other factors that can directly affect your childrens health and well-being. You will learn what activities and times of year make your children more susceptible to getting sick and what to do about it. I will introduce you to my Lazy Susan of natural medicines, which you can choose from each day to address each of your childrens different needs. Perfect Health for Kids would be remiss if it didnt address the emotional health and human potential of your children. I will introduce effective tools you can use to access and support your childrens emotional health, and will discuss the importance of play for both parents and children.

Ayurvedic medicine was originally used as preparation for achieving full human potential. Keeping a child in good physical, mental and emotional health is a prerequisite for a successful spiritual practice later in life. While Perfect Health for Kids is all about the day-to-day tools a parent will need to keep their child healthy, it is also building a foundation for children to develop into well-balanced physical, emotional and spiritual beings. This knowledge will change your life as a parent and protect the lives of your childrenit did mine, and for that I am very grateful.

While many of the Perfect Health for Kids principles will work for adults, I highly recommend parents read the best-selling book Perfect Health by Dr. Deepak Chopra. This comprehensive mind-body guide to Ayurvedic medicine is written for adults and elucidates the road to optimal health.

Knowledge: A Parents Best Medicine

I n the past 70 years we have seen miraculous developments in our health care system. In this relatively short time span we have seen the practice of modern medicine make significant advances, from the development and widespread use of the magic bullets of life-saving penicillin and other antibiotics in the 1940s, to the present when many patients walk out of a hospital the day they have heart surgery. These are incredible times in the health care field and the next decades promise to bring even more innovations. Health care is still a work in progress and doctors still call the art and science of medicine practice for a reason. The practice of modern medicine is changing and evolving as the acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine becomes more widespread.

We have all rightfully become fascinated by the science and technology of modern health care. It is important, however, that this fascination not blind us from the information contained in the healing pearls of health care wisdom that were a part of mainstream American awareness just 50 years ago. This knowledge, while almost lost in todays society, is still practiced in many traditional cultures worldwide. I did my post-graduate work in Ayurvedic healingone of the worlds oldest systems of medicine still practiced on this planet today. Ayurveda is Indias 5,000-year-old medical tradition. Ayurveda, the science of life, is the study of life, not disease.