---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: ama
title: Āma
iast: Āma
devanagari: आम
description: 'Incompletely transformed material produced when agni is impaired, a sticky pathogenic residue that clogs the channel system and seeds disease; NOT toxins in the environmental-chemical sense, NOT a detox marketing target, NOT ordinary waste.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya Sūtrasthāna 13.25
tags:
- ama
- pathology
- agni
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'toxins'
  why: 'The detox-industry gloss maps āma onto environmental chemicals to be flushed by a product. Āma is not an external poison; it is your own food and experience left half-transformed by weak fire. The corrective is tending agni, not purchasing a cleanse.'
  instead: 'Render āma as incompletely transformed residue born of impaired agni and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'ordinary waste'
  why: 'Mala, the normal wastes (urine, feces, sweat), are healthy products with proper exits. Āma has no proper exit: it is unfinished material that lodges where it should not, which is exactly why it is pathogenic.'
- term: 'a detox target'
  why: 'Framing āma as the thing a seven-day program removes converts an etiological analysis into a purchase. Classical management is graded: kindle the fire, lighten the load, and only in specific presentations apply formal purification.'
related:
- /concepts/agni.md
- /concepts/srotas.md
- /concepts/panchakarma.md
reception_note: 'Heavily captured by the detox industry. The file describes a pathophysiological concept; it does not endorse cleanse products or protocols and makes no clinical claims.'
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Āma -- आम

**Not:** toxins, ordinary waste, a detox target

## What It Actually Means

Āma is what happens to input the fire could not finish. When jāṭharāgni or the deeper agnis run weak, the intermediate product of digestion is neither nutrient nor excretable waste: it is a heavy, sticky, unripe residue that the texts describe with the word for uncooked. Because it is neither usable nor evacuable, āma seeps into the channel system (srotas), obstructs flow, blends with vitiated doṣas, and becomes the substrate on which disease patterns organize; a large share of classical pathology is narrated as doṣa plus āma lodged in a channel. The concept also extends to the mind: undigested experience behaves the same way. The therapeutic logic follows the etiology: strengthen the fire and stop feeding it beyond its capacity, because āma is manufactured at home, not imported.

## Audience Metaphor

Āma is the grease in a restaurant ventilation duct. Nobody carried grease into the building; it is the residue of ten thousand meals cooked on a flame that never burned quite hot enough, condensing where you cannot see it until the airflow chokes. You do not solve it by buying a fan; you fix the fire and clean the duct.

## Citations

1. Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya Sūtrasthāna 13.25 on the formation of āma from impaired agni -- see [references/ashtanga-hridaya.md](../references/ashtanga-hridaya.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Vimānasthāna 5 on channel obstruction in pathogenesis -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
