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Ayurveda - Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D. |
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Ayurveda
by Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D
Having practiced integrative psychiatry for over 25 years, my radar is always on the alert for natural solutions that ease discomfort and promote good health. When I find an exceptional herbal supplement that’s well-researched and free of side effects, I promote it through my books and public appearances and I recommend it to my patients. In 1997 I became aware of the profound calming effect of Hypericum (St.-John’s.-wort), originally recommended by Hippocrates for “nervous unrest” and used by physicians in Europe for hundreds of years as the anti-anxiety medicine of choice. Two years later, I discovered Kava (Piper methysticum), the natural tranquilizer of the South Pacific that improves mental functioning rather than suppressing it as synthetic tranquilizers do. These and other herbs, which I discuss in my book Healing Anxiety with Herbs, offer great promise in helping Americans deal with the challenge of anxiety without having to deal with the side effects and possible addictions of pharmaceuticals.
Today some ancient Ayurvedic formulas bring encouraging news for a health-conscious society frustrated by the costs, side effects and constraints of our modern healthcare system. Newly rediscovered complex herbal compounds offer the most promising benefits to date for neutralizing the effect of free radicals. I predict these compounds will become the herbal superstars of the millennium. Unlike modern herbal cocktails, these recipes come directly from the ancient classical texts of Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old system of natural health care.
The original “medicine cabinet” of ayurveda contained a host of life-giving formulas targeted to specific areas of health that, not surprisingly, remind us of today’s most popular supplements—vitality, memory, concentration, immunity, allergies, restful sleep, digestion, detoxification, menopause, joints and muscles, prostate and anxiety. Among these remedies is “Amrit,” the queen of all supplements, the “nectar of immortality” that promotes long, healthy life.
Now after years of research, these rediscovered formulas stand as champions among comparative antioxidant studies for their ability to neutralize free radicals, the greatest single threat to human health.
In recent years it has become common knowledge that controlling free radicals is the key to prevention and manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and herbal compounds have been promoting a wide spectrum of antioxidants, the free-radical scavengers. Technically, free radicals are molecules or atoms that are unstable due to unpaired electrons. While highly volatile, these particles are a normal part of the scenery of oxygen-based life, exhibiting their handiwork in rusted metal and spoiled food. In a healthy immune system, neutralizing these antagonists is a routine task but a mounting number of free-radical generators—such as pollution, pesticides, industrial chemicals, processed foods, cigarette smoke, alcohol and especially stress—raise their population to dangerous numbers. Left unchecked, free radicals can cripple our health. They impair the body’s flexibility and efficiency. They damage cell walls and DNA. They close arteries and they accelerate the aging process. That’s the bad news. The good news is that by controlling the free radical population we should be able to slow the aging process and according to some researchers, prevent up to 80 percent of degenerative disease. Research on Ayurvedic herbal formulas suggests that although free radicals are a recent discovery, their most powerful antidotes may come from an age-old system of healthcare.
THE NEXT GENERATION OF HERBAL SUPER ANTIOXIDANTS
Hari Sharma is professor emeritus and former director of cancer prevention and natural products research at Ohio State University College of Medicine. Today he is a renowned researcher on the health care benefits of ayurvedic herbal food supplements. About 10 years ago Dr. Sharma was introduced to these unusual compounds of ancient origin. To a medical doctor and scientist, the compounds, especially Amrit, were intriguing but offered no objective context. Sharma began investigating Amrit to see if its power would translate into modern terms. After 10 years of research he has seen evidence that this formula offers great hope for preventing disease. His findings show Amrit to be up to 1000 times more powerful in antioxidant properties than vitamins C, E and even the pharmaceutical probucol. Its antioxidant properties inhibit degenerative processes, including the growth of cancer cells and tumors, abnormal platelet aggregation (clotting, leading to cardiovascular disease), the aging process, depression, inflammation and pain. To date Amrit has not been found to produce negative side effects.
These findings inspired Sharma to confer the name “herbal super antioxidant.”
Dr. Sharma’s research and its implications for healthcare were published in his book Freedom from Disease (Veda Publishing, Toronto, Canada, 1993), as well as in peer-reviewed journals including Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Personality and Individual Differences, Complementary Medicine International, and the International Journal of Psychosomatics.
The latest research from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences—India’s Harvard—shows the Amrit formula to be an ally of the chemotherapy patient. Patients experience less nausea and vomiting (22 percent less than controls) with a greater ability to tolerate treatments (17.5 percent more) and complete them. After 10 years Dr. Sharma is still qualifying the complex Ayurvedic compound with fascination.
“Plants hold the key to controlling free radicals,” says Sharma. “Plants thrive on sunlight and sunlight causes oxidation. To neutralize free radicals, plants have a built-in system that produces antioxidants. This phenomenon was understood in ancient times. The Ayurvedic physicians knew how to formulate specific herbal mixtures rich in antioxidants with a powerful synergistic effect on health and longevity. Now these formulas have resurfaced in their original form. I believe we are in the midst of a medical revolution, the type that occurs only once every hundred years.”
Rama Kant Mishra is a foremost expert in Ayurvedic health care and dermatology and a direct descendant of a long lineage of Raj Vaidyas, the physicians to the royal families of India. “Ayurvedic medicine is a model of exactitude,” says Dr. Mishra, “of precision without compromise. Just as modern science recognizes the exactness of the laws of physics, the vaidya knows that the rules for processing herbs are explicit. There are details for every facet—when to harvest the plants, how to harvest them, the importance of using the entire plant rather than isolated active ingredients, as in pharmaceuticals. Processing can involve as many as 250 steps. Many are time-intensive, like the delicate grinding that reduces each ingredient to the finest possible powder for easy assimilation. These procedures yield a powerful compound whose ingredients help each other move through the digestive system, arrive at the appropriate cells, penetrate the cell membrane and produce intracellular effects. There is no fast-food version. These authentic prescriptions capture nature’s intelligence, which can then be directly assimilated into the intelligence of the human body.
Mishra add, “Ayurveda is equally rigorous about synergy, combining specific herbs into complex formulas for greatest potency, assimilation and overall results. Single-ingredient formulas like vitamins or single herbs balance only one area of life while they un-balance others. This is what is known as side-effects. Vedic formulas use precise combinations that address the whole physiology, from cell to organ to body and mind. These rich compounds promote long, healthy life.”
INTEGRATING THE OLD WITH THE NEW
The tradition of Ayurveda and its formulas offer the perfect complement to integrative psychiatry. My goal in working with patients is to heal and uplift every aspect of their lives. For whatever reasons they come to counseling, I am dedicated to guiding them to a higher level of integration of body, mind, emotions and spirit. The approach of Ayurveda completely supports these goals.
Ayurveda, literally “the science of life,” is the great grandfather of all natural systems of medicine. It operates from the field of consciousness where total health originates. There it detects the first deviation and corrects it, long before it develops into disease. The Vedic texts describe the cause of disease as “pragya aparadha,” the mistake of the intellect.
This means that the individual identifies only with his or her own individuality without experiencing the unbounded field of consciousness that connects him to everything else. This creates discomfort, which breaks down the connection between the mind, body, organs, tissues and cells, and this translates into disorder.
This enormous vision of well-being may sound a little out of reach. But Ayurveda contains a wealth of prescriptions and regimens for re-establishing order and promoting higher consciousness. These include diet, daily routine, behavior, yoga and transcendental meditation. Among these powerful prescriptions is the science of “rasayana” (rah-SYE-a-nah) translated as “that which enters the essence.” Rasayanas are potent herbal medicines based on the technology of synergy, whose combinations yield more powerful and “intelligent” compounds than the sum of their herbal parts. Modern science calls these compounds “herbal super antioxidants.” But the action of a rasayana is much more far-reaching. It is capable of nourishing consciousness, the very root of life. Herbs are nature’s first aid kit.
Rasayanas are based on nature’s principle that for every part of the human physiology there exists an herbal synergy with a matching vibration. The matching rasayana resets the vibration in the cells and reminds them of their correct function—and order is restored.
This brief overview gives us a glimpse into the magnitude of Ayurveda, its life-giving formulas and its wide spectrum of techniques and therapies for achieving total health. This remarkable system is compatible with all forms of conventional medicine, which is why hundreds of western doctors have studied and incorporated it into their practices.
BREAKING THE HEALTH BARRIER IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
I feel most fortunate to have discovered ayurveda many years ago. Speaking for myself, my family and a number of my patients, I can say that following the principles of Ayurveda and using its potent herbal supplements have clearly raised the quality of our lives for vitality, good health and enjoyment. The Vedic definition of a healthy person stands as confirmation to its time-tested wisdom, “one whose physiology is integrated and balanced and whose body, mind and senses remain full of bliss.” In the year 2000 we find ourselves pretty far away from this description. But long-term health insurance studies indicate that people who reduce free radical damage through the integrated approach of Ayurveda and its synergistic formulas have 80 percent fewer incidents of hospital visits and surgery than the general population. I believe that disease-based healthcare belongs to the last millennium. Today the oldest knowledge holds the newest promise of freedom from suffering and disease. Ayurveda and its family of herbal super antioxidants give humanity great hope for an unprecedented standard of well-being for generations to come.
Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., is a Yale-trained psychiatrist and a respected leader in alternative medicine and integrative psychiatry. He is the author of the bestsellers Hypericum and Depression, How to Heal Depression, and his newest release, Making Peace with Your Past. For more than two decades, Dr. Bloomfield has been at the forefront of a number of worldwide self-help movements. His books have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into 24 languages. His work has been featured in every major media outlet, including “20/20,” “Oprah,” “Larry King Live,” “Good Morning America,” Time, the New York Times and People.
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