Actor Genelia Deshmukh recently joined NewsX for an insightful conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. As part of the interview, Genelia opened up about how one can keep themselves and their family safe during the flu season, turning vegetarian, how people have been taking extra measures post the pandemic and finally taking care of their health. Read excerpts:
Sharing her health routine during monsoon to keep herself and family safe, Genelia said, “There are certain things that just pass on for generations and that is something that I as a mom have also done. I have taken it from my grandmother or my mother or my mother-in-law and followed it for my kids. While you use ajwain, mint, eucalyptus, camphor and all the general things. Like I remember, when my kids were little babies, we used to put it in a potli, the ajwain shake, so pretty much all of this. I am quite particular about diet in terms of it being a whole-plant based because I follow a plant-based diet. We don’t eat milk, we don’t have dairy, we don’t have meat so my kids are also plant-based. On the whole, we follow 80-20% rule, wherein we eat well for 80% and for the 20%, we don’t really break our heads much. I think that helped on a whole. I am also a big follower of steam inhalation because I feel that it just gives you so much of relief from cold and cough. I think one of the things of the pandemic, which I have learned I would do it only when I got the cold and cough, I would do steam inhalations. Today, it has come about where it has become part of our routine, where we do it once a day for sure. On the days we don’t feel good, we’ll do it once in the morning and once in the evening. That’s a routine and I think that it is something we have taken off, which is correct from all the negativity that surrounds us.”
She added, “The good thing about Vicks is that what you do individually, like I give my kids a nilgiri bath. I put eucalyptus in their water when I am giving them a bath. Of-course, not on the eyes, because it would burn them. The good part about the Vicks Vaporub is that it is all there. Your relief is almost instant because all you are doing is putting it in luke warm water. It is in itself the goodness of Ayurveda or the goodness of what your mom told us, which gave you relief. When you have a virus, most people have antibiotics and stuff like that and that is not going to help because the virus is going to take its time to get off your system. What you need is relief and I think that’s what Vicks Vaporub does. It gives you relief that at that point of time from your cold and cough and that really helps.”
Talking about about how people are finally taking care of their health after the pandemic, Genelia expressed, “It is the biggest investment in yourself. Me and Ritesh, both as a family, have grown out of phases where clothes or shoes made the most amount of sense to us. We have gone into a zone where we eat organic, we eat food from literally from the farm to table, we are plant based so we eat food that is made in our kitchen. Nothing really that has animal protein. I am a believer that all these things do cause your immunity to go five steps lower. That was also one of the things that we did in the pandemic. When we went plant-based, we were hardcore non-vegetarians eaters to totally off milk, eggs, and all of that. It was for your immunity boost. I think knowledge on this is growing. Though people want to be healthy, sometimes they just do wrong things because there is so much out there saying do this, do that. You need to trust your gut and trust yourself but I have seen a change. I have seen people at-least doing their regular walks, doing inhalations. I hope that people are a lot more in the house rather than being out there.“