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“‘The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

VOLTAIRE

Voltaire knew this in 18th Century and even warned people but we reduced his thought process to a famous Quote on brainyquotes.com. The quote amused me a lot and not because I have a pickle with modern medicines rather I believe that too much of everything is bad. And, we have crossed that phase a long back. Let me tell you a story and then you can see what I am talking about.

A story-
While I was growing up, Modern Medicine was getting very big in India. The age old methods of Ayurveda, Hakim, Unani medicines and various other ancient Indian alternative medicine styles were slowly going out of fashion. I developed Asthma as a child and my parents were hell bend on finding a permanent cure. The Allopathic doctors told us that there is no cure for Asthma and taught me to just understand the symptoms and act quickly. But mom and dad wanted a cure so I did everything – took Ayurveda medicines for several months, ate disgusting powders as medicines by hakim, ate extremely disgusting smelling ghee by Kerala Ayurveda. The trick with all these forms of medicines was that I had to do this every day and avoid ice creams, cold drinks and all the other things kids love. Its big of “food choices”. Obviously I did not stick to any form and went back and forth between Allopathy and Ayurveda. At end my parents rested the case and I continued with inhalers and occasional drugs to avoid severe incidents and life became normal.
When I was taking rounds of all these different forms then a culture was often in front of me. It was people who were enjoying going to the doctors and taking many pills with their meals. It almost became a fashion to show off the number of medicines you were taking in a day – Victim mentality at its peak. But I understood that people love swallowing the medicines.
So medicines became a new normal. Visiting doctor for every ailment and ditching other forms became new normal. I was on the new normal wagon. And slowly the alternatives were gone. Now, Ayurveda is picking up again due to western influence but other ancient forms are now only available at shady dingy corners in city where the person prescribing something seems questionable.

Things change with time and if they don’t then we probably are losing out on being progressive. Its okay to change and acquire the best solutions scientific discoveries have brought to light like the unique knowledge about gut microbiome. I have always been really impressed knowing that there is this whole leg of science focused on the micro organisms living in human gut. I mean, how impressive is this.

Even though there are breakthroughs happening every other day in the field of science, its also hard to ignore that too much of antibiotics and medicines have left the human body depleted of many good microbiomes. Which in turn have , are and will cause many diseases, specially auto immune diseases. So what do we do? Should we stop visiting doctors?

Strange thing to say at the crazy times of “Covid 19”Please visit the doctor if you are sick. Please do what you think is right for you. The idea here is to ask you all, if medicines are all there is left for us? Are we all not abusing our bodies by taking too much salt, sugar and processed food? Are we not supposed to take care of this body we live in?