Now that we understand the importance of our health, let’s take another step forward.

Here, we’ll try to explain how certain imbalances in our body can lead to various illnesses. This means how diseases can occur in our bodies due to imbalances in three main elements: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, according to the principles of Ayurveda.

Even modern medical science understands our body just three or four percent. But I believe that Ayurveda can also help us understand the human body better.

According to Ayurvedic principles, when there’s an imbalance of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha in the body, it can lead to various illnesses. The reason is that these three doshas exist in varying proportions in everyone’s body, and an excess of any of them can create health problems.

Here are four reasons: Why we get sick

1} Mental State:-

Another significant factor that affects our health, apart from medical science, is our “mental state.” Nowadays, even medical science acknowledges that around 70-80% of most illnesses have a psychological aspect.

Personally, as a psychologist, I can tell you that many major diseases are linked to our mental health. The importance of mental health has increased significantly in recent times.

2} Lifestyle:-

After all, one of the biggest reasons behind our illnesses is our lifestyle. Our current lifestyle often becomes our enemy.

Lifestyle includes a wide range of factors, such as diet, the type of work we do, stress, habits, exercise, and more. Each of these aspects needs to be thoroughly understood in each context.

I feel that most people don’t have enough information about a healthy lifestyle, which is why they invite diseases. Unfortunately, even our medical system focuses more on managing the symptoms of diseases than understanding the underlying causes and making lifestyle changes.

For many years, a common practice has been to ignore the symptoms of illness until they become unbearable. Sometimes, we prefer to turn a blind eye to the reasons behind our illnesses.

3} Heredity:-

Another reason behind our diseases is our genetics, which we call genetic diseases. We cannot prevent genetic diseases from being passed down through our ancestors.

Science also believed for a long time that we couldn’t control genetic diseases. But recent research in the field of epigenetics has shown that our environment and our behavior can influence our genes. In other words, we can modify or change genetic diseases.

Epigenetics is a complex topic, and we will discuss it in more detail in later chapters.

4} External Factors:-

The body’s susceptibility to illness is influenced by external factors. This means that when our bodies are attacked by viruses or bacteria, we need to strengthen our immune system to fight them off. Ultimately, the strength or weakness of our immune system depends on our lifestyle, mental state, and genetics.

If we have a strong immune system, we can defend ourselves against these viruses or bacteria from external attacks, whereas if our immune system is weak, we may become vulnerable to them and fall ill. (As we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

In summary, the body’s ability to resist illness depends on various factors including lifestyle, mental health, and genetics, and having a strong immune system can help protect us from infections caused by viruses and bacteria.

To sum it up, the main reasons behind our illnesses are our mental state, lifestyle, genetics, and external factors (Psychological – Lifestyle – Heredity – External factors). These are interconnected and play a significant role in our health.

Where external factors and genetics have less influence on the extent of the disease, lifestyle choices and psychological factors have a greater impact on our health.

The most common diseases worldwide include heart disease, cancer, obesity, respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. These diseases are often linked to our lifestyle and psychological factors.

So, now we understand that to live a healthy and disease-free life, we must understand the intricacies of our lifestyle and make improvements in our mental health. These aspects are in our hands. If we want to live a healthy life, we need to focus on a healthy lifestyle and improve our mental well-being.

It’s crucial to realize that all these aspects are interconnected. We need to take care of our physical health, our mental state, our lifestyle choices, and even our genetics to maintain good health.

So, I believe it’s essential for us to understand that if we want to live a healthy and disease-free life, we need to make changes in our lifestyle and achieve a balanced mental state.”