Different System of Medicine and OurHealth

Dr.V.N. Jindal Dean, Goa Medical College, Bambolim, Goa India

Speech on June 28.

Good morning friends, first of all I will like to complimentInternational Centre Goa, and Taleigao Chess Academy for organizing this meet. The topic isvery relevant and interesting ‘Different Systems of Medicines & our Health’. In fact, I mustsay, we are very fortunate that in our country so many different systems ofmedicines.

You will know that ourAuryveda system is many thousand years old, infect Allopathy started much later,and we in addition to Allopathy, Ayurvedawe have homeopathy Unani and Yoga and what not. Yoga is again given to theworld by our country. But, in all this systems it is unfortunate that not inthe mind of public, but also in the minds of practitioners of different systemsof medicines, there is a feeling that all this systems are antagonistic to eachother. While my personal opinion is that most of all these systems arecompliment to each other. They are not antagonistic to each other because basicallythe aim of any system of medicine is to put a person at ease. What is diseaseis that one is not at ease.

WHO widen a definition health now, not in extent of disease butpositive aspects of health which Dr.Hegde already spoken to and need not commenton that, so my strong belief is that all the system are complimentary and arenot antagonistic, however having said that we must ??? that all the systems hasevolved over a long period of time like I said Ayurveda is many thousand yearold Allopathy may be about two thousand year old Dr. Kothe said the Homepathyis two hundred years old, so over all the period of time all the systems haveevolved, now why they were evolving each systems has got certain strength andcertain weaknesses, so I think that it is very very important that we mustanalyse what is a strength of each system and what are the weaknesses of eachsystem, so that we can peek up the strong point of each system, and then followthe system which suits us most, now in that glide, because I am practitioner ofallopathic system, I am not qualify to speak much on Ayurveda, homeopathy etc. Iwill like to tell you what are the strength or what are merits and what arede-merits of allopathy.

Now traditionally you always starts with merits of system I willdo it reverse I will start with weaknesses of our system, that is modern system we call it or a system of Allopathy, firstof all I must confess that the biggest weakness of Allopathy is as side effects of medicines, while mostof our traditional indigenous system of medicine and Dr.Kothe is there he willagree with that the homeopathy system will not do any harm if not good, but Allopathycan do harm instead of doing the good, reason for that is unlike homeopathy, Ayurvedaetc most of our medicines are synthetic medicines, they are not from the plant regionor not the herbal medicines, so why they are very strong they can take care ofmany problems but at the same practically I must say each medicine have gotinherent side effects so you are practicallyway between the benefits and the side effects, so that is one of the weaknessesof our system that is Allopathy.

Second problem with our system of Allopathy is unlike Homeopathy unlike Ayurveda wenever had a holistic approach to the disease what we had to do is if patientcomes to us with throat infection we use to treat his throat infection, if cometo pain in a knee we use to treat his knee pain, we use to take a patient as awhole, of course of late the things have started changing, we have learnt fromHomeapathy we have learnt from Ayurveda that the holistic approach have broughtlots of benefits and slowly we are moving towards the holistic approach in Allopathyalso.

Third think the weakness of Allopathy is that we have a so much obsessed in treating the people fromthe disease that we over looked the positive aspect of health , of courseof late again now we are putting lot of stress on nutrition on mental healthand other thing which is still recently we never gave importance.

Last thing which I fill is very big set back of our systemof medicine is that it is veryexpensive. It is very very expensive ascompare to all other systems medicine, so in our country I think that is abig weakness of our system.

But having said thet having numerated weaknesses of system ofmedicine, we do have many merits, we do have many strong points and that isevidence of mushrooming medical colleges, mushrooming hospitals and clinics. Sowhat are the strong points let me take few minutes to enumerate what are thestrong points of our system of medicine.

The strongest point of our system of medicine is that this is an evidence base system, I mean probably no other system of medicine hassuch a strong evidence based medicine as we have, now you all know that the clinicaltrial for drugs or procedures are sostringent that to bring out a new medicine a new drug it take it takes, why ittakes ten years because there trials it takes to different levels, unless theregulatory authority absolutely sure that the drug will not cause any harm itwill not be marketed, we had a very bad experience few years back for you mightbe knowing that leodomight drug was introduced it caused lot of problems whenit was given to pregnant the children was born without their limb, so from thatwe learnt that no medicine should come to market unless it effective and safetyto beyond dought so that is very strong point of our system of medicine.

Second is reproducibilitywe have because of our system research that is we can test it in laboratoryso drugs are reproducible and the drugs etc everything is standardized. Now theproblem with Ayurveda that they do not has standardized drugs, of course nowthey are moving in that direction and I am sure that will defiantly help them.

So having enumerated strong points of our medicine andweaknesses of medical system I personally fill, we should make a decision, weshould not start condemning one particular system or medicine, we should notcriticize particular system of medicine.We must see which system is good for what purpose, now I will give you anexample all of you know that surgery is our strongest point, no other system ofmedicine has the system of surgery that we have in our Allopathy. Now no body else can matters as far as trauma isconcern, suppose tomorrow Mr.x has an accident had an clot in a brain, no othersystem can take care of that patientexcept Allopathic system of medicine. So that is our very strong point,similarly all acute problems we have a very strong point, now no body have theguts to any other system of medicine if a patient have got a acute heartattack, they have to come to use the reason for that again saying that our isevidence based system of medicine, but at same time I personally feel we have noanswer to the chronic problems, now the chronic problems are very importanttoday because we have almost conquered the infective diseases and we are moving towards what known as an conmenparlance the lifestyle diseases and thislifelessly diseases are chronic diseases like Dr. Hegde, and Dr. Kothe said ahypertension, diabetes, stress all these are lifestyle disease and they are onthe rise, and these are for which we do not has answer, we treat themsymptomatically.

Patient comes to use with stress we give them anty depression,though we try in to the depth of finding the cause but it is not as good aswhat Dr. Hegde, Dr. Kothe does, so this is weakness.

Firstly I believe that we should find out what are the strongpoints of each system and what are the demerits of each system and then advisea strategy as to which patient should go where. In fact some of you know eventhe government of India has taken the cognize in this aspects. Thereare new scheme I will not say very new but ultimately new scheme have startedby AYUSH even at primary health centre level, they are employing, earlier they use to do in with Allopathy doctor,now you have Allopathic doctor, Ayurvedic doctor, Homeapatic doctor so othersystem of medicines also, so the aim is to give wider choice to the people, asper a patient is suffering lifestyle disease or a chronic disease he/she has achoice to go to the alternate medical system other then coming to the Allopathicsystem of medicine and at the end I will like to say that in allopathic systemhas a very strong laboratories were lot of research can be done I think variousmedical system can join hands together and we can extend the helping to Ayurvedato Homeopathy and we can also look into their system of medicine and try toconvert it as evidence based medicine like to give an example that in fact Iwas talking last year to Dr.Kothe like in case of AIDS we don’t have treatmenttoday probably they will have the answer because basically what you want is tostrengthen the immune system in the body.

So, in fact I have offered in case you want to do any trial withyour medication we can help in the sense we can find out particular time oftreatment weather the immune system of the person we have those facilities, so we have everywilling to extend this facilities to other system of medicine, so I think weshould all live in harmony, instead of criticizing each other we should peek up the strong points of each system ofmedicine, basically the aim is to help person who is suffering or even helpordinary who is healthy to make him further more healthy as Dr. Hegede said notonly physically and mentally but also spiritually with this words once I willlike to thank to organizers for giving me this opportunity to interact with you.Thank you very much.