Is Ayurveda magical?

The answer is definitely no - it is neither a "divine therapy" spread online that can cure all diseases, nor is it a baseless pseudoscience. As an Indian traditional medical system that has been passed down for nearly 5,000 years, its practical value and controversy have always coexisted.

Two years ago at a natural healing exhibition in Yunnan, I met a healer who had been practicing regular Ayurveda for 12 years. At that time, a girl from a foreign company who worked with him stayed up late at night to catch up on projects. Her spleen and stomach were so bad that she would have diarrhea after eating something cold. I went to the gastroenterology department several times but no organic problems were found. She took digestive medicines for a long time and could only get rid of them. It was a symptomatic treatment. Later, she followed the Vata constitution conditioning plan customized for her, doing half-an-hour Doyle oil back massage every day, adjusting her diet to a warm, soft and low-sugar structure, and completely giving up two cups of iced coffee a day. Within two weeks, she said that most of the flatulence that had been in her chest had disappeared, and she no longer had to toss and turn for half an hour to fall asleep. This conditioning effect for chronic lifestyle diseases is indeed the core reason why it has been passed down for thousands of years.

However, I have seen many cases of fraud over the years, which makes me feel that praising Ayurveda as "very magical" is actually doing harm to it. Last year, I came across local people’s livelihood news. There was a lady in her fifties who believed in the Ayurveda “purifying blood and toxins to cure high blood pressure” promoted by Wechat merchants in her circle of friends. She spent more than 30,000 yuan to buy a bunch of herbal pills without batch numbers and ate them for half a month. She suffered from drug-induced liver damage and was admitted to the hospital. Later, when she was sent for examination, she found out that the heavy metals in those pills exceeded the legal limit by dozens of times.

In fact, apart from those deified gimmicks, the core logic of Ayurveda is very similar to the overall view of our traditional Chinese medicine. It divides people into three categories according to their constitution: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. It emphasizes the balance between man and nature. Many conditioning logics actually coincide with modern lifestyles. Medical science: For example, those with a Vata constitution that is dry and prone to anxiety should eat less raw and cold foods and avoid excessive consumption; those with a Pitta constitution that is prone to heat and are prone to irritability should eat less spicy food and avoid long-term exposure to the sun. To put it bluntly, these are all maintenance methods that adapt to the characteristics of the body and are nothing mysterious.

Now the WHO has long included Ayurveda in the category of traditional medicine, recognizing its complementary role in the treatment of chronic diseases and daily health maintenance, but it has also clearly drawn a line: it can never replace the formal treatment of modern medicine, especially for acute and severe diseases, tumors, and organic lesions. Counting on Ayurveda to create "miracle effects" will only delay the best opportunity for treatment.

I have met many enthusiasts and practitioners over the years, and my biggest feeling is that if you always feel tired and have no major problems during routine physical examinations, and want to find a systematic way to adjust your life, you can definitely try Ayurvedic conditioning in a formal institution. However, if you have "very magical" expectations and want to rely on it to cure serious illnesses or change your body in a few days, you will most likely fall into a trap. After all, no matter what health method, there is no magic effect that can be achieved overnight.