Home / Jan 31- Feb 06, 2026 / Life & Living / ON MY OWN / IN SEARCH OF HAPPY WELLBEING!
IN SEARCH OF HAPPY WELLBEING!
Comments Off on IN SEARCH OF HAPPY WELLBEING!

IN SEARCH OF HAPPY WELLBEING!

Jan 31- Feb 06, 2026, Life & Living, ON MY OWN January 30, 2026 , by

At the India International Ayurveda & Wellness Expo 2026…

NOWADAYS one is constantly defining the fine definition of words like healthcare, wellness, wellbeing and then all the medical systems which offer a host of medicines and therapies to cure you, heal you, make you whole and at peace anew with life and living. First we make ourselves sick and sicker with our lack of discipline when it comes to what we put in our mouth morning, noon and night.
Next, excessive carbohydrate eating is making overweight and obesity a serious issue when it comes to setting the stage for our slew of degenerative diseases…honestly, more often than not, by the time we’re in our 50s we end up as suffering Moses or suffering Miriam, whatever name you fancy, suffering Rajan or suffering Tara if you like! Suffering is not easy as age catches up with us with memories of how we failed to do the right thing at the right time and all that and so now it is some kind of payback time.
This is to say I was thinking of all this at what is considered the first edition of the India International Ayurveda and Wellness Expo and Summit which took place from January 23 to 25 at the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukjerjee Indoor Stadium from January 23 to 25. Of course I wished the expo had happened Panjim’s heritage precincts of the old Goa Medical College, I guess that was not to be. The Bambolim stadium offers air-conditioned comfort and it was very well organized expo and summit by the Ministry of AYUSH (government of India), the Goa Council of Ayurvedic and Other Allied Indian Systems of Medicine, government of Goa and Pantanjali. Most of us are interested in options in healthcare and many of the pharma and other healthcare stalls put up were a treasure trove of finds. It was a mega exhibition pavilion where one discovered some desirable produce like honest jaggery, honey, millets, ghee and the various medicines of mainstream pharma companies and therapies of Ayurveda, Yoga, Homeopathy, Unani, Siddhi and so on. Most of is offered deeper insight to Ayurveda and the parameters in which it offers preventive healthcare and wellbeing.
PLUS, there were some famous speakers and visitors familiar and unfamiliar. The topics of discussion ranged from Healthy Ageing to Integrative Sports Wellness, Global Perspective of Wellness and its scope for AYUSH Streams, The Future of Integrative Oncology in India, Illness to Wellness, Food as Medicine, Decoding the Indian Way of Nutrition for Wellness and some more. Cancer, as we all know, catches up with many of us and I was particularly interested in catching up with the future of integrative oncology in India.


Most of us are haunted by the Big C or cancer for this dreaded disease trails us in every home today even if the genial Padma Shri Dr Rajendra Badwe (Padma Shri, surgical oncologist, former director of Tata Memorial Centre) says that our Indian statistics are not as frightful as those in the USA and countries of the West. But even in India he shared the numbers are climbing and he keeps an open mind when it comes to integrating mainstream Allopathy with the alternative traditional medical systems including Ayurveda. The traditional medical systems are indeed, the forerunners of today’s Allopathy or so to speak and one must consider their role they play in improving the quality of life of a patient.
At the All India Institute of Ayurveda Goa, that is at the state-of-the-art AYUSH Hospital in Dhargal in Pernem, they’ve put into place an integrative program for cancer patients – cancer is a very complex disease and is staged 1, 2, 3, 4… alas most patients come to alternate healthcare when they’re quite in terminal stages of whatever cancer they’re suffering from. It’s a challenge to see if Ayurveda and the other AYUSH herbal medicines and therapies can make a difference for the better to a cancer patient’s quality of life. Perhaps it would be easier to achieve cures or total remission if patients seek alternative healthcare earlier!
It is interesting that Dr Badwe shared that oral cancers are a leading cancer in India and many cancer patients now come to him saying they don’t want surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. Is there a better way to be treated! What alarms him is that even after standard mainstream treatment there is something like a 30% reoccurrence of cancer in patients…what they are looking for is empirical statistics to prove that the alternative healthcare systems do cure or improve the quality of life of cancer patients at whatever age. For this, they may put say a 1,000 patients on placebo and another 1,000 on Ayurveda treatment and study the results ten years down the line. He has no doubt that a changeover to a nutritional diet and yoga therapy and do make for qualitatively better outcomes – but let us see the proof first before spreading the word, “It is only data which can put any treatment on a pedestal! The whole world must see and then we can take it forward…”
There is really no reason why there cannot be integrative post-cancer programs for a patient’s wellbeing when it comes to dealing with trauma care or pain or depression. We know for instance that an oil massage aids better circulation, and food as medicine is one of the oldest message in recovery from ill-health and disease…of course, if only we can swing it!
Other interesting speakers were Dr Vijay Murthy, a specialist in integrative medicine in United Kingdom and Europe. He spoke about the market for wellness tourism and how India is trying to promote it, but here’s a cautionary note – some countries like Australia and New Zealand now advice patients to be careful about outdated Ayurveda medicines! There have been some terrible cases of liver toxicity and death. Ayurveda pharmacopeia needs to be more stringent and measure up to international scrutiny.
Perhaps it is this herbal powders scare which is now translating into many Ayurveda practitioners looking at capsules and more Ayurveda medications are coming in oil capsules which are perceived as safer and with a longer shelf life. There is much more to Ayurveda than just medicines of course. As Dr Vijay Murthy stressed, “Safety is not negotiable, heavy metal toxicity is a fact and procedures are important…”
It is not all hunky dory even with Ayurveda. I like what Dr Vijay quipped about the body being a garden (as in flora and fauna!) and we must have the will to be good gardeners to enjoy fighting fit health! After him there was the very popular crusader for millets Padma Shri Dr Khader Vali from Mysuru who waxed lyrical over the need for all of us to dump rice and wheat in favor of the five millets he prescribes for to get the perfect microbiome (stomach environment)…forget the meats, our millets give us all the protein we need and much more. It is millets which make for good bacteria in the gut but there’s a way to eat “siridanya” to reap the rewards of ultimate health, for ultimate health is wealth.
Needless to say Dr Kader Vali is very popular and has a legion of thankful and grateful patients. You may look him up and learn how to do his millet recipes including the one for “ambali” which is fermented porridge, best breakfast for those who suffer from endless gut issues (idiopathic irritable bowel syndrome being one of them) which no modern medicine can cure. Food is medicine and he is so passionate about the many virtuous properties of our Indian millets that he disarmingly said he could speak for five hours, the whole day, to convince us all to junk rice and wheat. Learn to eat the millets, especially the little millets, namely “kodo, foxtail, barnyard, brown top and little millet.” Soak overnight and cook the millets in various health-conscious ways and “protect your gut for it is the essence of life…all celiac diseases can be cured by millet “ambali” which is a fermented porridge, you have to soak, wash, cook millet and keep overnight covered with a cloth…” Next morning, flavor or season and eat up. Hey, Ram and Lakshman in “vanwas” forest exile ate foxtail and little millet!
All this and much more, a most refreshing man is Dr Kader Vali and I think I’d love to visit his clinic in Mysuru down south India some day!
THEN nutritionist coach, Goan boy from Caranzalen in Panjim, Ryan Fernando, who said don’t call him celebrity coach, he is just coach to a few celebrities. Otherwise for him, “each one of you is a celebrity!” This is one very eloquent wellness coach and I’m not surprised so many seek him out to resolve their health issues. He’s got a PhD in Ayurveda which is rare in achievement in a wellness coach. What did he say? In a nutshell, 60 percent of India suffers from anemia, they’re micronutrient deficient….good eating has to start early in life. Some places children go to school because they get a meal but the poisoning starts from school!
There is so much lack of awareness of the role a correct diet plays in preventing stunted growth, he learned long ago from his friend Ali Irani (India’s renowned sports physiotherapist) that “it’s better to have to have hands that heal than lips which pray.” In Ayurveda we learn everyone has an individual prakriti or constitution, all food may not suit all people, “We must know what diet is good me!” In the Punjab paneer is fine, in Goa the coconut diet which people grow up with is better…in short, we all need to be educated about food and which food and which diet suits us best, also we must learn to eat with our seasons as they come and go.
Truly, the very fit Dr Ryan Fernando is a fund of amazing observations, a treat to listen to.
Elsewhere, doing a round-up of the exhibition pavilion, I was amused that so many want to come up with the perfect “poustik” ladoo, the quintessential Indian sweet which is now available in the millet flours too apart from gram flour or besan, moong flour and so on.
Before I forget the students and staff of the All India Institute of Ayurveda Goa had put up a very tempting stall where one got to taste some amazing recipes and beverages including a pickle of the jumbo “matulinga” lemon which may luckily find in the wet markets of Goa rarely, each lemon may cost something like Rs250 or so according to Chef Rajat Bakre here! The lemon is bitter but has to be cut in pieces, marinated in “salt, haldi, Kashmiri chili powder for eight to 10 days, but three days will do if you’re in a hurry to eat it! Don’t forget to temper the pickle in til oil (sesame seed oil) with rai (mustard seeds) and hing (asafetida)…”
Dear Chef Rajat Bakre, he gave me a little of the matulinga pickle to take home! On that note it’s avjo, selamat datang, poiteverem, au revoir, arrivedecci, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now.

Related posts:

  1. `PATNI NACHAVE, ENE KON BACHAVE’
  2. HOW QUICKLY THE WORLD IS CHANGING FOR BETTER OR WORSE!
  3. OCEANFRONT RACING ARRIVES IN GOA…
  4. JOIN THE `ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’ REVOLUTION IN GOA

Search

Back to Top