Ayurveda: Science of Integrative Approaches to Health and Disease, by Dr. Vimal Patel
This article is an excerpt from the ‘International Journal of Integrative Medicine - September/October 1999’. It is written by Dr. Vimal Patel and is reproduced here with his permission.
For the last three to four decades, there has been growing concern about the appropriateness of the technology-driven modern healthcare model for dealing with chronic disease. There is widespread recognition of the need for a less fragmented, more participative, and humane healthcare approach to address the growing financial, social, and personal costs of chronic disease management. This shift in attitude is reflected by the increasing use of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) modalities in the United States and around the world.
‘Healthy People 2000’ a 1990 report compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, also recognized the need for change. After extensive research involving more than 10,000 individuals. 22 expert groups, and a consortium of 250 organizations and state health departments, the report recommended revamping the U.S. approach to health care to improve the nation collective health by the year 2000.
The researchers stated that health springs from improved quality of life and reduced suffering, illness, and disability. They called for ‘mobilizing the considerable energies and creativity of the nation in the interest of’ disease prevention and health promotion’. This mobilization, they said, should include investigation of alternatives to current disease care approaches, alternatives that may help fight chronic disease and escalating healthcare costs. Since the report was published, some alternatives have been investigated.
However. the current rush to integrate CAM modalities into the modem healthcare system seems to be driven more by fear of economic losses rather than by concern for the human condition. A comprehensive healthcare model must reflect the human being’s place in, and relationship with, their larger environment.
India’s Ayurveda (literally, ‘science of living’) is a comprehensive model that provides a scientifically verifiable, philosophical/theoretical framework, as well as cost-effective practical modalities. By combining the principles of Ayurvedic and modem medicine. today’s practitioners can provide a medical model that addresses their patient’s health on mental, spiritual, and physical levels.
Conceptual Framework of Ayurveda
Ayurveda is one of the oldest forms of medicine in the world, and the forerunner of other great systems of medicine. It is one of five government-approved medical models in present-day India, and is also recognized by the World Health Organization as a viable system of natural medicine.
The Taxila (Taxashila) and Nalanda universities have been centers for the study of Ayurvedic medical sciences since the Buddhist period (6th century B.C.), drawing scholars from China and other Asian countries. The written texts of Ayurveda date back more than 3,000 years, their incredibly complex and advanced concepts form the basis of much of Indian medicine today The Ayurvedic materia medica include more than 8,000 preparations derived from plants, minerals, and dairy products used to enhance the body’s defense mechanisms. Surgical and psychiatric therapies have always been integral parts of Ayurveda, which was organized into specialty fields more than 3,000 years ago. Aside from surgery and psychiatry, Ayurvedic specialties include internal medicine, pediatrics, reproductive medicine, geriatrics, and toxicology.
Conceptual Framework of Ayurveda Practitioners of Ayurveda regard the human body and its sensory experiences as manifestations of cosmic energy that is transformed into energy at the physical and mental levels. Ayurvedic practitioners believe illness results when these different types of energy are not balanced. The patient can be taught to alter the ways his or her body responds to sensory experiences, thus bringing the various energies into balance and improving health. While this may sound far-fetched to practitioners schooled in traditional Western medicine, the two systems are closer than they may seem.
Ayurveda is derived from the Vedas, the Hindu books of knowledge, and the shamkhya and yoga hypotheses of Kapila and Patanjali, which are surprisingly similar to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Quantum theory. Ayurveda and both of these theories emphasize the impossibility of separating the observer. the process of observance, and the effect each component has on the other. And both make it possible to make verifiable predictions about the behavior of energy and matter. In recent years. many United States practitioners have begun to recognize the importance of treating the whole patient, of taking the patient’s spiritual life into account along with the physical and mental. This is the core of Ayurvedic practice: that the spiritual component is just as important to, and as inseparable from health as the physical and mental components. Scientific thinking on evolution, and on prediction and validation of the behavior of energy and matter, substantiates the hypotheses of the Ayurvedic system of medicine.
Ayurveda is important for its sound scientific basis, emphasis on nutrition and self-care, routines for disease prevention, therapies for chronic conditions, simplicity cost-effectiveness, and integrated approach to health and disease. There is a need for more research, with modern scientific methodology, on Ayurveda’s safety and efficacy. However, the available clinical and basic research supports Ayurveda’s scientific validity and clinical usefulness. Ayurveda could serve this country well as it strives to develop an integrative healthcare model, and in doing so, improve the health of our citizens.
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