I recently unfollowed a doctor who talks about one of my favorite topics (vulvas). I like her book, and respect that she had the ovaries to write it, but she did this thing that MDs do — speak with 100% certainty about topics that their medical degree does not qualify them to say.
I unfollowed her when she posted with great resolve that what you eat does not affect the health of your vulva. This was regarding certain foods and their relationships to healing yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, and general “unfreshness” (which is a different topic entirely). She called it “pelvic sorcery” (her quotes).
I would still be following this doctor had she said what is true: “There has been an historic absence of scientific studies on women’s health, thus it is not scientifically proven that the food one eats affects the balance of bacteria and candida albicans (yeast) in the vulva. However, thousands of years of practice through multiple wisdom traditions have demonstrated a clear and causal link.”
Ayurveda requires a lifetime of study, perhaps several lifetimes, before you can call yourself a master. But here are two teachings the masters have been applying for thousands of years with great success:
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What you eat affects how your body functions.
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Food, like our bodies, is made of five elements presented in different quantities. Introduce more of one element through food and that element becomes stronger.
The scientific method is a blessing for times when we must distinguish this from that. Western medicine has saved millions of lives. But to know Truth is not the same as proving something through science because what is studied by science reflects what is most valued by a society, and that leaves a lot of unturned stones.
How would Western medicine, and all modern healing, look if practitioners were trained to use the three most powerful words that any healer needs? I don’t know.
