MODERN MEDICINE AND AYURVEDA

Many a modern medical doctor is skeptical about the feasibility of Ayurvedic or herbal medicine. This opinion arises from lack of basic knowledge in Ayurvedic principles. To understand pharmacodynamics of Ayurveda one needs to have a basic knowledge about the five-element theory (Five Great Elements of Material Existence), thri dosha theory (three humor theory), concept of six-taste and their influence on doshas.

Modern medicine is based on scientific truths supported by the physical and molecular chemistry taking place within our body. The greatest advantage of modern medicine is its immaculate and infallible theories about how drugs act on somatic cells both within the body and in laboratories. The success of modern medicine in the last one hundred years is mainly due to the modern pharmacology’s success to combat bacterial diseases. Apart from this in the case of viral diseases modern medicine had lesser ammunition to fight with. But this drawback was nullified to some extent by the success achieved thru vaccination.

Mother Nature considers every living thing in this planet as equal. Like humans even bacteria and other microbes are also nurtured by it. Nature is a great leveler and it gives equal chance to its entire offspring including microbes.

We humans are selfish and take the lives of other organism for granted. Consider a honey bee or hornet attacking humans. An attack by these insects is always triggered by human intrusion. As far as honeybee is concerned it is protecting the colony from invaders. They defend their colony by sacrificing their life. (a honeybee can sting only once). They die in the process of protecting the colony. Likewise the microbes which attack us whenever they get a chance in the shape of an open wound. They are trying to do their ‘karma.’ We have all the right to protect ourselves from these microbes. Antibiotics are the biggest friend of a modern doctor to fight bacteria. Most of the time many practitioner of modern medicine use these medicines irrationally and ending up in microbes gaining tolerance to these drugs.