EBOLA-HIT LIBERIA SEEKS AYURVEDIC HELP FROM INDIA

The Times of India/TNN
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Bnglaru (Bangalore), Karnataka, India

Doctors in Karnataka will advise the Liberian government on using traditional Ayurveda to tackle modern-day scourge Ebola.

State health minister U.T. Khader confirmed correspondence between his office and Liberian counterparts on this subject. "A month ago, we received mails from Liberia about it and I had discussions with Ayurveda specialists in Belagavi. The doctors are working on it."

According to Ayurveda, pitta (in the form of bile juice) becomes concentrated and dries up leading to corrosion in cell walls resulting in bleeding when a person is infected with Ebola. Ayurvedic medicine prevents denaturing of pitta from liquid to dried acidic form and neutralizes toxins released by the Ebola virus.

Doctors from AyurVAID hospitals, a chain of Ayurvedic hospitals, had sent a proposal to the Karnataka government on possible treatment for Ebola. The government has also discussed Ayurvedic treatment with the doctors at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases where a quarantine unit has been set up for Ebola-suspect cases. "As of now, there's no treatment for Ebola. We discussed methods of treatment with AyurVaid doctors. I've written to the government that if we get an Ebola-suspect case, we'll take up a combined therapy of allopathy and Ayurveda," said Dr Shashidhar Buggi, director, RGICD.

Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids, blood, contaminated medical material such as needles or syringes, or even infected organisms. It's not transmitted through the air. The symptoms show up 2-3 weeks after contraction and include nausea, fever, sore throat, muscle pain, and headaches. In extreme cases, there could be internal bleeding and the intestinal tract is badly affected.

Ebola and Ayurveda

Dr Ajit Kumar, head of communicable diseases, AyurVAID, who has researched Ebola extensively, says, "In the initial stage of the fever corresponding to Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), according to Ayurveda, vata-pitta doshas and rakta dhatu (blood and plasma) gets affected leading to the haemorrhagic phase or Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF) with symptoms including excessive thirst, skin rashes, blood in spit, burning sensation, redness of body, giddiness and delirium. As per Ayurveda texts (Charaka Samhita), one complication of the fever is rakta-pitta resulting in bleeding from mouth, rectum, and other orifices. This is also happening in EHF victims."

Ayurveda solution

"Studies reveal that symptoms of Ebola are similar to that of dengue fever and India has been able to tackle severe illnesses effectively. We have to create a hostile environment for the virus to contain it," says Rajiv Vasudevan, CEO, AyurVAID. He has conveyed this to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta. "To stop the virus from spreading from one affected to person to others, we also suggest quarantine," adds Dr Ajit Kumar.

Medicine in Ayurveda

Ayurvedic protocols include diet, lifestyle, medicines, and therapies applicable to different stages of the disease. Medicine prepared from astringent foods items are favoured at intermediate stage and these include figs, gooseberries, white pepper, cucurbita, jamun fruit, walnut, dry mango seed/aamchur, raw woodapple, vastuk (bathwa), leafy vegetable, badri (berries), bamboo shoots, dates, lotus stem/stalk, charoli (chironji) to be administered in liquid form.

MEGA-STUDY ON AYURVEDA'S HEALING POWERS

By Shobita Dhar,
TNN/he Times of India

January 25, 2015, 06.19 AM

Perhaps for the first time leading research and medical institutions in the US-Harvard University, Scripps Clinic, University of California San Diego, Mt Sinai University , University of California San Francisco and Duke University -are collaborating on a project to study ayurveda's healing powers.

Called the `Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative (SBTI) Research Study', the study is being conducted at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in California. The center, run by wellness expert Deepak Chopra, had earlier conducted a smaller study to examine the effects of meditation and yoga on gene expression.

"The findings from the older study showed that a week of meditation and yoga practice led to an increase in expression of genes that support rejuvenation of the body , a reduction in expression of genes associated with the stress response, and a large increase in telomerase levels (an enzyme that helps maintain structural identity of genes)," says Chopra.

In the SBTI study , researchers will be analyzing the impact of ayurvedic treatments on participants' genes, certain hormones associated with metabolism and mood change, bacteria present in the gut and on the skin, inflammation markers, weight, stress makers etc. "The body's healing system is still little understood because of the complex inputs -thoughts, emotions, diet, stress, exercise, immune response - that affect healing. The picture is further clouded when isolated findings overlap or contradict one another. In the context of ayurveda, therapies and practices aren't done in isolation. Instead of focusing on local symptoms, the diagnosis is systemic. Only now is Western medicine beginning to understand that a blanket condition like `stress' or `inflammation' connects many diverse disorders, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes," says Chopra.

Ayurveda is widely practiced and followed in India. There are 2,458 ayurveda hospitals running in India under the government's directorate of Ayush (Ayurveda, yoga, unani, siddha and homoeopathy). However since there have been few scientific studies on the safety and efficacy of the system in the West, it is often perceived as a pseudoscience there. Dr Rudolf Tanzi, a professor at the Harvard University and a co-researcher at the SBTI study, says that this perception is now changing.

"Any scientist of worth will admit that most of time we are wrong. Just look back at science 100 years ago and ask how much is still correct today. Why would this not continue to be the case 100 years from now? Thus, it makes sense to look back to ancient remedies and wisdom, for example, as prescribed in ayurvedic medicine. So far, the results ranging from the effects of meditation on beneficial gene activity to ashwagandha on Alzheimer's pathology are certainly looking sufficiently promising to continue," says Tanzi who specializes in researching gene mutations linked to Alzheimer's Disease.

The study also has the potential to throw light on which brain-function related genes and chemicals are turned "on" or turned "off " by an ayurvedic diet and lifestyle." "That type of information can help us not only better establish how ayurveda works at a cellular level but also how best to integrate it into a modern healthy lifestyle," says Dr Murali Doraiswamy , professor at Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and coresearcher on the study .