Ayurvedic Medicine Explained
A practitioner's overview of Ayurveda as a complete system of medicine — prevention, herbology, and purification — and how the three actually fit together in modern clinical practice.
One of the beautiful things about Ayurvedic medicine is that it is a full system of health. There are eight branches of medicine in Ayurveda, and all of them are still practiced today by Ayurvedic practitioners in India. The branches were detailed in the Vedas, including an entire book — the Sushruta Samhita — dedicated to surgery. Many say that modern plastic surgery derived from an Ayurvedic surgeon who developed skin grafting over 5,000 years ago. My particular specialties are internal medicine and psychiatry. Sattva Vijaya Chikitsa, the psycho-spiritual aspect of mental health, translates to “the study of the liberation of the mind,” which I always say sounds more uplifting than Ayurvedic psychotherapy.
When we talk about treatment in Ayurvedic medicine, we are really talking about breaking it down into three components.
Prevention, maintenance, and treating disease (Swasthyarakshan)
First, there is prevention and maintaining health. This is the most important aspect when it comes to supporting a healthy lifestyle, and the focus of my book Ayurveda: Breaking the Rules Without Breaking the Principles. Prevention starts with learning your dosha or mind/body type, so you know the right foods to consume for balancing the digestive fire (agni). This component also involves establishing effective daily routines — yoga asanas, breathwork (pranayama), meditation, self-oil massage, and proper sleep — to maintain homeostasis of your constitution.
Those who are not in balance may need help to get to the prevention stage, and that is where we move into the management of disease. Ayurveda treats disease in two major ways: herbology (dravya guna) and purification (panchakarma).
Ayurvedic herbology (Dravya Guna)
In Ayurveda, curing is seen through herbal therapies and substances (dravya guna), the branch most similar to modern pharmacology. The Charaka Samhita Sutrasthana has this to say about Ayurvedic herbology:
“There is nothing in the world which does not have therapeutic utility when applied in appropriate conditions and situations.”
Medicinal substances are classified according to 50 groups with different physiological actions. In Ayurvedic herbology texts, each plant is labeled with its taste (rasa), quality (virya), and post-digestive effect (vipaka), and it can have several different curing actions on the body. A single plant could be obstructing, carminative, antihaemorrhoidal, diaphoretic, expectorant, purgative, nourishing, antiemetic, scraping, antiparasitic, intoxicating, moisturizing, tonifying, digestive, laxative, antispasmodic, blood-building, blood-cleansing, aphrodisiac, or emetic — to name just a few. An Ayurvedic herbalist would prepare these ingredients as fresh juice, paste, powder, decoction, infusion, jam, medicated wine or tincture, pill, medicated ghee or oil, or administer them via smoke therapy.
Purification (Panchakarma)
Finally, there is purification. Seasonal cleansing is helpful to reset the body as it moves through the seasons, removing ama (toxins) through processes like amapachana, purvakarma, and panchakarma. These practices help with deep-seated disorders or a buildup of ama in the body that needs to be released.
Various cultures use cleansing and purification methods to rejuvenate physical, emotional, and spiritual health — Ayurveda’s panchakarma protocols, Traditional Asian Medicine’s practices of cupping and scraping, and Native American sweat lodges and fasting ceremonies, to name a few.
Ayurveda recommends cleansing between the seasons. Pathogens — whether environmental or internal — can accumulate and need to be gently removed or corrected. Natural pathways can become obstructed (like buildup of plaque in the arteries), inflammation can perpetuate (like autoimmune disorders), or toxins can build in the body (like the increase of free radicals in the cells). One of the more well-known Ayurvedic purification techniques is panchakarma, which means “five actions” — five ways to purify the body:
- Nasya — nasal therapy
- Vamana — medical emesis
- Basti — enema
- Virechan — purgation
- Rakta Moksha — blood letting
People often mistake this process as a luxurious treatment with lots of oil massage (snehan) and herbal steam therapies (svedana), but these five actions are not intended to make the body feel good. The purpose of the treatments is to prepare the body for another bout of elimination to release the buildup of ama or deep-seated disorders. In traditional Ayurvedic practice, the process is repeated for a minimum of seven days, though panchakarma can also last for 14 or 21 days. In modern practice, you can also find three- or five-day panchakarma sessions.
These types of cleanses are targeted and should not be administered without a proper understanding of the patient’s pathology, so I recommend consulting with a provider before simply engaging in a cleanse. Everyone is so different, and I sometimes tell a patient they are not eligible for a cleanse. The reasons can be anything from a compromised immune system to low body mass or weight. In those cases, I recommend beginning with rasayanas — techniques or therapies that add to the body instead of breaking it down. And since cleansing involves movement within the channels of the body, the quality of vata can increase and cause physical and emotional instability if not performed correctly.
Many people think cleansing will aid in weight loss, and although that may be a side effect through changing the metabolism, it is generally not the main objective. Only a healthy diet and lifestyle will be an effective and lasting way to lose weight. If you feel uncomfortable with the idea of doing a cleanse, that’s okay. As long as you are taking preventative measures in diet and lifestyle — eating whole foods, staying active, and having a good mental health practice that keeps the mind growing and at peace — your body will naturally trigger itself back into balance.
As Hippocrates famously said, “The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food.”