EVEN as modern medical sciences
grow by leaps and bounds and
the world awaits a genetic revolution
that Could give humans the power
to play God, traditional diets and
medical systems of Asia are making a
special niche for themselves - and that,
too, in the Mecca of modern medicine,
the US.
Ever since Mahesh Yogi decided to
divest yoga of its spirituality and give the
Americans a taste of his transcendental
meditation, medical interest has grown
to a point that a new discipline called
Mind Body Medicine has emerged
(Down To Earth, Vol 3, No 23), which is
more jargonistically called PNI, for psychoneurommunology. Now even the
prestigious Harvard Medical School has
a Mind/Body Medical Institute. And it
recently organised a conference in
which 200 medicos rubbed shoulders
with a variety of healers from the
Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and
other traditions. Yoga and spiritual
healing are placebos no longer. Now,
controlled scientific studies have shown
that techniques like meditation can help
in curing depression, anxiety, high
blood pressure, cardiac pain, insomnia,
diabetes, ulcers, cold, fever, asthma,
arthritis and alcoholism.
And, of course, quick to latch on to
prayer, meditation and relaxation techniques are the cost-conscious, new
health insurance agencies, called Health
Maintenance Organisations (HMOS),
which try to keep medical costs down.
They are readily pushing patients to
these techniques. One clinical study
showed that when patients supplemented their high blood pressure drugs
with relaxation techniques, they were
able to reduce or eliminate their use of
drugs while significantly reducing their
blood pressure. The HMOs saved US
$1,300 per patient over the five-year
course of treatment.
And now, that Vatican of medical
research, the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), which, with its us $12 billion annual budget, funds almost all
medical research in USA, has also spoken
in favour of all this erstwhile mumbo-jumbo. One of its independent panels
recently concluded: "Integrating behaviour at and relaxation therapies with
conventional medical treatment is
imperative for successfully managing
these conditions." The human touch of
the healer, meditation or prayer may
not do much to mend broken bones or
control infection but, the NIH panel said,
they do seem to affect diseases that have
a psychological component or those
that can be helped by changes in the
heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension and so on.
The Harvard conference got a modern scientific treat from neuroscientist
Stephen Kosslyn, who presented PET
(Positron Emission Tomography) brain
scans of subjects who were asked to
close their eyes, as in yoga, and imagine
neutral images (like a sofa) or aversive
images (like the bruised face of a battered woman). The latter images
seemed to activate a region of the brain
called insula more than the neutral
images. Studies in animals have shown
that stimulating the insula can change
the heart rate and blood pressure. The
insula also has a large network of connections with the limbic area in the
brain's centre, which is associated with
strong emotions, plus a bundle of connections with the stomach and
intestines through the vagus nerves,
which is how ulcers may be created and
which may also explain how meditation
can reduce ulcer pain.
Apart from the brain, good old Asia
is also making its way into the minds of
US scientists through the stomach. with
the growing recognition that the traditional us diet may have been quite a bad
thing and could have been one cause of
the cancer epidemic in the country, US
diet scientists have been eyeing other
nations' 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 Harvard
University School of Public Health and
the Oldways Preservation and Exchange
Trust - joined by the Cornell
University, have now come up with the
Traditional Healthy Asian Pyramid,
with liberal helpings from diets of small
Chinese villages and Japanese coastal
seaports; traditional Indian diet is still
not 'in'. Surveys show that the Asian
continent has a lower rate of chronic
diseases and heart diseases. And Asian
dietary practices emphasise even less
meat and dairy products than the latest
US recommendations. A nutritional biochemist of Cornell University,
who has worked on Asian diets, has predicted that replacement of animal-based
food with plant-based food could result
in a 80-90 per cent reduction in cancer
in the US. A Washington Postarticle concludes: "Move over pasta, here comes
rice."
And, lo and behold, the new Dietary
Guidelines for Americans issued by the
US government in early January have put
even greater stress on vegetarianism.
And simultaneously, the state of
Washington has opened the country's
first government-subsidised natural
health clinic in Seattle where patients
can avail the benefits of acupuncture,
yoga lessons and garlic pills. After the
export of so many doctors to USA,
Indian vaids (practitioners of traditional
medicine) may jubilate, because this
may be their great chance to migrate
next- Mahesh Yogi has definitely left
a mark.
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