Talk:Ayurveda

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[edit] How do I know if the Ayurvedic doctor I'm consulting has a degree

Hi, I wanted to know whether Ayurvedic doctors have proper degrees. How can I tell whether the Ayurvedic doctor I'm going to has a bonafide degree? Please tell me whether there are degrees and certificates that Ayurvedic colleges in India provide.

[edit] Biju the Medicine Man

http://www.bhopal.org/2005newsletter/2223.pdf

HOW APPROPRIATE THAT BIJU IS CALLED BIJU (pronounced beeju) because beej in Sanskrit and Hindi means seed. Not that Biju is the slightest bit seedy, but his job is to turn Sambhavna’s harvest of seeds, leaves, flowers, fruit, bark and roots into ayurvedic medicines.

The clinic’s vaids, or ayurvedic doctors, insist that the old ayurvedic texts be followed to the letter, they are the distilled wisdom of many thousands of years of practice. This gave Biju a minor problem. He comes from Kerala, whose language is Malayalam:

The texts however are in Sanskrit, of which the following is an example:

it informs us. Or, to put it another way, ‘Only oil from eranda (root of castor), like a lion can kill the rheumatism that moves like an elephant in the forest of the body.’

Out of necessity Biju studied Sanskrit and Hindi in which he is now thoroughly proficient. Castor root is dried, then pounded and boiled with water to make a decocotion or kwaatha. This is used in a kashaaya basti or enema given in cases of constipation and chronic lower back pain. It is also the main constituent of vaitarana basti used in arthritis. This one herb makes redundant several chemically produced anti-inflammatories, analgesics and laxatives.

Here’s a recipe for a medicinal oil, vatari tailam: Ingredients: Akaua (Calotropis gigantea) also called Arka in Sanskrit, tamarind (Tamarindus indica), garlic, black pepper, mustard seeds, rock salt, coconut oil, mustard oil and sesame oil.

Method: Akaua leaves are boiled in water to make a kwaatha. The garlic, black pepper and mustard seeds are ground to a paste. The rock salt is powdered. Tamarind is soaked in water for oneday, then boiled and the juice extracted. The three oils are mixed in equal quantities. When warm the akaua kwaatha is added, followed by the garlic, pepper & mustard seed paste, the powdered rock salt and, finally, the tamarind juice. The mixture is boiled until all the water evaporates. As the oil boils a black paste settles in the pan. One tests the oil by rubbing a little of this paste between the fingertips. A drop of oil is burned to make sure all the moisture is gone. Finally the oil is filtered. The black paste is used as a hot fomentation to treat pain in the knee. This oil replaces analgesics like aspirin, diclofenac sodium, nimesulide and ibuprofen, all of which can have unpleasant side effects. The value of these remedies has repeatedly been proven in Bhopal. People whose bodies are already in toxic overload are successfully treated without exposing them to chemical drugs.

[edit] Ayurveda in Action

Ayurveda in Action

http://www.bhopal.org/2005newsletter/2223.pdf

UMA SAINI IS 40 YEARS OLD. At the time of the 1984 gas disaster she was a newly married 20 year old. She lived with her husband behind the Puttha Mill paper and board factory near the bus stand. Uma’s is the archetypal Bhopal story. Around 1 am on that night she woke up coughing, her eyes burning. Outside, people were shouting ‘Gas has leaked, run for your lives!’

Jostled in the panic-stricken and half-blinded crowd, Uma was separated from her family. She passed the night in great pain and in the morning went home through streets where corpses in some places lay in heaps, their faces still twisted in agony. Uma’s husband had luckily survived, and also came home.

Uma developed TB of the uterus (the possible cause of her childlessness) which was treated at the District Hospital. About nine years ago at the Diwali festival she bought an armload of marigold garlands. Instantly she started sneezing and a violent itching began in her eyes, ears, nose and inside her throat. Her face, eyes and ears swelled. These problems did not go away again. Uma’s life became a nightmare of eye-rubbing, vain attempts to relieve ear and nose itches & to twist her tongue to ease her itching throat. She was always sneezing, with a headache that was often unbearable.

Four years ago she began to suffer seriously from breathlessness, pain in the ribs, frequent colds, sneezing, itching and swelling. Her eyes became permanently irritated with fine eruptions on the lower eyelid. Rubbing them affected her vision. The sneezing became incessant, 40-50 explosions one after the other. In all weathers she was forced carry an umbrella as the sun exacerbated her problems. She could not wash her face with warm water nor cover it in winter. At Hamidia hospital doctors gave her a pill ‘that looked like a grain of masoor daal’, but didn’t work. A private eye- doctor prescribed five sets of eye drops, an array of pills, vitamin E & new glasses. Apart from the glasses nothing worked. The eye drops did nothing for the agonising itching, the pills made her drowsy and if anything the swellings worsened. Uma could not afford to continue this treatment which in all cost her about 12,000 rupees. Next, she tried home remedies: sandalwood paste applied to the forehead and eyes, a wet cloth over the face. Vicks!

A neighbour told her about Sambhavna where treatment was free and she would be able to choose between allopathic and ayurvedic medicine. When she came to us Uma chose ayurveda because she was tired of angrezi dawaa (foreign medicine).

Dr Deshpande prescribed her nasya treatment: a massage with mahanarayan oil on her head and forehead, a steam bath, and six drops of shadabindu taila given through the nose. Every two days the drops were changed to anu taila, giving four days of shadabindu and four days of anu. At first her nose streamed, she was sneezing badly & her headache worsened, but Dr Deshpande told her that people with chronic illnesses often grow worse before they start getting better. Uma began experiencing relief from the third day of treatment. After a week of nasya she had no headache, no sneezes, no more itching. Her face and limbs were no longer swollen.

Beaming at us, she says she finds it nigh impossible to believe that her problems are really over, she’ll believe it if she stays well throughout next summer. We’ll be sure to let you know.

[edit] Cure for Diabetes

my uncle was given "rabbit's foot" by his son, christopher, who has been training as an ayurvedic doctor for the past four years. my uncle's diabetic condition, which he had had all his life, was cured in two weeks. the western medical doctor he spoke to, for confirmation, was deeply disturbed by this.