Jan-March

Food to be taken in respective Months
(January to March)

January

January (Posh)

The following things should be taken in Posh season:

1. Carrot, jujube, sugar cane, sesame seed (til), brinjal, tomato, mogri, and similar nutritious articles.
2. Jaggery and sesame seed (til) balance each other. Sesame seed is heat much use predominant it destroys kafa, and jaggery quiets the pitta excited by too much use of til. Thus, til and gud supplement each other as winter food items.

February

February (Maha)

The month of Maha is more for the assimilation of nutrients than for taking in nutrients. We will find patients suffering from cold, cough, flu, and pneumonia as the weather is alternately hot and cold. Take care of the following during the Maha season:

1. Sufficient physical labor or exercise is needed for assimilation of nutrients and providing heat to the body to protect the body from diseases.
2. On Shivaratri Fasting and waking for the whole night or, at least till mid night are prescribed for these to remove kafa. But on the contrary, we eat sweet and sour dishes to celebrate Shivratri, thus inviting a horde of diseases.

March

March (Phalgun)

Take care of the following during the Vasant season:

1. Enjoy the sunshine. You can walk, play, and dance in it.
2. Light a bonfire in the evening of the Holi days and walk around and receive the heat on your body.
3. Stop taking sweets in Phalgun and take plain, easily digestible food like Jawari pops, baked gram, dates, and coconuts to your heart content.
4. Boil Kesuda flowers and wash yourself with that water and advise others to do the same. Besmear your body with sandal paste.
5. In order that the borderline weather of Vasant may not cause harm to people prone to kafa, if there is a congestion of kafa, get rid of it either by a purgative or by causing vomit. In order to excite vomiting, take five grams of Mindhol powder with lukewarm water. As purgatives Harde, Sena leaves or three grains of baked Kadu may be taken.
6. Do not eat fatty and sweet things.
7. Do not give peppermint, chocolate or ice-cream cones to young children, as they produce kafa.
8. Do not sleep during the day. Kafa predominant people should wake late into the night, this thing checks the congestion of kafa.
9. If you feel like having kafa trouble, take alkaline diet. Alkaline diet dilutes and dissolves cough, and is discharged by it self. For quicker dissolution, javakhar, tankankhar or salt does well.
If a little understanding care and caution are practiced in the borderline Vasant and a health giving routine is observed with faith, the month of Phalgun will be for us a month of gaining maintaining health even in this weakening weather.