AmalWhen my younger son Alvin was born in 2012 and was still a baby in arms, he would catch hold of my moustache and play with it. It was stiff, like thorns. He liked the prickle of it. Holding on to it became a game for him. When I went to India in 2014, between eating there without restraint and all the running about and the strain on my mind, my sugar level rose. First thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, it would be above 250. Forty days later, a few days before I came back to America, a few hairs in the middle of the left side of my moustache turned brown. Within a week of my return it had spread to the other side as well. Within a month a few hairs on both sides began to fall. It went on, and over the next two months every hair in the whole moustache was gone.
The hair of my beard fell too. The skin of my face thickened a little and my face grew misshapen. On my head as well, hair began to fall away in round patches. It was spreading slowly. So I went to my doctor and showed him, and he told me to go and see a dermatologist. When I went to the dermatologist he gave me tablets and a steroid injection. In the moustache alone he injected in five or six places where the hair had fallen. He did the same in the beard and on the head, wherever there was no hair. Taking an injection in the moustache, which is a sensitive area, is a very painful business. After a month the hair grew back. After half of it had grown, within the next month it all fell out again. But the injections and the tablets I had taken raised the sugar in my blood very greatly.
When I went to my doctor and showed him, he told me to take insulin injections. But instead of that he gave me some additional tablets. They were very expensive. Taking them brought the sugar under some control. But because I was taking the tablet for the skin, it rose again. And the hair did not grow. The following year, in 2015, when I went to India, I went to see a dermatologist there. He too, like the practice here, gave me injections and tablets, and some ointments besides. When I used them the hair grew in a month in the same way, and then fell. Two years passed for me like this. In that time I began, little by little, to watch my own condition and to read about it. I learned that it arises from a kind of allergic reaction in the body.
Sometimes, because of too much sugar or fat in the body, or because of blood pressure, or because of strain on the mind, the body's own defences begin to attack its own cells. Any organ in the body can be affected by this. I came to understand that what had happened on my face — the loss of my moustache and my beard — was exactly that. The first thing I did was to bring the sugar in my blood down as far as I possibly could. With exercise and with control over my food, the sugar in my blood fell quickly and came somewhere near the average. Now I noticed that hair had begun to grow on my face again. I kept at it, and brought the sugar in my blood under my own control, and so the swelling in my face went down and the hair began to grow.
It came back to what it had been. The round patches on my head disappeared too, and the hair had begun to grow again. That was when I understood that through our uncontrolled eating and the burdens on our minds we lose our sleep. And so, instead of the blood being cleaned, the sugar in it and the fat in it rise, which brings on blood pressure and works many changes in the body. I came to understand too that it creates allergies of this kind, and can bring on any sort of illness at all. Both my family doctor and my dermatologist knew my condition well. Even so, with no communication at all between them, the dermatologist gave me medicine to make my hair grow. But he did not tell me that it would raise the sugar in my blood. Not knowing that, my family doctor gave me medicine to bring the sugar in my blood down.
So between my workload and these medicines my body grew weaker still. Instead of the hair growing back, it had begun to fall. That is what happened. Once I understood this, in order to get the hair to grow I brought my blood sugar down, cut my workload back somewhat, and set my own health right.
Another episode. When we moved into our new house, my younger son Alvin developed a great many blisters on his legs, and within a few days they would burst and turn into a great many sores. We could not understand the reason for it at all. We took him to the paediatrician. He told us to take him to a dermatologist. We took him there too. They could not understand it either. Thinking it might be an allergy caused by the leaves of some poisonous plant brushing against him, he gave us some medicines and ointments. When we used them it would heal. But within a few days the same crop of sores would appear again. Six months went by like this.
Only afterwards did we come to know that the fire ants in our back garden were the cause — even a single bite from one of them would raise blisters on him. We learned that from one blister a great many more would form. So we destroyed the fire ant nests and saw to it that there were no ants in the garden. That solved the problem for him. But what I learned from it is that however experienced doctors may be, there are some simple problems they cannot solve. It was only while talking to my father, when he said it might be an insect bite, that we came to know about these ant bites.
From these episodes I began to pay attention to my body, to my way of eating, to my exercise and to the load of my work. That was when I came to know of many different ways of eating. And I began to notice that every one of them had some shortcoming.
After Covid, in 2022, I followed a particular way of eating. Mrs Krithika, from Bengaluru, trained me in it. From that three-month course I came to know several ways of eating. I learned what effects follow when green vegetables, greens and herbs are used in certain dishes, and when things like fresh turmeric and apple cider are added to our food. The relaxation, affirmation and gratitude techniques she taught were very useful as well. In 2023 I learned a method called the yoga diet from Dr Ramesh Rangarajan. It is a way of eating over one mandalam, that is 48 days. He taught the method for bringing body weight down. He also taught how to cleanse the body through this way of eating. What he taught was a very simple matter: that by reducing the calories in the food we take in — and by learning how to reduce them without tiring the body — we can bring our weight down and clean the body.
My elder brother died in 2021 of a bleed in the brain. My father died of cancer in 2024. The effect of their sudden deaths made me want to read further about health. So I began to read many books. Among them, Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation by Andreas Moritz, which Dr Hegde mentioned in a video, added greatly to what I knew of medicine. That book, written on the basis of Ayurveda and Siddha medicine, helped me to understand my own body fully.
In 2015 a project we had begun to build at my office — something three large companies had tried for 25 years and failed to do — we completed successfully over the next three years, and it came into use in 2018. Through it, several hundred thousand children in our state of South Carolina benefited. The chief reason we finished what the large companies could not was that we did it by what is called Agile development, completing the work in parts, in cycles. The companies that had tried before did not work that way. That was the reason they failed. Great appreciation came to us from the government for it. This experience gave me the idea that the same thing could be used for our health.
The illnesses and the experience of them, the different ways of eating I learned, the books on Ayurveda and Siddha that I read, and the experience I gained at my office — out of all of these I built this method of health, which is Nila Nalam. I have been testing it on myself without a break for the last four years. It has been doing good both to me and to my wife. So that everyone may have the benefit of it, I have published it as a book. Read it, take it in, and try it for yourself. Share with me whatever you find. Before you use this method, talk it over with your family doctor. The help of my wife Jacqueline, who practised these ways of living alongside me as a fellow laboratory mouse for four years, has been very great.
The health guides of my life
- Father of the Nation, M. K. Gandhi — author of "Key to Health"
- Dr George Washington Carver — the peanut man, American botanical scientist and educator
- Agricultural scientist Ko. Nammalvar — author of "Noyinai Kondaduvom" (Let Us Celebrate Illness)
- Writer Jeyamohan — author of "Nalamarithal" (Knowing Wellness)
- Mr Krishnamachari — yoga teacher, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai
- Dr Sundar Balasubramanian — Medical University of South Carolina, USA; author of "PranaScience — Decoding Yoga Breathing"
- Dr Mark Hyman — author of "The Blood Sugar Solution"
- Dr Andreas Moritz — author of "Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation"
- Dr B. M. Hegde — Indian cardiologist, professor of medicine and writer
- Mr Scott M. Johnson — Agile coach (PSI), Midlands Technical College, South Carolina, USA
- Mrs Krithika Tharan — Hepta Senz / Hepta Academy, Bengaluru
- Dr M. Ramesh Rangarajan — Sri Sai Yogalaya, Pune
To all of them I dedicate
this book.
On the blessed day
of Gandhi's birth,
it gives me great joy
to release this book.
Amalorpavanathan Yagulasamy
amal_forum at hotmail.com
10 October 2026
Whatever the matter, and from whoever's mouth it is heard,
to discern its truth is wisdom.
— Thirukkural 423
Meaning: whoever it is that says a thing, you must think it through and find the truth of it.