Traditional Indian medicine grows in popularity

David Kennedy, Contributor/New Delhi d_kenn@yahoo.com

Meaning "the science of life", Ayurveda lost its prominence during the British colonial period but is now popular as a treatment to treat what ails us at both home and abroad.

India's ancient holistic therapy -- Ayurveda -- is enjoying a comeback. Some even say it is destined for the same kind of popularity as yoga, its sister therapy.

"Ayurveda and yoga are two wheels of the same cart," explained Dr. Ramachandra Rao, an expert at Jiva, a New Delhi-based company specializing in Ayurveda education and research.

"Yoga was meant for the mind and Ayurveda for the body. Once clinical trials are completed and people are convinced of its benefits, then it will also spread all over the world."

Mentioned in the Vedas, India's ancient Sanskrit manuscripts, Ayurveda lost its prominence during the British colonial period and was reinstated as India's official health system alongside Western allopathic medicine following independence.

Ayurvedic doctors believe ill health is caused by imbalances in a person's mind and body, which can be corrected by changes in lifestyle and diet, as well as through therapeutic massage and herbal remedies which are formulated to produce no negative side effects.

Indian exports of traditional herbal remedies and therapeutic oils and creams are estimated at about US$300 million (IDR 2.4 billion) annually.

According to the Indian government's health ministry, 8,500 out of a total 9,500 registered traditional medicine manufacturers in India are ayurvedic producers.

As highlighted in the "Incredible India" advertising campaign, featured on television channels and in publications across Asia, Ayurveda is also a major attraction for visitors to the southern Indian state of Kerala which specializes in oil massage therapies and herbal medicines.

And there are indications that India's middle classes are looking more to indigenous therapies to treat a range of ailments which modern Western medicine has had little success in curing, such as arthritis, migraines, insomnia, paralysis and spinal problems.

"Most of my patients come because they've tried everything else, and had a lot of side effects," said Dr. Sudha Asokan, who opened one of the first Kerala style Ayurveda clinics in New Delhi nearly 15 years ago.

"Back when I first started here, I found it difficult to make patients understand what the therapy was about. Now they come directly and have heard about it from friends or been referred to me. When their young children get fever they often come here first."

Every day a long line of patients fills the waiting room of the clinic, tucked away in a quiet tree-lined square in South Delhi. The cornerstone of the treatment is massage with Ayurvedic oils, but patients are also given herbal medicines and tailored dietary and lifestyle advice.

The massage treatment includes dhara therapy during which liters of warm aromatic oil are poured over the center of a patient's forehead, a therapy said to be highly effective in treating migraines, insomnia and stress-related complaints.

Ayurvedic massage therapy can also reveal unexpected ailments in patients, said Dr. Asokan, who refers patients for hospital tests when she suspects there is more to a back pain than meets the eye.

Ayurvedic massage can aggravate existing conditions and helps in diagnosis, but modern scientific methods such as blood tests and MRI scans are also used. Ayurvedic doctors follow the same syllabus as allopathic medical doctors and readily mix and match both.

"We do not do surgery though," said Dr. Asokan, adding that Ayurveda is as much about preventing diseases as curing them. "But if people are undergoing our treatment regularly, they won't have any need for surgery."

Ayurveda differs from other herbal medicine systems as it looks at all aspects of the person: physical, mental, behavioral and spiritual and aims to completely detoxify and rejuvenate a patient's system. It also differs from Western medicine in its emphasis on eliminating the source of a disease rather than treating its symptoms.

"The basic thing here is that we treat the patient, not the disease," said Dr. Asokan. "When we are treating a patient, there are so many factors we have to keep in mind, such as how the person is made, what is their lifestyle and whether this or that medicine or therapy will help them.

"Allopathic (Western) medicine believes in suppressing the symptoms and prescribing the same medicines for all. We believe in preventing illness and if the disease is already there, then we root it out."

Nathalie Mitra, a Frenchwoman married to a local man and living in Gurgoan, a suburb of Delhi, turned to Ayurvedic medicine when her four-month-old child had pneumonia and a persistent wheezing cough despite taking regular courses of antibiotics.

"I was not happy as the antibiotics did not shift his cough and I was worried about the side effects. They helped a bit, but it kept coming back. The medicine only cured the symptoms so I decided to try him on Ayurveda. After about eight months of treatment, he is coughing much less now," she said.

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For more information see: indianmedicine.nic.in; www.jiva.org

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