Crazy Connections

Garrett Darrington

24 June 2022

Diabetes and Ayurveda

Capstone Blog

Connections in the Body

            Ayurveda according to google is a natural system of medicine that originated in India over 3000 years ago. I had honestly never heard of this topic before just researching it, but I have heard of other cultures using natural medicine to treat illness. It is interesting that it is considered just as useful as regular western medicine in India to the point the people will commonly use both to treat a patient. The balance between the body and stress or anxiety is a common illness that this treatment seems adapt at treating by balancing the body, and purifying it of harmful energy. Ayurveda is based upon 5 elements: space/ether, air/wind, fire, water, and earth. Wind is the communication and movement of the body such as nervous system, joints, elimination of waste and so on. Fire relates to the metabolic process, and earth relates to the structure of the body such as tissues, bones, and muscles. It is said that both Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine focus is the patient rather than the disease, and I think that we can take a lot of away from this in Western cultures. I feel like that in the West, we have a tendency to look a disease and not a patient as much because doctors are taught to solve the problem. This is becoming more of an issue because doctors will not listen to patients. However, it is their body, and they would know better than anymore how they feel and what’s going on.

            I think the idea of a connection between our body in itself is one of the most important concepts that Ayurveda teaches. The past 100 years has shown that our body is a complex ecosystem that is unique to each and every person. This means that each person will work a little different when it comes to connective body systems, and the idea that each system can connect to each other can help people to really understand the importance of living a healthy life style. I really like the idea of the connection between the body and nature as well. Over the long period of humans surviving, and eventually thriving, we learned how to become very in tune with our surroundings, but most of that has been lost due to the advancement of technology. I heard a saying once that said “Technology is how humans are evolving in today’s age, but it is at the cost of our natural evolutions”. I think this saying couldn’t be truer because we had cars, nice beds, and so many amenities that have made us kind of squishy in the sense of the natural world. However, with the advancement of medicine and antibiotics, we are able to outlive the past humans, but it doesn’t mean that we are living any better than they would have been to an extent.

            This natural medicine has had some studies showing that it can help with diabetes, arthritis, asthma, and anxiety. These things are actually very prevalent in society, and I believe that a lot of these can be helped with a diet change, or the natural remedies have chemical compounds that are able to lessen or help the symptoms of these diseases. I really think that it is a great concept that should be looked more into, and if it helps people than that is all you can ask for. However, very few studies have been done into the effects that are shown after doing treatments with natural remedies, and the studies that are done don’t have a lot of backing to them. I do think that hospitals should have knowledge of these natural medicine because it could help connect with people that follow these set standards.

            In conclusion, I think that Ayurveda is an amazing way that could be cheaper especially in the US to treat lesser diseases, but if it is not working looking into more western medicine could be a great move. I think there could be grounds that it could be a great way to help people, but until further research is done into the effects then it will just be kind of a side bar to Western medicine.

            A wide spread disease that is known as diabetes has a lot of known causes from obesity to the body not running correctly which means creating insulin or properly using insulin that is created in the body. This disease is said to been affecting 1/10 Americans, and it is one of the widest spread diseases up there with depression and heart disease. The papers that we had provided for us contained information about how low glucose levels can lead to an increase in angry feeling which might lead to more altercations. This means that people with diabetes that cannot process glucose properly may tend to be more aggressive than those who’s system function properly. Another paper talked about how impulse control is affected by the uptake of glucose as well because it takes energy to be able to exhibit self-control to stop one for lashing out in anger. The last paper talked about the consumption of alcohol along with having diabetes. This article talked about the best types that should be consume, and that keeping a watchful eye on people that have diabetes just in case they do go into diabetic shock.

            I have a family member that has diabetes, and he has had it the majority of his life. He didn’t really take great care of himself because he used to drink all the time, and not watch his sugar levels. I have even seen times when he has been really low, and it has caused him to go into an episode of mania basically. Another example of having spent time with a diabetic is my past boss. He was a very in shape person who enjoyed lots of outdoor activities, and he got diabetes in his early 20’s. He drank a lot of MT Dew which could have helped in him developing the disease, but he takes very good care of himself. However, I remember in one of the articles it talked about how drinking diet soda may not be the best choice because of all the additives inside. I know that he drinks a lot of diet soda, so this was interesting because my previous thoughts were that diet soda was very safe especially for diabetics. This just goes to show that new information coming out can challenge a previously held notion.

            Reading about how diabetes happens because of obesity, and it is usually a precursor to heart disease really makes me sad. Humans have developed into such a great society, but we have taken to poisoning ourselves with tons of sugar because it activates the dopamine in the brain. Also, the lack of exercise in the US is below par, and I think the developing ways to get people to do small things such as yoga or walking could help a lot of people stay healthy.

            Looking at the amount of money that people who have diabetes and what it will cost them with and without insurance is absurd. When the average amount of money spent on medical bills is 2.3 times that a person without diabetes will spend makes me consider why it is so high. One of the main reasons seems to be that people are unable to take care of themselves or afford insulin because of price gouging done by companies that hold patents over it. Not being able to afford the insulin leads to complications of diabetics not being able to regulate sugar intake. These complications lead to diabetic comas, diabetic shock, and trips to the hospital. Not taking care of a body or being unable to regulate it effectively leads to larger complications in the kidneys, increase in stroke, and increase in heart disease and obesity. All of these things can become risk factors if a person has diabetes already, but they can also be a cause of someone developing diabetes as well. This leads into the talk about metabolism because the body is just as Ayurveda explains that the body is connected, and it functions within each system separately and together.

            The two concepts of diabetes and Ayurveda are interestingly connected because when we talk about the connections of the body, it moves right into the uptake of glucose into our body which is what diabetes is not doing. Having the ability to uptake glucose with the use of insulin is a huge factor in living a healthy life especially because the majority of foods in society today are high processed grains the produce a lot of glucose. Ayurveda teaches that these connections happening all over the body especially the metabolism path would show that it is out of line. This means that people with type 2 diabetes need to correct how they are eating. This has been shown to really help people with type 2 in which they can change diet and exercise putting the auto immune disorder into a type of remission. These connections between an autoimmune disorder and a natural remedy are intertwined, and I believe that most of our modern medicine comes from a place of previous knowledge that was not fully understood. Not only is diabetes manageable and treatable by these types of natural practices but also it is one of the cheapest ways to treat the disease compared to the thousands of dollars diabetics spend in hospitals each year.  I think the most important part of Ayurveda is that it focuses on treating the patient first then the disease, and doing it this way makes a lot of sense compared to treating the disease the same each time like Western medicine does. For example, we have seen cancer treatments that work completely on one person, but on a person with the same cancer type it doesn’t work at all. This clear cut shows that each and every body is created different. I like to think of every person as an entirely different ecosystem, and in the world of biology treating each ecosystem is approached differently.

            In conclusion, diabetes and Ayurveda are intertwined creating this relationship of focusing of the person and their disease, and treating it with a lower cost. The connections of the body show us that each and every person is made different, and it shows that just as Ayurveda has taught the natural medicine users of the world is treat the person and the disease different with each approach.

 

Sources

“American Diabetes Association | Research, Education, Advocacy.” American Diabetes Association, www.diabetes.org. Accessed 24 June 2022.

“Ayurveda.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2 Dec. 2019, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/ayurveda.

“Ayurvedic Medicine: In Depth.” NCCIH, www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ayurvedic-medicine-in-depth. Accessed 24 June 2022.

“Diabetes - Symptoms and Causes.” Mayo Clinic, 30 Oct. 2020, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20371444.

“What Is Ayurveda?” WebMD, 13 Dec. 2016, www.webmd.com/balance/guide/ayurvedic-treatments.

“What Is Diabetes?” National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, 9 Dec. 2021, www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes.