For many, Ayurveda is a folklore — it is a traditional and empirical health care practice that was in vogue during the time when rational scientific understanding of health, pathogenesis, disease and cure was out of sight. Now, when the health care science has reached its zenith through advances made via experimentally-driven robust evidence, it seems logical to view the traditional health wisdom as a bygone entity with only historical relevance in the contemporary context.
It is beyond doubt that the modern health care system — due to its precision, predictability, reproducibility and dependability — has clear advantages over traditional health care, which is still struggling to find uniformity, standards and precision. This, however, is only one side of the coin. The other side of the story is that despite its remarkable technological advances, the modern health care system has severe limitations in disease understanding and its management.
Efficacy of Modern Medical Care
The current pandemic has exposed these limitations of the modern health care system in their barest form. Modern health care fairly admits that among all patients seeking medical advice, more than half are not diagnosable through contemporary understanding of disease. Naturally, these are not treatable either. A fair number among those whose ailments are diagnosable, do not get treated for the absence of any realistic treatment for their pathology. Ultimately, among the remaining few, who are privileged to have the treatment, many cannot go further for the possibilities of drug related adversities. Finally, it comes to only a small fraction of people who can be treated satisfactorily with modern medicine.
On the other hand, Ayurveda has the beauty of having operational ease and hence capable of embracing all on the basis of simple disease pattern recognitions. These patterns are pathognomonic of dosha (a balance of the five elements of air, earth, space, water and fire) and their interaction with the body tissue. If these patterns are prescribed for the interventions, keeping the personal characteristics of a person in mind, this becomes precision medicine, something which Ayurveda proposed as early as in 400 BC.
This is no surprise that for many who are bewildered at modern hospitals discovering nothing abnormal through the plethora of their lab test reports despite having all the clinical features, Ayurveda comes as a respite. Medical literature is full of individual reports where people have been offered cure through simple Ayurvedic interventions for the conditions where state of the art medical care was of not much help. During this pandemic also such examples have been extant.
The Missing Link
Now, looking at both of these narrations, we still find something missing. Despite its high stakes, the modern medical science fails to respond adequately. Similarly, due to its generically corrective approach, Ayurveda too fails to respond to situations not fitting into its own set of understanding. To put it in a simpler language, in a larger perspective, both are lost either in complexity or in simplicity of their approaches.
An ideal situation would have been the embracing of technology-driven, simpler and effective solutions from modern health care and experience-driven, time tested, and selective approaches from Ayurveda for the common good.
Embracing technology in Ayurveda had always been advocated by its seers all through its evolutionary journey. Contrary to the conventional belief, Ayurveda actually had strong experimental foundations leading to its theories and approaches related to disease and health. Unfortunately, Ayurveda lost the momentum of its technology drive during the unfavourable ages of the past few centuries. This receded momentum eventually created a limbo between the precepts of exceptionally growing new age science and Ayurveda, which remained frozen as it was at the beginning of the millennia.
Meeting of Ancient and Modern Worlds
The current pandemic has shown the global health care system a real picture of its strengths and weaknesses. This seems to be the right time for Ayurveda to reckon upon the leads from science and technology that were missed though the dark ages and to mark a new beginning, duly embraced with current age technology. Bridging the gap between science and Ayurveda, without compromising the real wisdom of the latter and without simply paying obeisance to the glittering new age technologies, is a real challenging task. This means there shall be a selective reuptake of technology only to serve the purpose of better understanding of its own tenets. Technology should be poised to serve the masses without any time lag and without any imprecision.
One clear example of adoption of technology during the ongoing pandemic is the use of information technology and telecommunication methods to reach out to patients, students and colleagues. For the purpose of medical consultation, classroom teaching, continuing medical education programs and brainstorming, telecommunication methods were aptly adopted by almost every Ayurveda institution in the country. Mobile app-based health care solutions enabling the patients to remain in touch with the physicians when a physical consultation was neither possible nor advisable have come as a great rescue. The app was also used to collect data about people who had used various Ayurveda modalities as a method to safeguard against the pandemic.
Beyond The Pandemic
Use of technology in Ayurveda, however, has a sustained application well beyond the pandemic. It has its application in almost every domain, which had earlier been performed by individuals. From growing the crops of medicinal value and their harvesting till the final production of goods with desired quality may have huge technology application. Contrary to conventional belief that technology can only give generic answers, it can also be used efficiently for personalisation of medicine. Imagine a day when people may be identified precisely for their genomic specifications and its regulatory settings during the healthy state. It is now understood that epigenetic up and down regulation of the genes plays a crucial role in pathogenesis and recovery. Seeing the normal pattern of gene functioning in a healthy individual and comparing it during the abnormal state may give an easy and dependable clue to create a homeostasis. Gut microbiota has recently been found to play a crucial role in sustaining health. Gut microbiome of every individual is so unique that it can be used as an individual signature. This is also largely recognised that in almost every pathology, gut microbiome spectrum changes in a patterned way to work as a reliable indicator of upcoming disease. Ayurveda percept that every disease generates through gut (rogah sarve api mandeagnau sutaram udarani ca) therefore may have a strong correlation with gut dysbiosis and strongly puts the Ayurvedic conceptualisation of correcting the ‘Agni’ (metabolic fire) in every disease, to eventually regulate the gut microbiome.
Ayurvedic dietary recommendations of pathya and apathya may also be seen in similar light as food is the most important determinant of gut microbiome regulation. With the help of appropriate technologies, such concepts of Ayurveda may see the light of day by bringing them down to real practice.
While adopting the technology for advancing Ayurveda, a few cautions will have to be kept in mind. Firstly, introduction of technology should not increase the cost of the management unreasonably. This may come as a predictable barrier to the adoption of technology in Ayurveda if it raises the complexity and the cost of the intervention, making it unaffordable.
Secondly, it should not dilute the original wisdom of Ayurveda unless the outcomes of technology-based applications have proven patient-sided advantages over the conventional approaches.
The reconnect between Ayurveda and technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond needs to be dreamt liberally, visualised passionately and executed zealously. Some extra efforts will be needed to set the ball rolling and to break the inertia of past centuries. A whole new world of Ayurveda is still waiting to be explored through the eyes of science and technology.
* The writer is Head, PG Dept of Kaya Chikitsa, State Ayurvedic College, Lucknow, and former Director, Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth (National Academy of Ayurveda), Ministry of AYUSH, New Delhi. He has edited three bestselling books on Ayurveda, including ‘Ayurvedic Science of Food and Nutrition’ (Springer Nature, NY)
