EVEN as modern medical sciencesgrow by leaps and bounds andthe world awaits a genetic revolutionthat Could give humans the powerto play God, traditional diets andmedical systems of Asia are making aspecial niche for themselves - and that,too, in the Mecca of modern medicine,the US.
Ever since Mahesh Yogi decided todivest yoga of its spirituality and give theAmericans a taste of his transcendentalmeditation, medical interest has grownto a point that a new discipline calledMind Body Medicine has emerged(Down To Earth, Vol 3, No 23), which ismore jargonistically called PNI, for psychoneurommunology. Now even theprestigious Harvard Medical School hasa Mind/Body Medical Institute. And itrecently organised a conference inwhich 200 medicos rubbed shoulderswith a variety of healers from theBuddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu andother traditions. Yoga and spiritualhealing are placebos no longer. Now,controlled scientific studies have shownthat techniques like meditation can helpin curing depression, anxiety, highblood pressure, cardiac pain, insomnia,diabetes, ulcers, cold, fever, asthma,arthritis and alcoholism.
And, of course, quick to latch on toprayer, meditation and relaxation techniques are the cost-conscious, newhealth insurance agencies, called HealthMaintenance Organisations (HMOS),which try to keep medical costs down.They are readily pushing patients tothese techniques. One clinical studyshowed that when patients supplemented their high blood pressure drugswith relaxation techniques, they wereable to reduce or eliminate their use ofdrugs while significantly reducing theirblood pressure. The HMOs saved US$1,300 per patient over the five-yearcourse of treatment.
And now, that Vatican of medicalresearch, the National Institutes ofHealth (NIH), which, with its us $12 billion annual budget, funds almost allmedical research in USA, has also spokenin favour of all this erstwhile mumbo-jumbo. One of its independent panelsrecently concluded: "Integrating behaviour at and relaxation therapies withconventional medical treatment isimperative for successfully managingthese conditions." The human touch ofthe healer, meditation or prayer maynot do much to mend broken bones orcontrol infection but, the NIH panel said,they do seem to affect diseases that havea psychological component or thosethat can be helped by changes in theheart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension and so on.
The Harvard conference got a modern scientific treat from neuroscientistStephen Kosslyn, who presented PET(Positron Emission Tomography) brainscans of subjects who were asked toclose their eyes, as in yoga, and imagineneutral images (like a sofa) or aversiveimages (like the bruised face of a battered woman). The latter imagesseemed to activate a region of the braincalled insula more than the neutralimages. Studies in animals have shownthat stimulating the insula can changethe heart rate and blood pressure. Theinsula also has a large network of connections with the limbic area in thebrain's centre, which is associated withstrong emotions, plus a bundle of connections with the stomach andintestines through the vagus nerves,which is how ulcers may be created andwhich may also explain how meditationcan reduce ulcer pain.
Apart from the brain, good old Asiais also making its way into the minds ofUS scientists through the stomach. withthe growing recognition that the traditional us diet may have been quite a badthing and could have been one cause ofthe cancer epidemic in the country, USdiet scientists have been eyeing othernations' plates. In t992, the us department of agriculture, which used to construct the US Food Guide Pyramid, heralded in the Mediterranean Diet,emphasising grains, veggies and fruits,with reduced emphasis on dairy products, meats, oil, fats and sugar, but without saying much against meats.
But the same guys - the HarvardUniversity School of Public Health andthe Oldways Preservation and ExchangeTrust - joined by the CornellUniversity, have now come up with theTraditional Healthy Asian Pyramid,with liberal helpings from diets of smallChinese villages and Japanese coastalseaports; traditional Indian diet is stillnot 'in'. Surveys show that the Asiancontinent has a lower rate of chronicdiseases and heart diseases. And Asiandietary practices emphasise even lessmeat and dairy products than the latestUS recommendations. A nutritional biochemist of Cornell University,who has worked on Asian diets, has predicted that replacement of animal-basedfood with plant-based food could resultin a 80-90 per cent reduction in cancerin the US. A Washington Postarticle concludes: "Move over pasta, here comesrice."
And, lo and behold, the new DietaryGuidelines for Americans issued by theUS government in early January have puteven greater stress on vegetarianism.And simultaneously, the state ofWashington has opened the country'sfirst government-subsidised naturalhealth clinic in Seattle where patientscan avail the benefits of acupuncture,yoga lessons and garlic pills. After theexport of so many doctors to USA,Indian vaids (practitioners of traditionalmedicine) may jubilate, because thismay be their great chance to migratenext- Mahesh Yogi has definitely lefta mark.