by Dr. Claudia Welch This piece grew out of a few sparks: a conversation between Kate O’Donnell and nutritionist Karen Hurd (recommended by a friend), and reflections on the stubborn problem of high cholesterol — even in people who are not overweight, who eat well, yet...
By Dr. Claudia Welch If you're reading this with heavy eyelids, feeling like you're moving through molasses, or finding yourself breathless after simple tasks, you're not alone. Anemia—whether from heavy menstrual bleeding, postpartum blood loss, surgery, or any other cause—can leave us feeling like a shadow...
When someone dies, the rearrangement of reality that follows can reach far beyond the absence of that person. It can alter the way family members relate to each other, as old dynamics collapse and new ones form. Since it’s often difficult—sometimes nearly impossible—to function practically...
By Dr. Claudia Welch June 12, 2025 ⸻ Most of the attention coffee gets is for its ability to energize. But a new study, presented at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting and reported in The New York Times on June 12, 2025, suggests coffee might...
By Dr. Claudia Welch; Originally posted September 1, 2010. Republished with light edits. He who constantly examines how his day and night are passing and adopts the right way only, will never become a victim of sorrow. — Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam, Sūtrasthāna II.47 What does my fork have to...
November 6, 2024 “Part of the goal of a healer is to bear the unbearable pain...
Preamble: I’m not an expert on this subject. Just a student of it, and these are some current thoughts on it. I was biking the other day and was finding so much joy in the speed and forward-motion, and was reflecting on how much of...
I once read (in My Gita, by Devdutt Pattanaik) something like that the main difference between gods and demons is that gods can see possibilities beyond the measurable. This insight resonates deeply when I consider the role of storytelling in our lives. By sharing our personal...
Alert husband Jim recently noticed a report on a study exploring the link between menopause and longevity. The study shows that the evolution of menopause in toothed whales is strikingly similar to the evolution of menopause in humans. Menopause in both species came about through the...
by Dr. Claudia Welch Personal Experience When I was 19, I went to live in Benares, India to study Ayurveda… I thought. It was a year-long program through the University of Wisconsin, and the heftiest program requirement was to write a 100+ page research paper. I planned...
रागादिरोगान् सततानुषक्तानशेषकायप्रसृतानशेषान् औत्सुक्यमोहारतिदान् जघान योऽपूर्ववैद्याय नमोस्तुतस्मैः Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam:I:1 rāgādi-rogān satatānuṣaktān-aśeṣa-kāya-prasṛtān-aśeṣān autsukya-mohāratidān jaghāna yo’pūrva-vaidyāya namo’stu-tasmai //1// Obeisance be unto that unique and rare (incomparable) physician [that’d be God] who has completely eliminated limitless diseases that are closely associated with and spreading all over the body and mind, perpetually causing...
ऋ॒तं च॑ स॒त्यं चा॒भी॑द्धा॒त्तप॒सोऽध्य॑जायत ṛtaṃ ca satyaṃ cābhīddhāt tapaso 'dhy ajāyata Truth was born and the order of truth from the kindled fire of energy of consciousness. Rig Veda 10.190.1 I’ve been reflecting on the relationship between the Sanskrit words, “satyam” and, “ṛta” or, “ṛtam.” Satyam: The Chandogya Upanishad tells us...
Osteoporosis (An Excerpt from the beginning of chapter 16 of Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life, by Claudia Welch) Americans spend about $5 billion a year on drugs to protect bone health, roughly 50 percent more than they spent for this just five years ago. Thinning...
By Dr. Ramkumar, Dr. Robert Svoboda & Dr. Claudia Welch Note: This is an evolving work. We have already changed the title and edited the article a bit in response to thoughtful input from readers. We have added links at the bottom of this article to...
By Dr. Claudia Welch Disclaimer, Introduction and entry into svādhyāya (self-introspection): While certainly Black people and people outside the US are welcome to read this, I am a white woman, and it is generally intended to speak to the perspective and perhaps shared experience of other...
By Dr. Claudia Welch Fertility—practices around conception and contraception—profoundly affects almost everyone’s life. Knowing our own bodies, signs and rhythm, and how to cooperate with biology in order to navigate of conception or contraception has been too daunting a prospect for most men or women I...
by Dr. Claudia Welch With a crazy percentage (and that link is to an article that only includes percentages of the leading causes of death; there are many other causes we'd have to add) of disease being caused by poor lifestyle (stress, overwork, too much or...
Hi Friends, Please check with your doctor before implementing these ideas, to make sure they are safe to implement in your case or the case of who you are caring for. So, I assume we all have access to all the good doctors' advice about what to...
Prologue: I have undergone pañcakarma a handful of times in India. In order to contextualize how I found the experience, and to hopefully support yours should you find yourself in India for pañcakarma, here is an overview of pañcakarma. If you are already familiar, feel...
Dear Friends, I hope this finds you finding, good in the, “bad” and with a strong footing in the, “good.” I recently returned to North America from Eastern & Northern Europe where, among other things, I co-taught some events with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Robert...
By Dr. Claudia Welch For a long time I have reflected on something that my guru said on more than one occasion. Here are the exact words, in one case: “And then we should have confidence, because a coward can never achieve any success. Only a strong-hearted...
(Like the pithy title?) I just finished the second of two books I read back-to-back. Well, actually I listened to them on Audible (www.audible.com). (While in many cases I prefer reading books, this one is particularly wonderful to listen to I find the reader, Simon Vance,...
by Dr. Claudia Welch I'm awfully close to turning 50...
How do we decide whether or not to undergo a, "preventative" procedure like a mammogram? First, we might want to educate ourselves. This is trickier than it seems at first. Because many of the sources of our information may be difficult to trust. Consider, as one of any...
Dear Friends, My previous book, "How the Art of Medicine Makes the Science More Effective: Becoming the Medicine We Practice" was just released in January 2017 in paperback under its new (much better) title: "The Four Qualities of Effective Physicians: Practical Ayurvedic Wisdom for Modern Physicians". In...
Today, in the wake of the 2016 US Presidential election, there is shock, daze, awe, grief, disbelief, or all of the above, on all sides of the political totem. It feels familiar to me. I think maybe because I have been involved in birth and death before. What the...
By Dr. Claudia Welch As of January 2011, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that, if you were an average young American, you would be spending almost every waking minute, outside of time in school, on either a smart phone, computer, TV or some other electronic...
Choose Wisely, Grasshopper. This Is Your Life We’re Talking About The Choices We Make And Why They Affect Our Health The last year or so has produced a few editorials and blogs about choice, success and how we spend our time. They struck a chord with us...
Abstract The Problem: Sensory control v. repression of urges. The solution: Read on...
Ayurveda, Self-Reformation, & The Mediterranean Diet Study. [Warning: I hope this article isn't too preachy...
Gentle Reader, I am guilty of this too. I could pretend I’m not, but then there would be pretense on top of pretense. In 2011, the New York Times reported a study that led to conclusions about fake versus genuine emotions, that we probably already knew. (One...
I was thinking lately… I was thinking that traditionally the Aghora sect of Hinduism has, at least in part, at least according to my understanding, embraced practices that would seem extreme to non-Aghori Hindus. Or just about anybody else. Meditating in graveyards, maybe on corpses, inviting a...
Some of us are exercise junkies. Some not. Some of us enjoy a good, brisk, long walk. Provided some tidy conditions are met: the weather must be perfect and there must be a perfect chat companion. If the weather is cold, companion taciturn or absent, or...
“Alas, I have good news.” In late May 2010, I got this cheerful voicemail message from Renee Sedliar, the affable and talented Executive Editor at Da Capo. I stood in the Baltimore airport, between flights, slightly confused. She quickly corrected, “I mean, at last, I have good news.” Da...
Hi all. I just spent a couple weeks in New Zealand, or “Aotearoa”– “land of the long white cloud,” as a stopover on my way to teach in Australia. There is a reason clouds occupy a prominent position in the Maori name for New Zealand. [caption id="attachment_55521" align="alignnone"...
Dr. Welch talks about two major considerations in breast health - considerations she wished all women knew about so we could all have the best mammarian (yes, she knows that is not a word) health possible....
In this special interview Dr Claudia Welch, Ayurvedic Practitioner, gives a refreshing holistic perspective on hormones, the difference between adrenaline and cortisol, male and female sex hormones, and perspective on how to balance your hormones....
A few months ago, I was reading about how one of the big Hindu Gods (Brahma) was lusting after his own daughter. She would try to escape his line of vision but he kept creating himself new faces, so he could continue to look upon her in...
I suppose that, at any given time, there are always at least a few places on this planet that manage to manifest lofty ideals in practical ways that inspire and transform whoever participates. In my estimation, vaidyagrāma, an Ayurvedic eco-village that provides education and Ayurvedic treatments...
Ancient Āyurvedic texts describe four qualities one must possess to become an effective physician: Excellence in theoretical knowledge, lots of practice, dexterity and purity. Dr. Welch explores some of the weird and interesting aspects of these qualities and how cultivating them can enhance our ability...
We have this idea, I think, that medicine should be yucky. That it doesn’t work unless it is. No pain, no gain. Things have not always been like this....
What To Look For And How To See It (And why this has anything to do with the Art of Medicine) By Dr. Claudia Welch “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”...
Close to 70 percent of US residents are on at least one prescription drug and, most likely, those drugs are antibiotics, antidepressants or addictive painkilling opioids....
It’s happened. I can feel it. You probably can too. Autumn. Quite a personality she has, isn’t it? I have a friend who has a difficult time with Autumn. Not surprising. In Chinese medicine, Autumn is associated with lungs and grief. It is a time of...
I just spent such a delightful weekend with the Kripalu School of Ayurveda students, who should be graduating, like, any minute now. It was truly, madly, deeply enjoyable for me to spend time with them. Hopefully it wasn’t lousy for them either. I am also aware...
Sometime in maybe the 2000s, I started hearing a lot about, “oil pulling.” How it was an ancient Ayurvedic practice used extensively for thousands of years. And it seemed to cure everything from cavities to cancer. I had never heard of it. I had been studying Ayurveda...
by Dr. Claudia Welch Note: You can find organic doṣa-pacifying oils listed in this article at Banyan Botanicals and other places. Good to check that they are made with organic herbs that are harvested in a sustainable way. We do not get commissions for naming Banyan...
Note: While much of this article is about plants and medicine, all these ideas apply equally to animals and food. Treating animals as commodities, packing them into unnaturally crowded areas and interacting with them in those environments has been shown to be clearly associated with...
Masters come to tell us this. They address us either as a man, from the level of man- “O, man, awake!”-or from the level of the soul, the conscious being—“O, children of Light, awake! You are asleep. Being under the control of mind, your attention...
Ayurveda Ayurveda, literally “the science of life,” is a science of medicine that originated in India between two and five—even ten—thousand years ago (depending on who you ask). It includes a comprehensive study of anatomy, physiology, pathology, diagnostic systems and treatment strategies. Even today, in India,...