Ayurveda and the Science of Life.
Ayurveda, like most traditional healing practices, is a system of medicine as well as a general philosophy of health and wellbeing. It includes advice on diet, exercise, sleep, and general hygiene. It also advises on the use of herbal remedies based on ancient Hindu traditions. Ayurvedic medicine has developed and been refined by its practitioners over thousands of years. Practitioners advance the practice of Ayurvedic medicine using observation and experience. It has been said that Ayurveda was the first true science. In fact the Sanskrit word “ayurveda”, literally means the “science of life.”
There is a lot to be said about the differences between science, as described in Ayurveda, and the scientific method, employed today by researchers and scientists. For instance, Ayurveda does not rely on controlled clinical trials to determine the efficacy of a given therapy. It rather relies only on the collective experience and observations of other practitioners. For this reason you could say that Ayurvedic medicine is the product of thousands of years of anecdotal evidence for the systematic use of traditional remedies passed down from one generation to the next as oral history and traditional medical practices. This opens the door for skeptics who rightfully criticize Ayurveda as being little more than pseudoscience.
Today Ayurvedic medicine is most often discussed in the context of nutrition. Human beings have a number of attributes that make them natural scientists. For example, we are quick to recognize patterns, noticing that certain things always seem to occur together while other things never occur together or that certain sequences of events usually seem to lead to the same outcome. We are also predisposed to believe that things happen for a reason which drives us to come up with explanations for the things that happen even if we have no evidence for them. Take for example the Copernican revolution which for the first time in human history, rightfully placed the sun at the center of our solar system and the earth in rotation. This alternative explanation for the observed motions of celestial bodies was so revolutionary at the time that it’s belief was seen as a threat to the political and religious orders which understandably interpreted the place of humanity as being at the center of all existence. It seems that our desire for answers precedes our desire for the truth. This talent for pattern recognition and the desire to understand cause and effect gives us some control over our environment, or at least makes us feel like we’re in control and that we have the ability to anticipate and prepare for future events. This has given us a powerful survival advantage.
This tendency to see patterns and our desire for explanations can also cause us to see patterns where there are none and come up with explanations that are false. For example, we once believed that dancing in a certain way could bring rain and that by sacrificing animals we could ensure a good harvest. We may also come up with explanations that fit the available evidence but ultimately prove to be false and even harmful when put into practice. Take for instance people who lose blood, become weak, and than by eating red meat would recuperate. In other words we knew how to treat iron deficiency and anemia long before we knew anything about iron, hemoglobin or red-blood cells. But thanks to our well developed ability to recognize patterns and an innate desire for an explanation for observed phenomenon we reasoned that the spirit or energy of the animal entered the body of the person who consumed the animal. In this way we connected the dots between a sequence of events that appeared to lead to a predictable outcome. The role of the observer is not well considered by Ayurveda, the biases of the inquirer are not thought to influence the outcome and natural phenomenon, like the placebo effect, are ignored completely. In other words, while Ayurveda may appear to be systematic, it does not adequately control for inherent biases or confounding variables.
Although the observer may be where science begins, it is not where it ends. Modern science began when we developed a methodology for testing our hypothesis. The scientific method seeks to limit individual biases and control for any potentially confounding variable. This allows us to weed out all kinds of ineffective medical treatments with more effective ones and replace inaccurate understandings of natural phenomenon with more accurate ones that help us to develop even more effective treatments.
History is riddled with the cautionary tales of men who blindly did what those who came before them had done, and yet wisdom acquired over the ages is not without value. Any system based on observation and shared experiences is bound to figure out a lot even if they may, more often than not, fall victim to the correlation ≠ causation trap that remains today the greatest hazard any researcher may face. And since herbal medicine, like the kind practiced in Ayurveda, is the direct precursor to modern medical pharmacology, there is likely to be a fair bit of folk-medicine, myth making, and false notions of how a traditional remedy is likely to be beneficial. So while you may be getting good results with Ayurveda, you may also be wasting time, money and limiting your own access to more effective treatments. The other downside of Ayurveda is that like other traditional medical practices, much of the explanation for how Ayurveda works is based on myths and legends rather than biological activity. This limits the ability of Ayurvedic practices to evolve and progress. In other words, regardless of how effective Ayurveda is, it won’t be getting any better since there’s no mechanism for systematically improving it. Instead Ayurveda is being challenged by modern science and incorporated into conventional medical practices where the evidence supports it.
Ayurveda is grounded in observation and experience, two pillars of modern science. Some Ayurvedic herbal remedies have been evaluated by modern, placebo-controlled trials, however, the results have been mixed. One of the challenges of reconciling an ancient healing practice, like Ayurveda, with modern science is that modern science is only interested in what can be measured whereas Ayurveda is far more esoteric and involves things that can’t be measure or even defined in scientific terms. For instance, in Ayurveda, your treatments are tailored to your dosha or vital energy. These theories are difficult to test using modern scientific methods, which prefers objective rather than subjective endpoints. However, this has not stopped practitioners or their patients who would prefer a more traditional approach to medicine. Many are content to simply do things the way they have “always been done”, content that experience is the best teacher. They believe that by following in thousand-year-old footsteps they are more likely to get it right than by following the lead of more modern medical practitioners. And, of course, if it benefits the individual — well that is all that is really important — to the individual.
