I’m personally plant-based for multiple reasons. The first reason is related to physical health: the vast majority of chronic imbalance and disease can be prevented (and also treated) with an individualized approach to plant-based eating. (Consider this study, this study, and this study, for example.) The second reason is related to emotional and spiritual health: from the standpoint of Yoga and Ayurveda, there is no such thing as sattvic meat or eggs, and sattva is a key quality for spiritual growth and development. The third reason is environmental: animal husbandry is, by far, the primary source of meat, eggs, dairy, and other animal products, and factory farming is the source of extensive damage to our planet [link]. And the fourth is moral (entirely a personal matter, of course): I view non-human animals as cohabitants of our planet, and wish to live in a way that can serve to limit their suffering, even if only a small amount.

I practice plant-based medicine for patients the same way I practice medicine for all of the patients I have the pleasure of caring for: with a fully-individualized approach that suits both their health and medical needs and their personal preferences. This often involves some fairly obvious elements such as ensuring adequate vitamin B12 and vitamin D intake, though the process always goes deeper than that.

The scope of practice for our plant-based patients at The Buddha’s Medicine is rather complete; there is virtually nothing that we cannot treat with a plant-based approach that might be treated otherwise.

There is a millennia-long history of plant-based traditions coming to us from South Asia, and India in particular. As such, Ayurveda and plant-based living couple very comfortably together. Of course, history’s great Ayurvedic physicians identified that everything occurring in the natural world has the potential to be used as medicine - including products coming from animals. However, items of animal origin are virtually always considered suboptimal or outright inferior to plant-based medicines. This is in part because most animal products, such as meat, have broadly acidifying and inflammatory effects on the human body. It is also in part because there is no such thing as meat or eggs which are sattvic in nature (see above). All of that said, we do not push anyone into a plant-based lifestyle who does not wish to live in that way; we simply support those who do live plant-based, and place emphasis on healing plant-based foods and medicines.