Honest exposition of my experience with Ayurveda

1. What my life so far taught me in my medical
career
Dr. Remya Krishnan MD PhD(Ay)

2. My BAMS
• My BAMS started with frustration for not getting for
MBBS. My rank was 1200 and being in general category
I must get below 600 to secure MBBS
• Being a student with great passion for medical
profession, I was looking around to find at least some
reasons to acquire satisfaction in my learning period.
• I found almost nothing fulfilling or inspiring either in
bench side or bedside and I found no case getting
recovered fast and intended by my sytem of Medicine .
• Majority of seniors were depressed for being in
Ayurveda and vast majority were talking about growing
business or means of financial settlement after studies.

3. • The young doctors are always influenced by others’ advices and
many seniors were talking about financial security of Government
service . Infact hardly there were any truly academic/ clinical
discussions with respect to situation or patients and everything
was so mechanical . Even before the patient is admitted , his
number of days of treatment and mode of treatment is fixed and
most of the patients were put on multiple therapies which were
never rationalised by any faculties .
• Everything continues the same , no logic, no intended results and
patients are not depressed as they believe that this is what
Ayurveda is as evident from their words .
• In between when aggravation of disease happens , that is always
interpreted as poor quality of medicine with special reference to
scarcity of herbs

4. • Of course, it requires someone to boost your
passion and confidence when you’ve depressed
learning, but in my case, there were none.
• I did mug up the textual verses , though the
intentions were hardly conveyed and wrote heavy
booklets of answer sheets which was only
required for qualifying in examinations.
• In viva-voce and bedside , being a good student ,
the faculties were happy with me but I used to
feel an empty feel through out my curriculum and
never happy with myself

5. • There were no challenging cases and every case of
Arthritis, Asthma, Allergy or Psoriasis were seen
treated mechanically in the uniform manner . When
every patient gets admitted , that time itself the entire
treatment package is decided and continued as such no
matter whatever happens in between.
• The drugs of Modern Medicine were continued in
every patient in most of the cases.
• Most of the faculties were enthusiastic to teach HOW
TO REFER THE PATIENT to Modern Medicine and
excitingly talk regarding the limitations of Ayurveda .

6. • There used to be lot of extracurricular activities and fun,
but Medicine was always taught or more specifically read
as philosophy confined to bench side and what is
happening in bed side were only shared experiences with
medicines and therapies
• Blind correlation of Ayurvedic and modern terminologies
were done which enhanced confusion and disappointment
further.
• But frankly I never regretted that I happened to be here
after first year and I don’t know why may be because the
frustration of not being able to secure what I wanted
vanished from my mind . There was too much study, the
curriculum has both Modern Medicine and Ayurveda
portions, both vast and deep and no time for anything else.

7. • Staying with my cardiologist uncle, I never felt any shame
in taking pain killers for my pre menstrual cramps , fever
and gut problems. Once I fainted in Anatomy exam hall
after consuming drugs for fever and diarrhoea . But that
was all that I can do at that time. I remember my faculties
took me to a hospital and my uncle came and picked me
from there and shifted to his hospital. Every one around me
in my college was proud that I have my specialist uncle to
take care of me in crisis.
• Frankly I never thought of any possibility of substituting
those drugs by Ayurveda any time . Neither did I receive
any specific training for that nor I got any thought to initiate
the same in my body any time

8. Turning point
• My wedding was the biggest turning point in my life
• My husband whose first option was Ayurveda in Medical
entrance took me to Jaipur where he did MD and then and
there itself I got my first attack of head ache.
• I asked him to buy Calpol and he gave his first hit upon me
by telling that he cannot buy it for me. I felt shocked and
disappointed but he gave me some Ayurvedic medicine
which he had and asked me to drink some extra
medicated water( we were boiling water with shunthy
dhanyaka , as temperatre was cool there, if my memory is
right)
• For the first time in my life, my head ache got vanished
very fast which never happens with Modern Medicine

9. • I felt proud of my best half at that time but still
had worries that life is going to be dangerous in
any moment as there is no paracetamol in stock.
• I had fever there for which I started taking single
Ayurveda medicine alone with pathya (which I
cook) and I was getting recovered fast and
silently. Generally when ever fever comes, head
ache will accompany, gut problems and many
such things, but this time nothing of that sort

10. • When we had our first child, we took him for
some early vaccinations as routine custom
without any thought but later we have not
continued with boosters .
• I still remember his first fever. It was me who took
medicine and lactate him, no Ayurveda or
modern drugs were given to him and he sweated
in less than a day and became totally active . I
was getting hammer strike realization about the
accuracy and depth of my science in those days.

11. • My elder son is 17 years now. He had never been given paracetamol
or any modern drugs till date except for one time when he had
developed high fever which continued to elevate with our fever
guidelines . We took him to a hospital where physician inserted anal
suppository but temperature continue to stay raised and for the
first and last time, they sponged my child and he started shivering.
• I asked them to stop immediately, dried his body and covered with
warm clothes and when the physician told about his decision to
prescribe Nimesulide, we denied and took him back home at
midnight .
• We have a learnt a diversion point explained in Ayurvedic science
of infection management in that period and we decided to
experiment this diverted approach and in the first hour of
starting new medicine itself, he started getting profuse sweating
and recovered very fast from then.

12. THANK GOD AND MY SCIENCE
• My elder boy had an episode of early stage of appendicitis
also at 10 years . As he was with my husband at the time of
onset of unbearabke pain, it was suspected early by him by
the nature of pain, site and manifestation and got
confirmed by scan. Though they recommended surgery, we
have decided not to resort to it at the moment and started
Ayurvedic medicine from there itself and specific
medicated water, decided to wait for a few hours to check
for response in TLC and TLC had fallen from 13,000 to 9,000
in few hours next morning by single medicine and scientific
diet and pain also got resolved by it. After 20 days, we
repeated the scan and found his appendix was normal
normal

13. THANK GOD AND MY SCIENCE
• My younger boy has never been given any
chemical drugs so far . He is also treated by
granules of scientific medicine and kept on
scientific diet and regimen whenever he fall sick
and is educated regarding the same .
• Generally the recovery from infections are in mot
more than three days at any cost and frequency
of infections are very less less when this method
is adopted correctly.
• No suvarnaprasha is administered to both my
kids any time .

14. • I have decided to work hard for securing MD
soon after marriage as it was more a necessity
for our financial security . My best half is my
biggest motivator in my life and without his
constant sound motivation, training and
support, I could not have imagined to secure
23 rd rank in my full term pregnancy in first
attempt itself.

15. • When we started adopting Ayurveda in our lives ,
my life got changed in many ways. Learning
science became a passion again and when I
started my career, I started exploring every single
case by applying principles of Science Based
Medicine. I started treating patients to learn and
confirm what I understand in science and
thankfully being not opted for Government
service (owing to the extremity of corruption in
selection process), we had limited patients a day
to explore , study, treat and evaluate .

16. • Every case that I dealt with was eye opener for
me. I started experiencing the depth, subtlety
and precision of my science. Wen a failure get
transformed to success by pertinent modification
in decision, I experienced real thrill and joy of
becoming a physician . Those times,we were
practising in a remote place in Trivandrum and
we were prescribing less than Rs 30 medicine
only for all, but had to give them medicine free of
cost and treatment by accepting many times
nothing from them.

17. • We had to join as faculty some where for
financial security and the best thing I got there
was child OPD with multiple cases of
infections, Asthma, Allergies, skin ailments,
seizures etc etc. I thoroughly enjoyed my OPD
there, and that helped to establish my base in
clinical side for what Iam learning in science.
Though the pay was very less , both of us had
INTENDED job there and lots and lots of
intesresting case experiences too

18. • One day MD of the hospital called me and said he
is sad that Iam not able to meet their financial
target by prescribing negligible medicines , very
few admissions and not their medicines. I said
openly that Iam ready to resign. They hardly
cared for patient results, all that they cared was
profit and profit alone.They would publish a
merrit list of doctors in making profit and in that,
my name would be second last, the last being my
husband .

19. • We had quit the college for PhD and better prospects
in Rajasthan and there after completing PhD , worked
in Gujarat, had OPDs there and got professional
satisfaction in academic as well as clinical perspective.
• We are discussing science more than life and many
times we feel that all our discussions were initiated by
God to improve the clarity in understanding the
intentions of the science and we published three books
on Science Based Evidence Based Ayurveda only after
attaining basic level of clarity and confirmation both in
theory and application in what we wish to convey

20. What we understood
• We ( Myself and my best half) have debates ,
arguments and discussions mostly on various
aspects of science and surprisingly both of us
have the nature of asking questions to each
other. He was led in right direction by his Guru,
respected late Padmabhooshan Raghavan
Thgirumulpad Sir who himself exemplified in life
that Science Based Medicine is to be practised
and not Medicine based science.
• We both owe to him for the eternal inspiration to
do what is crucially required in Ayurveda today.

21. What we understand so far are these
• Science gets simple only if we understand it with clarity
and confirmation
• Science is to be practised in patients and not Medicine
• Science is meant for intended effects and not benefits
• With science, you need only medicine granules with one
medicine or maximum 2 . Not more
• Panchakarma treatment is required only in less than 2
percent of all the cases prevalent in society today
• Science is fast, accurate and on the target. So if science is
practised, Ayurveda is fast and accurate.
• The flaws in prescription continue to be the greatest silent
disaster in Ayurveda

22. • If Ayurveda physicians are to be genuine healers, they
inevitably need to learn and practice principles of Science
Based Medicine in right direction .
• Instead of searching for good role models to copy and
adopt, we have to initiate our intellectual efforts in
understanding the scientific verses and their true intentions
and ask questions to self and others in our community.
• The real learning happens with simultaneous application of
what w e learn at times of our own crisis
• We must avoid confirmation error in practice . We must
not diagnose what we want to diagnose but with an
unbised mind must seek for reality

23. BIGGEST TRAGEDY IN CURRENT AYURVEDA
• Confirmation error is dangerously killing the
intellectual growth of Ayurveda physicians.
When we start thinking based on advantages of
medicines and treatments, we will learn about
the literature of them alone and some how wish
to impose any or all of them in different patients
instead of exploring the clinical situation based
on science and go through the path of HOW TO
CHOOSES MEDICINE . Now a days , only “what to
choose” is checked upon owing to this reason.

24. LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST
• This ppt is made not with any intention to
demoralise or defame any individual or
oganisation or the system of Medicine but
instead a blatant exposition of reality in Ayurveda
• Everything mentioned here is true and there are
no coccoct stories
• If this stimulate the young minds positively to
understand that the reality of Ayurveda is not
what is seen around, then we are blessed
Surrender to God ALWAYS