curated paper 2

 The principles of Ayurveda focus on the mind, the body, and the environment. For me, the mind can refer to our soul and its spiritual aspect. I believe the mind refers more to our Soul. Nevertheless, with discoveries and scientific research, scientists have observed the link between the brain and our body. We know that our brain controls our body by sending electrical messages through neurons and that drugs can inhibit or enhance these messages. Drugs are chemicals that interact with our nervous system to modify or interfere with the synaptic transmission between dendrites. This will then affect the way we feel and act. We can conclude from the definition of drugs that some ayurvedic treatments, such as herbs, could be considered drugs. For example, Azadirachta indica, or neem, is a plant recognized as a weed for its insecticide properties in Asia and the Middle East. It’s been used in traditional medicine since ancient times as an insecticide. It’s crazy to think about how human’s curiosity is responsible for our survival. Through evolution, our brain communicates with the environment and distinguishes between harmful and useful remedies.

The paper “Mind, Brain, and Personality Disorder” associates the mind and the brain with the environment, genes, and society. It defines the mind as the activity of the brain. 

This paper highlights the role of the environment in altering genetics and, therefore, creating divergences in behavior between individuals. They also show that an individual's environment shapes his behavior. For example, people who have been abused at an early age have a higher risk of developing borderline personality disorder because abuse may increase the activity of their hypothalamus and therefore change the environmental response (hormone production from the hypothalamus). According to this study, chemical treatments improve the symptoms of personality disorders. They showed that serotonin inhibitors could control anger and impulsive, aggressive behavior. Also, psychotherapy is a good method for changing brain configuration. It can be considered a biological treatment, but it takes more time. I think that it is fascinating to understand how the brain works; it is one of the organs of the body that never ceases to amaze me. The brain reacts to external stimuli. I think the outside stimuli are what shape most of our behavior, except for genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease, which affect the behavior of an individual internally, leading to personality change and dementia.

Ayeruda is a good solution to ease brain disease because, as said in Mind, Brain, and Personality Disorders, chemical treatment, and psychotherapy require a long period to work. So does Ayeruda; therefore, it might be cheaper in the long run to adopt Ayeruda's method to ease brain diseases such as depression.  Ayeruda proposed herbal medications to manage his symptoms. These methods are effective. According to studies, it improves worry, a relaxed state of mind, sadness, helplessness, worthlessness, quality of sleep, tinnitus, and backache. 

A brain concussion is a common traumatic brain injury for athletes that causes symptoms such as headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness or balance problems, fatigue, insomnia or sleep disturbances, drowsiness, sensitivity to light or noise, blurred vision, difficulty remembering, and/or difficulty concentrating. Traumatic brain injuries occur when a force, acceleration, or impact hits the brain. It is challenging to investigate these injuries because all the knowledge we acquired was through experiments or invasive methods. Invasive methods require human or animal participants and have high risks of brain damage. Moreover, these methods are questionable in terms of ethics. 

In an article posted on Neurotray, Tuarez explains that modern technologies, such as MRI and brain imaging, are used to study the brain. These methods take more time and may not give a complete understanding of the phenomenon studied because the brain is capable of carrying out multiple tasks at the same time; therefore, it is challenging to design experiments that determine if brain activity is being observed as a result of cognition or internal metabolism.   

Brain injuries modify the hypothalamus and pituitary glands in the brain, which are responsible for metabolism processes linked with hormones in the body. For example, they control water concentration by balancing the antidiuretic hormone (ADH). This means that a brain injury could cause physiological imbalances in other organs of the body, such as the kidney. Ayurveda emphasizes the connectivity between the body and the mind. The brain is the control system of our body; an injury to the control system could shut down “the machine.”

Autism is a brain-related condition that could be managed with Ayurvedic techniques. Studies show that herbal treatments and therapy can improve the symptoms of autism to some extent. Knowing people with this condition, I can say that these treatments alone have little effect on the behavior of the kids. The most effective way to ease the symptoms of autism is through therapy. Moreover, these treatments are hard to give to children, so the posology requirements are never met. Studies show that ayurvedic treatments require a long duration to be effective. 

The study and production of drugs exist because of plants' properties. With new technologies, scientists can synthesize chemicals from plants. This led to the discovery of most drugs, including atropine, hyoscine, digoxin, and cocaine. In an attempt to modernize the field of medicine, traditional treatments like Ayurveda and others almost disappeared because, despite all of the knowledge of indigenous people, they did not, most of the time, take into consideration the toxic effects of long-term use. Nevertheless, modern drugs use these toxicities to improve natural drugs, such as chloroquine, which is much less toxic than quinine. The current scope of this article talks also about the disadvantages of medical drugs such as antibiotic resistance and numerous side effects. 

Illicit drug use is a subject I’m not familiar with because I grew up in an environment where people feared drugs or just didn't want to spend their money on them. Through research, I saw that adolescents are more likely to be addicted to drugs than adults because adolescents appeal to their amygdala (which controls reward learning and memory, conditioned reward, and emotion) when it comes to drugs, while adults use their frontal cortex.

New studies looked into the risk factors for adolescent drug abuse. They found that adolescents with certain personal or individual traits, such as signs of abuse at an early age, are prone to drug use. They use drugs to escape and forget past trauma. Also, significant negative growth exposure is another risk factor for drug addiction in adolescents because our brains develop as we age and we replicate and adopt mechanisms that we observe in our environment. Peer influence and the economic status of our neighborhood need to be taken into consideration when talking about drug use in adolescents. Statistics show that people who use drugs often have unstable economic situations. Drug dealers target adolescents as buyers because of their credulity; as said before, they can be manipulated easily. With this information, I believe that if we improve the quality of life of teenagers living in rough neighborhoods by providing extracurricular activities and doing awareness campaigns against drug use, we could decrease the number of teenage drug addicts. 

On the other hand, kids who live in an environment with high religious beliefs, school connectedness, and adult support act as protective factors against drug abuse. From a biological point of view, epigenetics can influence drug addiction. Studies on Methamphetamine addiction show that it could modify gene expression. It alters the histone acetylation and transcription of genes involved in behavioral sensitization. They found out that METH enhanced spatial memory, a type of memory involved with locating an object, a route, or an event, during drug addiction. Researchers also found that METH use decreased synapse length, downregulated DNA methyltransferase (an enzyme that transfers methyl groups to DNA), and induced DNA hypomethylation (loss of a methyl group) at the Syn promoter (a glycoprotein that is an integral part of the secretory granule membrane in synapses). The results of this study show that drug use can cause irreversible brain damage, which includes memory loss, paranoia, and hallucinations.

In conclusion, the interconnectedness of the mind, brain, and environment is visible everywhere. Ayurvedic treatments such as herbal medications could be effective in managing brain conditions or as drugs, but their effectiveness requires time and consistency. Moreover, scientific research expands our understanding of the brain. Studies looked into the effects of brain injuries, neurobiological conditions like autism, and drug addiction on brain structure and function. These studies could be used as an opportunity to explore the potential of Ayurvedic treatments in managing brain-related conditions, particularly in cases where chemical treatments and psychotherapy may take time to show results. However, it is essential to balance the benefits of traditional medicine with modern medical technology to ensure efficacy.