What has traditional ayurvedic medicine to say about vaccination?
When Indian doctors open their mouths…
What happens when Indian paediatricians take a look at the disease incidence in their own country and decide that certain vaccines are not justified on epidemiological grounds? Nothing, So long as they keep their mouths shut. What happens when they look into the use of certain vaccines, and find that reactions are being covered up? Nothing. So long as they keep their mouths shut. But when they tell the world about both… , no matter that good science is on their side, there is only one possible result. To start with, they will be branded ANTI VACCINE. What better slur is there? Anti vaccine people are idiots, don’t you know? Truth won’t be discussed. Truth is inconvenient to the vaccine industry, especially to organisations who owe their existence and income to the vaccine industry. Simple as that. Here’s the story: http://beyondconformity.co.nz/_blog/Hilary’s_Desk/post/When_Indian_doctors_open_their_mouths/
So, what has traditional ayurvedic medicine to say about vaccination?
Regards
Trond Ruud, Norway
Ayurveda is more of a life style system than a medicinal system. Based on natural food and energy/nutrient provider of the humans – the plants – Ayurveda lays down a lifestyle which when followed can strengthen the body and bring it in balance with the surrounding nature there by evading any illness – be it of microbial attack or inherent systemic failures in the body.
Ayurveda strongly believes that any illness is caused when the body goes out of balance with the nature, which can result either in issues related to organs like heart diseases, kidney problems, etc, but can also cause conditions favorable for microbial attack in the body. So the whole aim of Ayurveda is to lay down a life style which constantly strengthens the body and keeps it in a systemic balance so as to fight any microbial attacks.
While western medicine is a medicine system, Ayurveda is the way you live your life. Ayurveda is not just about body, but about the well being of mind, body and soul. The principles of Ayurveda in combination with Yoga is the most powerful arsenal to live a healthy life. While Ayurveda ensures good nutritional supply to the body, Yoga ensure physical fitness of the body and mind.
Western medical system is aimed at treating the illness directly, where as Ayurveda strengthens the body and encourages it to fight the illness on its own. While western medical system has its own genuine areas of application, misusing it to treat symptoms like headache or allergy are against the principles of Ayurveda. If a person gets a headache, there is a reason behind it where in the body is trying to convey a message about a problem. Taking a tablet will only hide the symptom, it wont address the actual problem. Sometimes the treatment can be more dangerous than the headache itself. Some tablets and drugs related to curing headache are known to cause paralysis!
The principles of Ayurveda say nothing about vaccination, probably because vaccination was not in practice in ancient days. But if one studies those principles, then the way Ayurveda deals with strengthening immunity is not allowing to create conditions favorable for microbes to survive in the body.
Ayurveda divides the types of immunity in a person’s body as
1. Sahaja (Genetic Immunity obtained from parents)
2. Kalaja (Immunity based on seasons, time and age factors) and
3. Yuktikruta (Acquired immunity)
It is the Yuktikruta or the acquired immunity which a person has control of and the ayurvedic principles lay down guidelines to constantly nurture and strengthen this acquired immunity. They are by
1. Vyayama – Physical exercises like Yoga, Sports
2. Satmya – Tolerance, where regular and controlled exposure to substances which are otherwise toxic or harmful in nature, like say allergens – brings about tolerance to these substances in the body via body’s adaptability mechanisms.
3. Rasayana – Consumption of different Herbal based ayurvedic diet (tonics, food, powders) depending on the person’s needs.
So one can argue that by definition, in Ayurveda vaccines fall under the Satmya category of Yuktikruta immunity acquired by a person. But whether the core principles of Ayurveda really allow vaccines to be used as a Satmya means (especially considering the non-herbal nature of vaccines) is something that can be answered only by an expert ayurvedic physician.
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LikeDislikeThank you Gurudev,
I wrote a long reply but the system deleted it because I was not logged in apparently? Your definition of Satmya, reminded me a little of what I’ve read abour homeopathy, so it might perhaps have vedic roots.
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LikeDislikeOh, sorry about your long reply getting lost, probably if you had just pressed the browser back button, the reply would still have been there? What I normally do is type all the reply text in a notepad, and then paste it into the website so that all the typing is not lost in case of any browser or website issues.
Satmya is based on another very ancient ayurvedic principle “vishasya visham oushadam” which means poison can be used as a medicine to treat poison. Homeopathy is based on this very same principle, and this principle seems to be quite a common knowledge among most ancient civilizations.
Unfortunately the modern multinational drug companies are not allowing any form of alternate medicine to survive and if one observe the patterns of research by these drug companies, most of the drugs are of the type keep using forever till the end of your life, so that these companies can make big money, instead of providing “once and for all cured” type of research. So this shows the direction in which the world is moving towards, making people scared, as if the human immune system is weak by nature and always requires vaccines and drugs to keep us healthy – forgetting the fact that the our best defense is the natural immune system we inherit and all our actions should be to complement it, not override it, unless and until extremely necessary.
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LikeDisliketo all the people here,
take a look at this site of “RATIONAL THINKERS” headed by prof.Narendra Nayak(i don’t know how he became a prof).
http://nirmukta.com/2010/08/30/why-alternative-medicine-is-neither-science-based-nor-medicine/
i have written a few replies there and i will post it here. basically the group claims that ayurveda is a pseudo-science and it cannot cure any ailments. so in response to that i wrote a couple of replies.
“my friend had got alopecia(he had a bald spot on his scalp). he went to kotakkal arya vaidya shala malleshwaram. the thailam they gave him cured his aloepecia and his hair grew back within 15 days!. i have been using dhurdhurapatraadi kerathailam for dandruff and it has proven to be much more effective than the ZPTO medicine named scalpe that i had been using for 2 years prior to that. i also get throat pain almost every fortnight and i take taalisapatraadi churnam and it has been proven to be effective.
from personal experience i can say that benzoyl peroxide and ZPTO are good for tackling acne vulgaris and dandruff respectively, however the corresponding ayurvedic medicines are better(i have used medicines recommended by a dermatologist and the ayurvedic medicine and kerathailam has completely gotten me rid of the dandruff).
to all the people here who will be shaking their heads in disbelief saying that its placebo i would like to ask, how is growing hair in a bald spot to cure alopecia a placebo. you can continue on with your rantings because no matter how much evidence one provides you guys will continue to be “RATIONAL THINKERS” and no amount of evidence can change it.
thank you for reading(if you have read this post)”
they also have this habit of clubbing ayurveda with homeopathy and seem to treat it as a similar system of medicine which is absurd.
i think it is a waste of time trying to make them logically understand the effectiveness of ayurveda but the problem is they are spreading major MISINFO and convincing the semi sceptical people into believing wholeheartedly that ayurveda ia pseudoscience and any other position on the matter is also pseudoscience (LOL)
how do you think such people should be dealt/confronted with?
any suggestions?
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LikeDislikeI guess the best way to deal with them is NOT to deal with them. Because as you said when somebody has decided about what they want to hear, there is no point arguing with them. It becomes the same as arguing with a religious fanatic.
The best way to tackle negativisim is to promote more positivism. So instead of wasting time on useless debates, I guess we need to spend the same precious time in knowing more about these ancient systems, documenting them and making more information available, because there are millions others who want to know more about these systems but simply dont have proper access to it. So we should be catering to this audience which is willing to listen, rather than try and waste our time in convincing a handful of people who have decided to be ignorant for the rest of their life.
Say for instance, instead of spending our time arguing with the so called self-titled RATIONALS, if we spend our time documenting an article and publishing it which talks about how to tackle a particular health issue using Ayurveda’s nature cure – I bet millions will benefit from it not just for their health, but also monetarily. Almost all ayurvedic natural therapies are very low cost and most can be done at home with no fear of any side effects, so by concentrating on spreading such information, the masses will benefit from it, and that itself will later restrict RATIONALS inside their RATIONAL WELL
What these rationals do not understand is that, in the traditional Indian homes the very way of life is filled with Ayurveda. For instance, traditional Hindus give a lot of prominence to the use of Turmeric in the day today life. You can see Turmeric being used in the daily diet extensively, one can see Turmeric being used extensively by the women as a beauty enhancer+anti-microbial facial, one can see mothers applying turmeric to the wounds of the children who got hurt while playing and so on. The reason?
Turmeric is one of the best anti-microbial and anti-septic agent, natural liver detoxifier, natural pain-killer, is anti-inflammatory, is effective against containing cancer (experiments showed that in mice turmeric prevented breast cancer from spreading to lungs), protects skin various skin diseases, is good at metabolising fat, slows down multiple-sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease etc, speeds up wound healing, prevents growth of new blood vessels inside tumors and so on. Now just one can wonder how many drugs you will have to take if one were to use western medicine to treat all the above conditions and the side effects of taking those different drugs. So that proves it all, and this is just one very small example. By using Turmeric in the daily diet, one can keep away all the above mentioned ailments and much more. Ayurveda – is a way of life – the veda (knowledge) of increasing one’s ayu (lifespan) and staying healthy.
We just need to make sure all such information is well documented and spread across the world for the ultimate benefit of mankind and to save mankind from the clutches of a few money hungry large multinational companies, who for the sake of making money have gone down to the level of creating terminator genes in naturally available seeds so that the farmers come back to the multinationals to buy seeds for the every crop they sow.
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LikeDislikewell i guess the first thing that needs to be done in the coming 10-15 years is the large scale scientific testing of various lehyas, thailams, and other ayurvedic medicines. and it’s being done on a small scale already. once the ayurvedic medicines are tested on a large scale , then only can ayurveda be promoted on a large scale, and i guess the Government of India is largely responsible for the lack of progress made in the country in ayurveda. i myself was sceptical of ayurveda initially but after using ayurvedic medicines since the past 3-4 months(yes very recently!) i am convinced that ayurveda is not a pseudoscience and similar experiences need to be gotten by other sceptics also.
RE: vaccines
this is what i have observed with allopathic medicines. they are effective on 90-95% of the population but the remaining 5% show side effects when taking some specific medicines. i’ve also read that vaccines have caused complications and even death in a few young babies. i’ve also read that autism could be caused by vaccines. now many of these claims could be funded by the faith healing community in USA and could turn out to be false, but an honest research on this issue must be taken up.
my view, i think modern system of medicine is a wonderful branch of science which has given us info and shown us things we didn’t know about before. but the capitalists policies of the big pharmas have played around the faith of the common man and tainted the image of modern medical science, often testing their medicines on human lives. abuse of allopathic drugs is promoted by the pharmas.
ayurveda and allopathy can both learn and grow from each other. as for the medicines unless one seriously gets ill one should prefer to go for ayurvedic medicines, and even if one gets the serious diseases like typhiod, malaria ayurveda does have solutions to these diseases also.
the other complaint that comes about to people who promote ayurveda is that they may inflict damage on the sick who are affected by deadly diseases. my answer is learn to use the systems of ayurveda and allopathy wisely, and complement your treatment from both the systems, and if possible use both!!
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