Doctor prescribe Ayurveda route for relief

Feb. 9: “Honey is the safest antibiotic, amla or nellikai the most potent immunity-booster. Desi ghee, loaded with the goodness of essential fatty acids can actually keep your heart healthy and neem can topple any chemical antiseptic lotion when it comes to healing wounds,” — not suggestions from the paati next door, but from senior practitioners of modern medicine.
‘When in doubt, turn to Ayurveda’ — this is the mantra of senior surgeons and modern doctors, who seem to have become a bit cynical with all those years of practicing allopathy.

“Modern medicine has too many loopholes - for one, it does not consider that the prakriti, or constitution of each individual is different. It works on the principle ‘One size fits all’, while ayurveda classifies people as per their body type, and treats them accordingly,” says Dr Ravindra D. Bapat , senior gastric surgeon and vice chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi Mission University of Health Sciences in Mumbai. Dr Bapat has been trying to establish ayurveda as ‘evidence-based’ medicine so it can be accepted as mainstream medicine, and not just a ‘complementary’ system. While ayurvedic remedies have been used to treat people for centuries, providing us with innumerable clinical trials, why do we need to perform laboratory trials to brand them ‘evidence-based’, Dr Bapat reasons.

“Allopathy is gradually losing ground, even as the side effects of drugs are becoming more dangerous. There is too much dependence on expensive technology to diagnose diseases, and the sick people, as well as the microbes are developing resistance to antibiotics,” explains Dr Bapat.
“Precisely why a whopping 57 per cent of Britons, despite being given free healthcare by their government, are opting out of allopathy, and into alternative medicine,” quips Dr B.M. Hegde , veteran cardiologist.

Article has been published in Deccan Chronicle on Wednesday 10 February 2010.