Ayurveda: Holistic Healing and Traditional Indian Medicine
First Reading
Ayurveda is an indigenous ethnic medical system in popular practice in the Indian subcontinent since the pre-biblical era. The system’s core strength is its holistic approach to health and disease, using natural remedies derived from medicinal plants and minerals. It lays emphasis on self-discipline and guidelines on diet and exercise in daily healthy living.
The classical Ayurvedic system was probably driven by insight, intuition, and astute observation of human behavior and nature. The concept that “the soil is more important than the seed” underlies several Ayurvedic treatment strategies. A delicate balance between biophysiological forces (dosha) and constitution (prakriti) is said to determine health and disease. Several other “players” like “mind” and “metabolic fire” (agni) play important roles. Ayurveda’s principal therapeutic aim is to harmoniously restore that balance. Man is regarded as bearing a structure transcending all matter in the universe, animate and inanimate. This commonality makes “man a replica of the universe.” Plants are no exception; all matter has medicinal value.
Ayurveda has an extensive pharmacopoeia, predominantly herbs and minerals. Their healing properties are well summarized in modern texts. Ayurvedic formulations, often complex with several herbal-mineral ingredients, are governed by well-described pharmacological principles of preparation, compatibility, and administration. In some complex, well-controlled physicochemical processes, raw metals and minerals are converted into potent medicines known as bhasmas. Although classic texts contain descriptions of classic formulations, traditional Ayurvedic practitioners often modify them to suit the individual constitution (prakriti). This confers genetic predisposition toward disease and therapy response and is vital to ensure medication safety. Safety is inherently bound to efficacy, forming an important endpoint when preparing an Ayurvedic formulation. A formulation’s medicinal power is a function of its milieu interior, not merely due to any plant extract. Molecular structure, as viewed in modern science, is not described and is not of particular significance in determining a formulation’s therapeutic properties. Ayurveda’s basic perspective: “no two individuals are alike” holds, even when they suffer from seemingly similar ailments. Also, advice on diet, exercise, and lifestyle are inherently bound to its basic therapeutic approach. Rather than seeking support from laboratory or imaging investigations, Ayurvedic physicians use subtle clinical methods to diagnose and monitor therapeutic response.
Biomedicine, in contrast, is founded on a different approach to health and disease and attempts, most importantly, to eliminate disease. Although clinical evaluation is of paramount and critical importance, science, as such, is extremely impersonal. When treating patients, it generally cuts across individual differences (genetic or other). Proneness to disease and prevention thereof are more environmental and genetic issues than questions of “wholesome strengthening of the host.” There is a strong, across-the-board underpinning of “objectivity” in diagnosis, treatment, and therapy response. Medicines are its core strength, well-characterized in structure and function (usually well-tested under laboratory and clinical trial conditions), with efficacy/safety tradeoffs. Response is generally predictable.