Curated Paper 1

 Ayurveda

In today’s cultures people are looking for more alternative ways of healthcare. Whether that is exercising more, eating whole foods, or drinking diet soda, people are looking for prescriptions other than a bottle of pills. One of the more common forms of alternative medication originated in India 5,000 years ago and is named Ayurveda. Ayurveda believes that health is dependent on the balance between mind and body. Ayurveda identifies three basic types of energy or functional principles that are present in everyone and everything. These three energies are named Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.  Vata is the energy of movement; Pitta is the energy of digestion or metabolism and Kapha, the energy of lubrication and structure (Lad, 2006). Within the Ayurveda lifestyle there is Ayurvedic Diet and Ayurveda Medicine.

It is believed a proper diet is necessary to balance the three energies found in the body. According to the Ayurvedic Diet, there is a specific diet for someone’s body type. Each of the three elements has its own diet associated with it. In order to be balanced and maintain good health, all three elements must be met through the diet. For example, the pitta dosha focuses on cooling, energizing foods while vata dosha favors warm, moist, and grounding foods. Finally, the kapha dosha limits heavy foods like nuts, seeds, and oils in favor of fruits, veggies, and legumes (Link, 2019). 

Ayurveda has its own way of treating diseases through its own medical methodologies.  It usually relies on herbes, massages, and specialized diets to balance the body, mind, and spirit  (Ayurvedic Medicine: An Introduction 2009). It states that the universe is interconnected through living and non-living material. It also says that disease occurs when someone is out of harmony with the universe. More than 200,000 U.S. adults used Ayurvedic Medicine than in the previous year of 2007. Perhaps this increase is from the awareness of alternative medicine looking for a more holistic and natural form of healthcare. There are actually Ayurvedic practitioners. They check a patient's kakras. They ask about lifestyle, exam stool,and check their teeth. Afterwards they offer advice such as lay in the sun, meditate, exercise, etc. Practitioners also offer many herbs, plants, proteins and spiritual healing (Ayurvedic Medicine: An Introduction 2009). However, there are downsides to Ayurveda Medicine. 

One article I found wrote how some of these herbs used in Ayurveda Medicine may be toxic. Research done on Ayurvedic practices have been poor. They lack control groups, replication, etc, so it’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t. Ayurveda has tried to treat diabetes in their pathway of finding balance in the body. What I found was that there was a lot of diversity in the available literature of Ayurvedic treatments for diabetes. The majority of the studies tested herbal therapy. The herbs, formulas, and methods of preparation were very diverse. In doing so the methodologies of these studies were undermined because they had small sample sizes, statistics were not used, and other reasons. However, there was enough evidence to support future studies (Ayurvedic Medicine: An Introduction 2009).  

Metabolism

There isn’t only the COVID pandemic happening, but there is also a diabetes pandemic. Diabetes medical costs were 246 billion during 2012. In 2018, 34.3 million Americans have diabetes. The seventh leading cause of death in the United States in 2017 was diabetes. 187,000 children have type 1 diabetes (Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2017, 2018). Obesity is a disease that is in clear sight, yet people do not take it seriously. A child with one obese parent has a 50 percent chance of being obese. When both parents are obese, their children have an 80 percent chance of obesity (Lifshitz, 2011). People who are over 18, and can make a choice to handle their health as they want do not concern me, however children who don’t know enough about health should be more concerning to the public's eye. This concern made me wonder what are the driving factors for obesity? In searching for a driving factor I stumbled across the microbiome and its relationship with obesity. 

If babies have a microbiome, it made me wonder where they get it from. Do they develop it as they age, is it given to them from their mother, or is it developed through another source? By diving into these questions I found an article that suggested the placenta isn’t as sterile as it was once thought to be (Bawagan, 2019). It stated babies receive some of their microbiomes from their mothers while in the placenta. After learning about this I searched more into the relationship between the microbiome and obesity to see if obesity can be passed onto offspring through the microbiome. 

What I discovered was the microbiome is different for people who are obese than those who are not. It was even found that an unbalance in the microbiome could slow metabolism. In another study I read, there were mice that were transferred the microbiome from an obese person. The results were very interesting, what they found were the mice that were given the microbiome had more adipose than those in the control group (Ridaura et al., 2013).

If an “obese micriobiome” can be passed onto offspring this would set up the child to be obese considering his or her parents passed down their microbiome. This makes me wonder how difficult it would be for a child that had obese parents to not be obese. Does this have anything to do with obesity in young children? Are they already going to be obese just because of their microbiome? How much does their microbiome contribute to their obesity? Is it the learned lifestyle of their parents that leads to their children being obese? These are questions that make me wonder how microbes can affect obesity. After exploring these subjects above, I think more research should be done on an “obese micriobome” being passed onto offspring.

Work Cited

Ayurvedic Medicine: An Introduction. (2009). National Center for Complementary & 

Alternative Medicine, 1-8.

Bawagan, J. (2019). Babies get critical gut bacteria from their mother at birth, not from placenta, 

study suggests. Science. doi:10.1126/science.aay9546

Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2017. (2018). Diabetes Care, 41(5), 917-928. 

doi:10.2337/dci18-0007

Lad, V. (2006). Ayurveda: A Brief Introduction and Guide. Retrieved October 08, 2020, from

 https://www.ayurveda.com/resources/articles/ayurveda-a-brief-introduction-and-guide

Lifshitz, F. (2011). Obesity in Children. Journal of Clinical Research in Pediatric Endocrinology, 

1(2), 53-60. doi:10.4008/jcrpe.v1i2.35

Link, R. (2019, July 31). What Is the Ayurvedic Diet? Benefits, Downsides, and More. Retrieved

October 8, 2020, from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ayurvedic-diet

Ridaura, V. K., Faith, J. J., Rey, F. E., Cheng, J., Duncan, A. E., Kau, A. L., & Griffin, N. W. 

(2013). Gut Microbiota from Twins Discordant for Obesity Modulate Metabolism in Mice. 

Science, 341(6150), 1241214-1241214. doi:10.1126/science.1241214