What is Ayurveda

Ayurvedic therapy is a traditional natural healing system that originated in ancient India and has a history of more than 5,000 years. It is also one of the oldest comprehensive medical systems recorded in history. The core logic is to regard people as a natural part of the universe and believe that life is composed of the five elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space. Cheng, corresponds to the three life energies of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha in an individual. All physical and mental discomforts are essentially caused by the imbalance of these three energies. The core purpose of therapy is to return energy to a balanced state and achieve overall health of the body, mind, and spirit, rather than just performing elimination treatments for a single disease.

When I traveled to Kerala, South India, two years ago, I happened to catch up with the local Ayurvedic recuperation season. I stayed at the recuperation camp for three weeks with the mentality of giving it a try. At first, I thought it was just an ordinary essential oil SPA. Unexpectedly, the doctor spent more than 40 minutes on the first day feeling my pulse and asking about my daily routine and minor physical problems. At that time, I stayed up late all year round, developed hives when the season changed, and became flatulent after eating something cold. After the test, the teacher said that I have a typical high-Vata constitution. For the next three weeks, even the water I drank had to be warm. Every meal was served with a warm meal with a small amount of turmeric and ghee. I also had to apply herbal oil drops and massage on different parts of the body every day. After the test, I didn’t have hives for more than half a year, and my flatulence problem was mostly cured. It was then that I really realized that it was not the metaphysical IQ tax mentioned on the Internet.

Of course, the controversy over Ayurveda has not stopped over the years. After all, its core theoretical system is completely different from the logic of modern evidence-based medicine. The effectiveness of many treatments cannot be verified through large-scale double-blind experiments. There are also many reports that some Ayurvedic herbal preparations sold by informal institutions have excessive heavy metals. Some bad practitioners even exaggerate the efficacy, claiming that Ayurveda can cure cancer, diabetes and other serious diseases, causing some patients to delay formal treatment. This is the core reason why many professionals are now cautious about it.

At present, formal Ayurvedic therapy is generally classified as complementary and alternative medicine in the world. To put it bluntly, if you have daily ailments such as chronic fatigue, insomnia, and gastrointestinal sensitivity, which modern medicine does not have a good cure for, it is no problem to seek treatment from doctors who have been systematically trained and have formal qualifications. However, if you really find out that you have organic diseases or severe emergencies, you must first seek formal treatment with modern medicine. Treating conditioning as a good way to cure the disease is putting the cart before the horse.