Curated Paper 1

 Curated paper 1: Ayurveda, Metabolism, and the Way We Understand Health

“You are what you eat.” I never really understood how true that is. I always knew that food was important for our health, but I didn’t think much about what happens inside our body after we eat. The food we consume provides the energy and nutrients our bodies need to function, but our bodies process and use those nutrients in ways that are much more complex than I realized.

Through the journaling assignments, I started noticing connections between metabolism, diabetes, diet, society, and even how different medical systems understand health. The concept of Ayurveda especially made me think about metabolism differently. Ayurveda looks at the body as a system of relationships rather than as separate organs or processes, and when I put this idea together with what I learned about metabolism and metabolic diseases, I started to see health as something influenced by many connected factors instead of one simple cause.

One of the first things that made metabolism feel more connected to everyday life was paying attention to food. For example, when I go to Dutch Bros to get a sweet drink, I notice the calories, and I’d probably just think about whether I want the drink or not, but now I look at the calories and it makes me think about how often we make these small decisions without thinking about their effect on the body. A single drink does not determine someone's health, but many drinks can become part of a person's overall diet. It made me realize that metabolism is not something that only matters when someone has a disease, it is always happening as the body processes the food we eat and uses the energy we get from it.

It is too simple to say that someone's metabolic health is only the result of their choices; the process is much more complicated. I started thinking more about the environment we live in. People might not realize it, but what we buy and consume is affected by price, convenience, time, advertising, and what is available. Someone who has very little time to prepare food may rely more on “ready-to-eat” options than someone who has more time and resources to make meals from scratch. This means that talking about metabolic health only in terms of personal responsibility leaves out an important part of the situation. People make choices, yes, but those choices are influenced by the society around them. Eating is not just about satisfying hunger or counting calories, but is also about providing the body with the materials it needs to function.

These everyday choices can become especially important when we look at conditions such as diabetes. Diabetes is often discussed in a way that makes it sound like it is simply caused by eating too much sugar or having an unhealthy lifestyle, however, the body is much more complicated than that. Glucose is an important source of energy, and hormones like insulin regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. When blood glucose regulation is disrupted, glucose levels can become too high and contribute to health complications over time. These changes in the body's normal processes can affect a person's overall health. It shows why metabolism is important beyond topics such as weight loss or nutrition. Metabolic processes are essential for keeping the body functioning; they affect not only the individual but also families, healthcare systems, and society through medical costs and long-term care.

Patwardhan et al. (2004), in their article Ayurveda and Natural Products Drug Discovery, discuss how traditional Ayurvedic knowledge may contribute to modern medicine, including the discovery and development of drugs from natural products. Metabolism can be studied through individual biochemical pathways, but these pathways are part of a larger biological system. Ayurveda's holistic perspective encouraged me to think about how the different parts of health relate to one another. The authors explain that traditional knowledge can provide ideas for scientific investigation, while also emphasizing the importance of evaluating treatments through modern research. Modern biology gives us ways to understand the specific mechanisms happening inside the body; we can study enzymes, metabolic pathways, hormones, glucose, and other measurable processes. Ayurveda approaches health from a different perspective by focusing more on the person as a whole and on the relationships between different aspects of health. These approaches are different, but I do not think that necessarily means that one has to completely replace the other; they can lead to different questions about the same person. Modern biology can help explain what is happening inside the body, while a more holistic perspective can encourage us to think about what else may be influencing those processes.

This connection made me realize that understanding a disease involves asking different kinds of questions. Biochemistry helps explain the mechanisms behind a condition, while a holistic perspective encourages us to consider how those mechanisms relate to the person's overall health. Looking at social factors helps us understand the circumstances that may influence their health. Together, these perspectives helped me see that understanding disease requires both scientific knowledge and a broader view of the individual. 

If a person has a metabolic disorder, it is easy to focus only on the biological problem; however, their diet, activity, stress, sleep, environment, and access to healthcare may also be connected to their health. This does not mean that every disease can be solved simply by changing someone's lifestyle, it means that understanding the biological process is only one part of understanding the person's experience with disease.

Ayurveda's idea of the body as a system of relationships gave me another way of thinking about health. Health can be understood at multiple levels at the same time. At the smallest level, we can look at molecules and biochemical reactions; at the next, we can look at organs and body systems. Then we can look at a person's habits, environment, relationships, and access to resources. None of these levels necessarily gives us the complete picture by itself, but looking at them all together gives us a better understanding of why health and diseases can be so complicated.

Maintaining health involves personal choices, but it is also influenced by factors that are not always within a person's control. It is easy to say that people should simply eat better, exercise more, or make healthier choices. Those things can be important, but a person's health is affected by their biology, as well as by their circumstances. Health is not only about treating a disease once it appears, it also involves paying attention to patterns in everyday life and how different parts of life affect one another.

Overall, these topics made me think about metabolism as much more than calories or the speed at which someone burns energy. Metabolism is a biological process, but it is also connected to the way people eat, live, and experience their environment. Diabetes and other metabolic disorders show what can happen when these biological processes are disrupted, while Ayurveda provides a different perspective that emphasizes the relationships between different parts of a person's health. By connecting these ideas, I came to see that understanding disease requires more than understanding one biological pathway. It also requires thinking about the whole person and the different factors that influence their health. This was probably the most important change in my thinking throughout these topics: instead of seeing metabolism, diet, disease, and lifestyle as separate subjects, I now see them as different parts of the same larger picture of health.

Citations

Patwardhan, B., Vaidya, A. D. B., & Chorghade, M. (2004). Ayurveda and natural products drug discovery. Current Science, 86(6), 789–799.