Triphala Dosage: How Much, When, With What

The classical dose of Triphala churna, the powder, is 3 to 6 grams once a day, taken with warm water at bedtime for the bowel, or with honey and ghee before food as a rasayana, a rejuvenative. The decoction, Triphala kwatha, is taken at 40 to 60 millilitres, and is the form used for washing the eyes and wounds as well as for drinking. These are the doses the Sharngadhara Samhita's method and the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India record, and they are the doses used in practice today. The powder is made of the three fruits in equal parts, and it is a medicine with a purpose and a season, not a supplement taken indefinitely.

What Triphala is

Triphala, the three fruits, is Haritaki, Terminalia chebula; Bibhitaki, Terminalia bellirica; and Amalaki, Phyllanthus emblica, dried and powdered without their seeds. The pharmacopoeia standard is equal parts by weight; some lineages weight Amalaki more heavily to soften the formula for Pitta.

The three together carry five of the six tastes, all but salt, with astringent leading; they are light and dry in quality; the potency is balanced, Haritaki and Bibhitaki warming and Amalaki cooling; the vipaka, the post-digestive effect, is sweet; and the prabhava, the specific action, is that of a gentle purgative that also nourishes, which no reading of its tastes would predict. It pacifies all three doshas, Kapha most and Vata least, and it is the classical example of a formula that both cleanses and builds. It is deepana, kindling agni, the digestive fire; anulomana, moving Vata downward; and chakshushya, good for the eyes.

Dose by purpose

For constipation and a sluggish bowel, 3 to 6 grams of the churna in a cup of warm water, stirred and drunk at bedtime, or an hour after the evening meal. The stool moves the following morning, soft and without griping. A person who finds the full dose loosens the bowel too far reduces it; a Vata person with hard dry stool takes the churna with warm water and a small spoon of ghee, since dryness is the Vata fault and Triphala is itself drying.

As a rasayana, the same 3 to 6 grams before food in the morning, mixed with honey and ghee in unequal quantity, which the tradition specifies because equal quantities of the two are an incompatible combination. For a Vata person, ghee predominates; for Kapha, honey; for Pitta, ghee. Taken this way through the year it keeps the senses sharp and the body light into age, and the Bhavaprakasha's description of Haritaki gives a different vehicle for each season: rock salt in the rains, sugar in autumn, dried ginger in early winter, long pepper in late winter, honey in spring, and jaggery in summer.

For the eyes, Triphala kwatha, cooled and strained, used as an eyewash morning and evening, or the churna soaked overnight and the clear water used the same way. For the mouth and gums, the same decoction as a gargle. For weight and Kapha, the churna with honey and warm water in the morning, and Triphala guggulu, which adds Guggulu, Commiphora wightii, and long pepper, in tablet form.

Triphala kwatha is made by boiling one part of the coarse powder in sixteen parts of water and reducing to a quarter, following the Sharngadhara rule for decoctions; 40 to 60 millilitres is a dose. Triphala ghrita, the ghee, is given for the eyes at a spoon before food.

Timing and season

For the bowel, the dose is at night, since the colon is the seat of Vata and the night belongs to it. For rejuvenation and the eyes, it is in the morning before food. Triphala is not taken with food, which weakens its action on the bowel, and not at the same hour as other medicines, since its astringency slows their absorption. It suits every season, with the vehicle changed as above, and it is most needed in the rains and in spring, when Kapha and ama, the residue of poor digestion, accumulate.

When it is not given

The classical cautions for Haritaki govern the formula. It is not given in pregnancy, to a person who is emaciated or exhausted, in extreme thirst or dehydration, after bloodletting, after heavy fasting, or in acute diarrhoea. It is reduced or stopped when the stool becomes loose or the body becomes dry, since a laxative taken daily for months dries the colon and, in a Vata person, worsens the constipation it was meant to relieve; the tradition's practice is to take it for the weeks a condition requires, or as a seasonal rasayana with a nourishing vehicle, and not as a daily fixture. A person taking other medicines separates them from Triphala by two hours. Herbalism uses the same three fruits under their Sanskrit names and gives the same doses.

Not medical advice.