In Ayurveda, dry skin, dry hair, constipation, insomnia, anxiety, irritation, blood deficiency and wasting disease all are symptoms of dryness:
– Dry Skin: Dryness of skin
– Dry Hair: Dryness of hair
– Constipation: Dryness of intestine
– Insomnia, Anxiety, Irritation: Dryness of brain and mind
– Blood Deficiency: Dryness of blood
– Wasting Disease: Dryness of body
Dryness is a vata disease. Vata is “Wind” Dosha. The main qualities of vata are dry, light, cool, rough, mobile, irregular, quick and changeable.
How to treat a dry disease? 
Firstly, Ayurveda suggests that, you should avoid or eat less dry foods, such as dense foods, beans, nuts, potatoes, barley, and corn. Why these foods are dry foods? According to Ayurveda, any food that causes dryness is dry food. Dried nuts and dense foods absorb moisture. The body needs more fluids to soak these foods for digestion. Corn and many beans are diuretics – reduce water in the body by increasing urine output. Consuming too much dry foods, or consuming them for long time could lead to dehydration of organs. You should also avoid or eat less light foods, such as millet, buckwheat, rye, barley, spinach, lettuce, and apple. Many vegetables and fruits are light foods, which make your body light and thin.
Secondly, Ayurveda suggests that, you should eat oily foods, which include dairy products, meat, fatty foods, and cooking oils. Oily foods can add nutrition and energy to the body and nourish the organs, skin and hair, calm the nerves, reduce and cure dryness. You should also eat heavy foods such as bread, pasta, cheese, and yogurt, which make your body heavy and gain weight.
The foods also can be grouped into sex tastes: bitter, pungent, astringent, salty, sour and sweet. For people who suffer from dryness, Ayurveda suggests to consume more salty, sour and sweet foods, and avoid or eat less bitter, pungent and astringent foods. Because salty, sour and sweet foods decrease vata, and increase kapha, but bitter, pungent and astringent foods decrease kapha, and increase vata.
If you want to eat dry foods, or dry foods are your main foods to eat, you should add oily foods or sweet taste foods to reduce the dryness of them. If you have no dairy products, meat or fatty foods, you should at least add cooking oils (even just vegetable oils) to the foods. The oils for human body are just like the ones used for a car – providing the fuel of energy and lubricating the machine. People in poor country usually have their life experience about cooking oils, which are essential to keep the body healthy.
Today, in the Western countries, people are fed by excessive oily foods – high fat diet every day, and too many people are overweight, and too many people suffer from obesity. If you live in the West and are overweight, but still suffer from a dry disease, it is likely that your dryness is not caused by nutrient deficiencies and you are not malnourished. You need to visit your doctor and find the real cause of the disease.
But if you live in a developing country, and rarely eat oily foods, or if you live in a developed country, have a thin body, and suffer from a dry disease, you may try to consume more oily foods to nourish your body.
In the West, seeing the health problems of the increasing overweight population, many health care professionals and doctors advise people to “eat more vegetables, less fat, sugar and salt”. This makes many vegetarians who believe that more vegetables, less fat, sugar and salt means more healthy. Unfortunately the advice is only correct under some circumstances, such as if you are overweight, if you are fed by excessive high fat diet every day, if you are suffering from some diseases.
Due to monophagia, many hard-core vegetarians are suffering from protein deficiency and some kind of dryness. If this is the case, the simplest treatment for curing the disorders of dryness is to add oily foods (and heavy, sweet foods) to the diet.
Please consult your doctor before taking any remedies, including food therapies.
For more information about Ayurvedic remedies, go to Natural Remedies Center: http://www.naturalremediescenter.com/treat/ayurvedic-medicine/
