Curated 1

 Ayurveda and Modern Medicine

Ayurveda means "life science." It is an old traditional Indian belief system based on the idea that health is achieved by balancing the body’s energies. In it, our physical, mental, and spiritual energies are associated with five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. These five elements then form the three energies: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Everyone has a unique combination of these energies, which control every aspect of our bodies. Vata is associated with movement, nerves, and circulation, representing the elements of air and space. Pitta is digestion and metabolism, linked to fire and water. Kapha, responsible for growth, structure, and stability, is associated with water and earth.

Along with all the energies and elements, Ayurveda encourages balance in life through daily routines, diet, meditation, and exercise. While I personally don’t subscribe to the spiritual or mystical aspects of the belief system, its emphasis on preventive care and overall health is awesome. It takes a whole-body approach and focuses on physical, mental, and even community aspects. This makes sense. Our bodies are not individual parts and pieces, but rather one whole. Treating one area without considering the rest is just asking for problems. Ayurveda also teaches that our environment has a major effect on health. Recent studies show a positive correlation between environment and well-being, such as higher suicide rates at high altitudes, personal happiness with increased community involvement, and the strong connection between physical health and happiness.

The American people would benefit immensely from adopting the good in this holistic system. Today, a lot of our peers are obese, stressed, unbalanced, and convinced that they themselves are not the problem. Convinced that everything can be fixed with some kind of pill, that physical health is impossible and out of their reach, or even that a focus on physical health isn’t necessary. While the environment and community are part of the problem, personal responsibility and discipline are the other half.

This last summer I worked as a biometric health screener and had firsthand exposure to how pervasive this problem has become. I worked for a health insurance company offering rebates to people if they came to our yearly health screenings. These tests monitored cholesterol, blood glucose, blood pressure, and more. Many people would provide long unprompted stories about why they weren’t healthy. Sometimes it was some chronic condition, sometimes it was a medication, an injury, a lack of knowledge. Some just wanted the rebate. What was most surprising -- and unsettling -- was how many people had no idea they were at risk for serious health issues like diabetes.

Many people we screened were unaware that their blood glucose levels were dangerously high, teetering on the edge of pre-diabetes or well within the realm of the full-fledged disease. It highlighted for me just how disconnected many people are from their own health. Part of the job included research and reading to further understand how to help people want to be healthy, and on how to relay that information in a way that would be received well. It was incredible to learn more about how small changes in lifestyle, diet, and exercise have profound impacts throughout the entire body. 

This same principle is what Ayurveda is all about. The need for balance in life, including the proper intake of food, physical activity, and the management of stress and mental well-being, is essential. Adopting even small elements of this holistic approach could potentially prevent many cases of type 2 diabetes before they became severe enough to require medication.

The general attitude toward health in the good ol’ USA is reactive rather than proactive. People tend to only address health problems once they become unmanageable, which leads to an over-reliance on medication. This is where I see value in something like Ayurveda: to prevent problems before they arise by maintaining balance in life. Not only prevention, but also treating problems by focusing on balance in life would be beneficial. Catching high blood glucose levels early and making dietary adjustments and begin exercise routines before medications like metformin or insulin become necessary.

Ayurveda can’t fix everything though. Before the discovery of insulin in 1921, type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. Children and young adults diagnosed with this condition had little hope for survival, as their bodies could not produce insulin. The work of Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best in the early 20th century revolutionized diabetes treatment. By extracting insulin from animal pancreases -- initially from dogs, then later from cows and pigs -- Banting and Best gave diabetic patients a chance at life for the first time. The first successful injection of purified insulin took place in 1922, administered to a 14-year-old boy. This groundbreaking work completely changed the landscape of diabetes treatment, allowing people who previously had no hope of survival to live normal lives.

However, insulin production and administration did not stop evolving there. In 1978, scientists made another leap forward when they developed synthetic human insulin using recombinant DNA technology. This was a breakthrough led by Eli Lilly and Co., in which scientists used bacteria to produce insulin identical to our own. The development of this synthetic insulin, dubbed Humulin, represented a major advancement, providing a more reliable and efficient means of managing diabetes. The FDA approved it in 1982, and since then, it has been produced on a massive scale, giving millions of people the ability to control their diabetes more effectively.

While those with type 1 diabetes don’t have much of a choice in the matter, the ongoing rise in type 2 diabetes should be a more troubling issue. Type 2 diabetes is preventable and often comes from lifestyle choices like poor diet, lack of exercise, and stress. This is where a more preventive, whole-body approach (cough, cough, Ayurveda) could be invaluable. Ayurveda could be applied to help people understand that their choices do have a major role in their own health, and that there is still hope and further happiness to work to. In the case of diabetes, adopting these principles could prevent many people from needing insulin in the first place.

In conclusion, while Ayurveda and modern medicine seem worlds apart, they share a common goal: saving lives and improving health. Whether through balancing the body’s ‘energies’ or making sure people are happy and healthy in their roles of community and personal health, Ayurveda has a lot of good that modern medicine, and by proxy modern medical professionals, can learn from. Combining modern medicine’s advancements with the preventive, lifestyle-focused principles of Ayurveda could offer a more comprehensive and effective way to manage and prevent diseases.