Is Ayurveda magical?

As a practitioner who has been exposed to Ayurveda for nearly 10 years, I have to say that it is not "very miraculous" at all. It is neither a divine therapy that can cure all diseases, nor a completely useless pseudoscience. It is essentially an ancient Indian traditional health system that has been passed down for thousands of years. It is useful but has a strong sense of boundaries. Currently, there are ongoing controversies in the industry and academia.

A while ago, a girl who works in cross-border e-commerce came to me. She stayed up late all year long to meet overseas customers, and had an irregular diet. When she woke up in the morning, her face was swollen like a dough bun, and she had sticky stools that couldn’t be flushed down the toilet. We tested her and found that her Kapha constitution was seriously imbalanced, so we arranged for her to take two meals a week. After the warm herbal oil massage, she was advised to cook more turmeric and black pepper and drink less iced milk tea and iced coffee for more than two months. She said that her face was no longer swollen when she woke up in the morning, and her bowel movements became much smoother. Even the eczema that was easy to get during the change of seasons was less common. In fact, the logic of this kind of conditioning is not "magical" at all. The core is to adjust your living habits according to your body constitution and help the body find balance. It is actually the same logic as the "removing dampness and cold" that our traditional Chinese medicine talks about.

But I have seen too many outrageous propaganda over the years that promote Ayurveda. Last year, a family member of a patient came to me and said that someone had recommended Ayurvedic detoxification therapy to them, saying that drinking herbal oil for three months could cure lung cancer. Let me see if it was true. I quickly advised them not to believe it and go back to chemotherapy. Nowadays, many of the "miraculous effects" spread on the Internet have long exceeded the scope of application of Ayurveda itself. This system is originally used to regulate daily sub-health and help improve chronic mild diseases. If there are organic diseases, acute or serious diseases, relying on it to treat diseases will only delay things. Moreover, many studies on Ayurveda in the academic community are not yet thorough. There is no clear large-scale clinical data on the toxic and side effects and active ingredients of some herbal preparations. In the past few years, many tests have even revealed that some Ayurvedic drugs that have not been processed in a standardized way have excessive heavy metals. These are all objective problems.

To put it bluntly, just think of it as a health regimen option that suits your body type. Just like if you have sore shoulders and necks, go for a bone-setting massage. If you can’t sleep well, try meditation. It’s useful but there’s no need to boast about it. If you really have a health problem, your first choice is always a doctor in a regular hospital. Don’t use health regimen as a cure.