[Thread] Do you believe in Ayurveda, Homeopathy or other alternate medical systems?
Recently, read about Heavy Metal Toxicity from Ayurvedic formulations. Many over the counter Ayurvedic* formulations have been found to contain heavy metals like Arsenic, Lead, Mercury etc.
Furthermore, lack of scientific validation is a little concerning. There is also a pressing problem of lack of standardization in prescriptions where multiple doctors might recommend different strengths of dosages.
It also does not help that practitioners are extremely resistant to change. One might think that with passage of time we learn more about compounds and their interactions with the human body. Then, shouldn't any field of medicine improve over time as a function of that?
These medical systems have a long history and deep cultural roots, which can sometimes lead to resistance to change or adaptation in the face of new scientific evidence or medical advances.
On the other hand, I find several merits in the Ayurvedic approach. The holistic approach is actually a great way to look at general wellness of the body, essentially how several systems interact with each other, which is sometimes missing in the reductionist approach of modern medicine.
Also, focus on prevention of diseases is another merit. Finally, natural remedies are easily accessible to people and being generally non-invasive in nature is a strong point in it's favour especially in a country like India where access to healthcare has been difficult for many.
What do you all think?
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Most of Ayurveda has no modern scientific backing meaning it's up to the consumer to trust its effectiveness.
Meanwhile Homeopathy is a fucking scam. Stay away from that shit. It's a prime example of the placebo effect.
Ayurveda used to be scientific, it just isn't anymore because medical science studied anatomy on cadavers and understanding in molecular biology helped in better pharmaceuticals. Modern medicines are carefully crafted and they even know the exact composition, its localised effects in body and have a recommended dosage.
Ayurveda on the other hand disregards everything modern science has found, and favours the age old texts. Any questioning is treated sort of like blasphemy and has logical fallacies everywhere. Its very foundation based on the tridosha model is pseudoscience (vata, pitta and kapha imbalances are very much similar to allopathy's humours concept) and have been disproven. Assuming the best case scenario, they know what works, but they don't know why that works. Their explanation is flawed. The same is the case with their understanding of anatomy as well. There are many critiques who have critiqued the concepts of ashta chakra nadi kendra.
What's concerning is there has been complete disregard by the practitioners and there is not even a single peer reviewed paper explaining either the efficacy nor why the criticism is invalid in a reputed journal. Everything that is published is done with no clinical tests or pilot tests with very small sample size without any randomisation and accounting for placebo, that too in predatory journals.
Now comes Homeopathy. The only reason it survives is blind trust by patients just because they say that it has no side effects. I do respect Samuel Hahnemann for what he wanted to do in 18th century was right, but he failed to follow the scientific method and established false postulates which can be questioned with just common sense. The hatred towards Allopathy (it's not modern evidence based medicine, but it is Europe's equivalent of India's Ayurveda) made people go with it, because Hahnemann did provide good mental relief because he used to spend lot of time talking with patients. But today, it is a pretty big scam.