Myth Busting: Ayurveda is Evidence Based

Nisarg Joshi

Ayurveda

EvidenceBased

Every time I talk about superiority of Ayurveda, friends from other branches of healthcare start talking and asking for EBM in Ayurveda! 😀

Ha! EBM or Evidence-based medicine! 🙂 Ayurveda is actually real EBM if you consider textbook definition. Follow the post for detail.

I am thinking to write entire series of posts based on it to make them realize that how really western science is slowly learning Ayurvedic principles of EBM. Stay tuned. (Y)

This is post#1 #EBM #AyurVedaEBM #Ayurveda

EBM, which has become a buzz word concerning medical decision making, refers to a three aspects of information that the physician should use to determine the best treatment for a particular patient:
1. Best available relevant scientific evidence concerning the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed treatment
2. Physician knowledge based on practice experience
3. Patient’s own preferences for treatment modalities if they do not contradict 1 or 2 above

Now, if you compare modern medicine and Ayurveda (As a layman, I have exposure to both medicine and their practitioners.) , Modern medicine is coming closer to a holistic treatment approach, closer to the parameters of treatment in Ayurvedic practice. What is considered as EBM, is already followed by
Ayurveda for 5000+ years!

We will explore this subject in subsequent posts. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, read this pdf to know what exactly is EBM:

“Good doctors use both individual clinical expertise and the best available external evidence, and neither alone is enough. Without clinical expertise, practice risks becoming tyrannised by evidence, for even excellent external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate for an individual patient. Without current best evidence, practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the detriment of patients.”

Do we really have such good doctors?Introspection needed for doctor community. Most modern medicine doctors consider patients dumb. Forget about considering patient’s values and preferences! So high ego! (this is very well taken care by Ayurvedic doctors! So humble they are!)


Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t

It’s about integrating individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence

Evidence based medicine, whose philosophical origins extend back to mid-19th century Paris and earlier, remains a hot topic for clinicians, public health practitioners, purchasers, planners, and the public. There are now frequent workshops in how to practice and teach it (one sponsored by the BMJ will be held in London on 24 April); undergraduate1 and postgraduate2 training programmes are incorporating it3 (or pondering how to do so); British centres for evidence based practice have been established or planned in adult medicine, child health, surgery, pathology, pharmacotherapy, nursing, general practice, and dentistry; the Cochrane Collaboration and Britain’s Centre for Review and Dissemination in York are providing systematic reviews of the effects of health care; new evidence based practice journals are being launched; and it has become a common topic in the lay media. But enthusiasm has been mixed with some negative reaction.4 5 6 Criticism has ranged from evidence based medicine being old hat to it being a dangerous innovation, perpetrated by the arrogant to serve cost cutters and suppress clinical freedom. As evidence based medicine continues to evolve and adapt, now is a useful time to refine the discussion of what it is and what it is not.

http://www.bmj.com/content/312/7023/71

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