Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of life and medicine, is now one of the most popular alternate systems of medicine in the world. In addition to being a widely accepted system of medicine in India, Ayurveda has also been legally recognized as an alternate system of medicine and practiced in quite a few countries like, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bangladesh, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman and so on. It is also practiced in a very small way in many developed countries like USA, parts of Europe, mainly Germany, Australia, etc. though not with much of governmental support.
Ayurveda is sought-after by different persons for different reasons. One of the most common reasons is that many people are not happy with the use of synthetic modern medicine on account of safety concerns, and so they seek medical systems like Ayurveda which use natural products and are perceived to be safe. Some adopt Ayurveda for certain types of illnesses like liver disorders, degenerative skeleto-muscular problems like Osteoarthritis, Spondylosis etc where Ayurveda is known to be more effective. Many others are using ayurvedic massages and allied procedures as a stress relief and rejuvenative measure. Ayurvedic and other natural herbal cosmetics have also found their way into many domains.
Modern healthcare systems have evolved and grown by leaps and bounds. There have been great achievements like steady increase in life expectancy, reduction in child mortality, dramatic reduction in deaths due to infections, excellent survival rates in accident and trauma related issues and so on. But on the other hand there are also growing concerns from other areas like degenerative diseases, geriatric problems, immunological hyper/hypo activity, lifestyle related disorders and the growing concern about the rise in drug induced illnesses.
This being the scenario, healthcare authorities, the world over, and WHO, are seriously exploring the possibility of harnessing the strengths in traditional healthcare systems to achieve their objective of providing the ideal healthcare, comprising of safe and effective preventive as well as curative medical care. The scope of Ayurveda in contributing to the current and emerging global health scenario can be viewed from two perspectives, one from a conceptual point of view and the second from a practical point of view.
From a conceptual perspective, Ayurveda can contribute significantly towards safe and effective holistic approach to healthcare. It understands the person as a dynamic entity, interacting with innumerable factors which have to be considered in arriving at a total understanding of what contributes to health and ill-health for that particular individual.
Approach towards health maintenance
In the preventive healthcare segment, the ayurvedic approach towards the maintenance of health is holistic and encompasses a number of factors like, understanding the basic constitution of a person in terms of his health and vulnerability to diseases and adapting his lifestyle with respect to food, activities, dos and don'ts, taking into consideration the various factors that affect him in the physical, mental, climatic, nutritional, occupational and environmental domains. In spite of every possible care, there is a stress on the human system arising from various endogenous factors produced as a result of from the regular and extraordinary metabolic processes and from exogenous substances which constantly stimulate the immune system and lead to a variety of chronic immunological and degenerative diseases. Ayurveda has a great repertoire of very effective methods called 'Sodhana Chikitsa" to safely and effectively eliminate these toxic accumulations and can play a very significant preventive role. The procedures known as the "Panchakarmas" and "Upakramas" comprise of a number of preparatory and main procedures aimed at metabolizing and mobilizing the toxicity and eliminating the same through the body's natural elimination processes like, emesis, purgation and through medicated enemas. Ayurveda also has a very elaborate and effective approach called "Rasayana", which deals with the retardation of tissue degeneration.
From the curative point of view, Ayurveda has a two pronged strategy towards handling diseases. The first and preferred approach, (Hetuvipareeta) is one of identifying the principle aberrations in the functioning of the body which form the root cause of the various diseases & their manifestations and correcting the same, as opposed to treating each symptom or disease as a separate entity. This is a fundamental approach and though, at times time consuming, yields excellent results even in chronic complicated conditions involving multiple systems. Conditions treated with this approach do not recur and the treatment does not result in the production of other diseases. The next approach, (Vyadhi Vipareetam) is one, comprising of correcting or mitigating the specific disease or disease process. It is adopted in emergencies and in conditions which could develop into further complications very quickly, but diseases treated with this approach could recur. To achieve the above objectives, Ayurveda utilises diet, lifestyle changes, medicines, therapeutic procedures, and surgical and allied procedures.
Diet comprises of everything that can be used internally, is principally of nutritive value and takes a very long time to produce significant and noticeable effects. Anything that produces immediate and pronounced action is understood to be poisonous and materials that are via-media are considered as medicines. All the three can be harnessed in treating diseases. Ayurveda advocates the use of diet and safe medicines other than in emergencies and serious conditions where the risk-benefit ratio justifies the use of even what it categorizes as not so safe or poisonous substances. So the main body of knowledge pertaining to medicines comprises of safe and mild therapeutically effective natural products. This can be a rich resource for the development of innumerable safe and effective healthcare products and could lead to new therapeutic avenues and targets and subsequently to the discovery of natural based or synthetic analogues of new chemical entities (NCEs) as therapeutic agents.
The ayurvedic therapeutic procedures, could, if studied in-depth, pave the way for the discovery of novel approaches in the preventive and curative healthcare. Ayurveda has significant contributions to make in terms of safe and effective treatments resulting in good cure rates in a significant number of cases and control in some, for a wide range of diseases comprising of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases, immunological diseases, metabolic and degenerative diseases in all the areas of medicine like General medicine, Orthopaedics, Neurology, Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Urology, Ophthalmology and ENT, Psychiatry, Geriatrics and so on. Ayurveda also has significant contributions to make in the field of Surgery in the areas of wound healing, fracture healing and in the treatment of Hemorrhoids and Fistulae-in-Ano etc.
(The author is MD of Arya Vaidya Nilayam Ltd, Madurai-625 004. email: avn@eth.net)