What happens when the 5000 year old wisdom of Ayurveda meets the science of modern western medicine?  Could this redefine healthcare as we know it?

Medicine today faces many challenges, amongst others the mounting burden of Non-Communicable Diseases and the NHS’s financial strain from managing chronic illness.

And it is on the rise. The current prediction for the number of people in England living with a chronic illness is a staggering 1 in 5 (around 9.1 million) of the adult population (approx 9.1 million) by 2040. 

This alone has been one of the biggest drivers to initiatives like our student choice placements for medical students and our master’s Level 7 Diploma programme. One of our missions at NCIM is to educate healthcare professionals to have tools in their tool box to navigate an ageing population who are becoming more and more out of touch with their own health.

One of the reasons we decided to include Ayurveda within the range of integrative approaches included in the NCIM master’s programme, was because the principles of Ayurveda encompass the spectrum from preventative to curative medicine which is the ethos of Integrative Medicine. Ayurveda is a sanskrit word which when literally translated means the ‘science of life’- (ayush means ‘life’ and veda means ‘science-knowledge’).

I don’t see Ayurveda as ‘alternative’ medicine. I see it as whole system approach increasingly informed by science and a traditional medicine with a framework for integrative and preventative care with insights into health and wellbeing.

In dismissing Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM) we can forget that our modern-day knowledge is based on all the generations of traditional medicine which have preceded us. Look at Ulmaria filipendula, a rose, which formed the basis for aspirin, the anti-malarial drug artemisinin derived from wormwood, and digoxin a heart medication which comes from the foxglove plant. Our medical knowledge has always been based on the knowledge of some form of traditional medicine.

And increasingly modern research is backing up the concepts of Ayurveda, with plants like Ashwaganda and the ability to build resilience through adaptogens and gut health, circadian rhythm, and stress management all of which Ayurveda had a concept of thousands of years ago.

Despite it being the longest continually practiced medical system in the world and being over 5000 years old, the principles of Ayurveda still make sense for healthcare today.

It includes not only components of modern medicine like pharmacy and nutrition to help treat a patient, but pulls together perhaps less conventional aspects that we might not necessarily associate with healthcare including philosophy, mythology and yoga. Because Ayurveda believes that our spiritual health is just as important as our physical – holistic in the truest sense of the word.

Ayurveda’s core values also concentrate heavily on preventative health, daily routine and individual constitution. And this aligns perfectly with the future of personalised medicine and moves beyond the ‘one size fits all’ perspective which conventional medicine can sometimes concentrate on.

The focus of Ayurveda is very much on prevention of disease and optimising our health potential as much as getting rid of disease. And integral to Ayurveda is the belief that everything is interconnected, not just within our own bodies. We are all connected to each other, to nature and to the world at large.

As healthcare shifts towards a more proactive, individualised model, is it time we looked back to Ayurveda for inspiration and wisdom? Could this redefine healthcare as we know it?