Ayurveda

Ayurveda is a complementary and alternative medical practise that has been practised on the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years. Both the theory and the practise of Ayurveda might be categorised as pseudoscience. Around eighty percent of the people in India and Nepal have reported taking some form of ayurvedic medicine at some point in their lives.

Over the course of more than two millennia, Ayurvedic treatment methods have diversified and progressed. Herbal medications, specific diets, meditation, yoga, massage, laxatives, enemas, and medicinal oils are all examples of different types of therapies. Traditionally, Ayurvedic remedies are composed of a wide variety of complex plant components, mineral substances, and metal elements (perhaps under the influence of early Indian alchemy or rasashastra). Ayurvedic books from the past also included instructions on surgical procedures, such as rhinoplasty, the removal of kidney stones and other foreign objects, suturing, and extraction of wounds.

The primary books that comprise the classical body of Ayurveda start off by describing how medical knowledge was passed down from the gods to the sages, and then finally to human physicians. Printed copies of the Sushruta Samhita, also known as Sushruta's Compendium, present the book as the teachings of Dhanvantari, the Hindu deity of Ayurveda, who was incarnated as King Divoda of Varanasi, to a group of physicians, including Sushruta. Sushruta was one of these physicians. However, the earliest versions of the book do not include this frame, and instead attribute the work to King Divodas himself. Ayurveda has been converted for Western consumption, most notably by Baba Hari Dass in the 1970s and Maharishi Ayurveda in the 1980s. This adaptation occurred as a result of well-understood processes of modernization and globalisation. Beginning in the middle of the first millennium BCE and continuing onward, archaeological evidence of Ayurvedic literature, vocabulary, and ideas may be found.

Ayurvedic literature place a strong emphasis on maintaining a good balance of the Doshas, and they assert that it is harmful and can even cause sickness to repress one's natural desires. In Ayurvedic treatises, the three elemental doshas known as vata, pitta, and kapha are discussed. According to these treatises, health is achieved when the doshas are in a condition of equilibrium (Skt. smyatva), whereas sickness is the outcome of an imbalance (viamatva). Ayurveda treatises split medicine into eight canonical components. At the beginning of the common period, practitioners of Ayurveda had already devised a variety of medicinal concoctions and surgical treatments.

There is little data to support claims that Ayurveda may successfully treat or cure cancer. It has been discovered that several Ayurvedic remedies include lead, mercury, and arsenic; these are all elements that are known to be hazardous to human health. According to the findings of a research that was conducted in 2008, the three chemicals were included in around 21 percent of the patent Ayurvedic medications that were made in the United States and India and were marketed over the internet. It is yet unknown what effects such metallic pollutants may have on public health in India.