Saturday, September 6, 2008

PURUSHAM PURUSHAM VEEKSHYA AND PERSONALISED MEDICINE!!

Pranams to all, this time we shall try to discuss about some thing which is mentioned in ayurveda centuries back and has been recently understood by contemporary people as thier own discovery. ayurveda deals with the diseases not just the disease, i.e we believe in bringing the entire environment of the body in harmony and normalcy, health is not just absence of disease, its the complete psychological, social well being says w.h.o.in its definition of health. but ayurveda has understood this concept several centuries back, it has understood all thge parameters of health, sama dhoshaha, samagni , sama malaha- these are physical parameters, then comes prassnathma indriya manaha- these psychological and psycho social parameters are understood by our ancient seers. coming to the treatment concept, ayurveda doesnt believe in irrational treatment, i.e one cant just blindly administer any medicine, a aushada may not cure the same condition in all the people. a disease just cant be cured by the same medicine to all. it may work or may not work. ayurveda considers each and every individual as different and hence the medicine should be close to his own self. even in diagnosing we consider various things like prakrithi, kala, bala, ahara shakthi, vikrti, vyayama shakthi , satwa, etc. every individual need not respond to the same medicine. hence we have several preparations having similair properties and action but with subtle variations that has to bve appropriately selected according to the individual and his condition. unlike ayurveda , the contemporary system of medicine had the practice of administering drugs which are target specific or condition specific. these are nothing but poisons in low doses, they have antipyretics to relieve fever, anti spasmodics, anti inflamatory, ant helminthic etc. but the net result is the suppression of expression of the disease. the root cause and disease causing tendency remains un disturbed. but now a recent system of practice, a branch of medicine has evolved with advance ments in genetics, the branch called as personalized medicine, it believes that 400mg of paracetamol given at same time and for same temperature of 100 degree f, to two individuals say x and y, will not elicit the same response. the bio availability, action duration, solubility, cause etc all are independent , they are purely objective, and more over the genetic make up of individual and the environment also plzys an imporatant role. this is what our ancient seers have observed several centuries before. acharya charaka has wonderfully described as purusham purusham veekshya, every individual is different. now the modern system is looking in this field and tremendous scope is there in future for this field for sure, ayurveda and its concepts have once again proved its eternity.