India seeks to cash in on global demand for ancient remedies

Yahoo – AFP, Annie Banerji, 16 Nov 2014

Indian visitors take advice from a yoga instructor at the sixth World Ayurveda Congress

and Arogya Expo in New Delhi, November 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Chandan Khanna)

India's new government has launched a drive to promote the country's ancient therapies as it seeks to cash in on the multi-billion dollar global market for holistic medicine.

India claims to have natural remedies for everything from cancer to the common cold, but ministers say it has failed to capitalise on its traditions as the world has woken up to alternative medicine.

Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a teetotal vegetarian who practices yoga daily, has said he wants the world to make Ayurveda "a way of life" -- and in doing so expand India's share of the growing global market for holistic medicine.

An Indian visitor points to a herb on display

 during the sixth World Ayurveda Congress

 and Arogya Expo in New Delhi, November

6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Chandan Khanna)

Earlier this month he appointed India's first minister for Ayurveda, yoga, naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and homeopathy -- known as the AAYUSH ministry -- and has also called for an international yoga day.

"Call it whatever -— Ayurvedic medicines or herbal medicines or traditional medicines –- the global market is estimated at about $100 billion today," former health minister Harsh Vardhan told a recent conference on Ayurveda in New Delhi.

"India's share in this is negligible because quality standards are not maintained to international specifications. The government has decided to address this lacuna."

Ayurvedic medicine -- which means the "science of life" in Sanskrit -- treats the physical and mental sources of illness through, for example, prescribing herbs in conjunction with yoga or massage.

Much of the knowledge has been passed on through the generations by word of mouth and predates written records, but two volumes of remedies and prescriptions have survived, called the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita.

'High priority'

Critics say that Ayurvedic remedies have no proven curative properties for disease, and instead work as a placebo.

Visitors look at a dummy of the human
body on display at an Ayurvedic oil 
massage table during the sixth World 
Ayurveda Congress and Arogya Expo in
New Delhi, November 6, 2014 (AFP
Photo/Chandan Khanna)

"It's like superstition -- it's in your head that it helps. But in real life, you need actual pharma drugs," said P.K. Goyal, a Delhi-based physician.

But Modi, who as a young man wandered the Himalayas on a spiritual quest, said Ayurvedic remedies should be seen as complementary to modern medicine.

"If a person adopts Ayurveda, he can protect himself against various infections," said the 64-year-old.

"(Formerly) health was a part of life. But today we have outsourced health... we consult one doctor and then the other."

In India, domestic companies such as Dabur, Emami and the Himalaya group have pioneered herbal products, combining ancient traditional medicine with cutting-edge technology to make pills, creams and oils.

Ayurvedic centres and clinics have also sprung up in Europe and the United States in recent years, and global chain The Body Shop has created its own range of Ayurvedic products.

On Tuesday the new AAYUSH minister, Shripad Yesso Naik, said he would make promoting Ayurveda a "high priority" as he began his newly-created role.

"We will do whatever it takes to make India a healthy India in the days ahead," he said, praising the preventive qualities of yoga and Ayurveda.

An Indian child looks at a display board 

showing different types of Yoga positions

 during the sixth World Ayurveda Congress

 and Arogya Expo in New Delhi, November

6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Chandan Khanna)

According to the World Health Organization, 65 percent of India's rural population uses Ayurvedic remedies, mostly due to poor access to modern health facilities.

Modi has vowed to provide affordable healthcare to India, where nearly 25 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day and more than 40 million people have been pushed into poverty because of the cost of medical treatment.

His Hindu nationalist government, which swept to power in May on a promise to revive India's flagging economy, has already announced plans to establish a state-funded Ayurvedic research centre and hospital.

And many are already converted to the drive. One fan at the conference -- where everything from massage chairs to digestion and blood pressure pills were on display -- needed no further persuading.

"It's natural, so no side effects, and it's cheap," said 20-year-old Delhi student Ashima Beri.

"Honestly, these worked on my acne better than any other cream or drug."

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Is There Scientific Proof We Can Heal Ourselves?

Prevent Disease, Dr. Lissa Rankin

Whether you’re battling a life-threatening illness, saddled with a “chronic” health condition that Western medicine hasn’t been able to cure, or battling nuisance symptoms that decrease your quality of life, or just hoping to optimize your energy, vitality, looks, and longevity, there is scientific proof that you can heal yourself.

As a skeptic herself, Dr. Lissa Rankin makes an irrefutable case, documenting with cold, hard science that the medical establishment has been proving that the mind can heal the body for over 50 years.

Loads of data proves that the mind can believe itself well. In clinical trials, we call it “the placebo effect.” Patients treated with placebos don’t just feel better. It’s not just “in their heads.” They’ve actually had warts disappear, bronchi dilate, colons become less inflamed, hair growth on the heads of bald men, ulcers heal, and other measurable physiological phenomena. We also know that the opposite is true, and the mind can think itself sick, which researchers call “the nocebo effect.” When patients are given injections with saline and told it is chemotherapy, they vomit and lose their hair.

How do such things happen physiologically? In her book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself, Lissa Rankin, MD, explains the science behind how a positive or negative thought or emotion in the mind translates into spontaneous repair in the body. As it turns out, the body has built in self-repair mechanisms that fix damaged proteins, repair DNA, correct hormonal imbalances, and gobble up cancer cells, infectious agents, and foreign bodies that our bodies are exposed to everyday. These mechanisms explain the spontaneous remissions that are reported in the medical literature from seemingly “incurable” diseases like Stage 4 cancer, HIV, hypothyroidism, diabetes, and even an untreated gunshot wound to the head. Yet patients often feel powerless to harness these natural self-repair mechanisms.

Not anymore. In this book, Dr. Rankin teachs a scientifically-founded six step process you can follow to optimize the body’s capacity to flip on its natural self-repair mechanisms when the body becomes ill. She also teaches the tools to implement the power of the mind as preventative medicine, to increase the chance that you will one day die of “old age,” rather than dying too young as the result of disabling of the body’s ability to repair itself.

What disables the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms? We all know that stress is bad for the body. But do you understand how this works? Loads of data proves that stress comes in different forms -- the stress of feeling lonely, work stress, financial stress, marital stress, family stress, the stress of feeling creatively blocked or spiritually disconnected. Regardless of what triggers it, stress flips on a series of physiological cascades associated with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic nervous system. In other words, whether you’re stressed about money, your marriage, or your job, your body can’t tell the difference between a perceived threat, such as impending bankruptcy, and a real threat, such as getting chased by a lion.

But here’s the kicker. The body can only repair itself when the body is in a state of physiological rest. Whenever the body thinks it’s time to run away from the lion (or whatever chronic, repetitive perceived threat it believes itself to be under), it shuts down self-repair. After all, who cares about long term maintenance like killing unwanted cancer cells if you’re about to be eaten by a lion? In Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself, Dr. Rankin shares not just the scientific proof that you can heal yourself, but also tips for using the power of the mind to optimize the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms, so disease prevention and spontaneous remissions aren’t just something that happens randomly, but something you might be able to experience for yourself.

Sources:

lissarankin.com

mindovermedicinebook.com

Dr. Lissa Rankin, launched the Whole Health Medicine Institute to train doctors, nurses, alternative and other health care providers, and life coaches about mind-body medicine. She is the author of several books including the New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine.

. Stress Is Not Our Enemy Until We Think It Is

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How Biophotons Show That We Are Made of Light


"Cellular Communication" - Apr 12, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"The Mysterious Innate" – Aug 31, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

"... Mining the Akash - The Role of Innate

What I'm going to tell next, we have given you before. However, I wish to explain it better in this communication. Your innate is also a governor of what you personally need. Let me explain: Turn a page with me. We have talked in the past about mining the Akash. So let us open that door for a moment. Is it possible, dear one, that you could go into the vast storehouse of the attributes of your past lives and pick out something that you need today? The answer is yes. It's called mining the Akash, and it is a staple of the Kryon teaching. However, the way it's accomplished by the individual Human is really difficult to describe. It's a personal intuitive process. However, one attribute of it that is often misunderstood is that permission from the innate is needed. This is because the innate smart body knows what you need. It is then the governor, or the filter, giving you permission regarding what can be pulled out of your Akash and used. It will say no to frivolous things and yes to the things that will allow you to cure yourself of disease, live longer, and increase the efficiency of your DNA. It's a smart body regulator.

Innate doesn't care how you look. It cares about your health. If you want to go into your Akash and pull out something that you need for survival, it's right there with you. If you want to make clearer skin, it won't respond. Do you see what I mean? It's the governor for mining the Akash. By the way, the Akash is very ready to be used for this. [Kryon wink]

You have earned what you've lived, dear ones, and it's very available. It lies in a quantum soup of lifetime information that is ready to be used. If you have a disease in your body right now, and perhaps you want to mine the Akash in a way that will create healing, you can. Like all nonlinear things, it requires a new, mature consciousness and practice to work. But the body is ready for you to "go get" the cellular structure of a past life that had no disease. The blueprint for this resides within you since you earned it and lived it. The innate is responsible for spontaneous remission! Science has no idea how a Human does this. The innate can help you "go get" the things within your earned Akash and place them into your cellular structure. That's how smart it is! Imagine clearing disease so completely that there is no sign it was ever there? It happens all the time. Imagine being able to drop a chemical dependency overnight? It's exactly the same principle.

Did you ever sit in a meeting and something is said or a feeling can happen, and you get chills? What are they? You might say, "They are chills of validation." Guess where they came from? The innate! The innate has the ability to signal you the truth. The brain does not. In fact, your brain will often get in the way. It's the brain that contains your box of belief. It's the brain that contains the perception of who you are based on experience and memory. It's your 3D survival instrument. But the brain can't give truth. It can only give you what it perceives as the truth, based on logical, processed, computed, synaptic reasoning and only based on your past experience.

Your brain can tell you not to touch the stove because of what happened once before. But it can't give you chills of validation from information it does not have. The intellect wants you to believe that your brain is supreme. However, the brain is only one part of the body system and not a very intuitive part. It is the innate that knows the truth. The innate is connected to the quantum parts of your DNA and, therefore, also knows of your spirituality and the truth of God inside.

The Next Step

One of the attributes of the future Human Being is to build a bridge between your Human consciousness and your innate. This is one of the three things in the cellular parts of the nine attributes lesson, the Human energies part. This needs to be a bridge of new tools so you no longer have to muscle-test. In fact, you can become your own medical intuitive. Doesn't this make sense? So, when a virus or bacteria invades your body - something your brain can't warn you about - you will know it anyway! This bridge will begin to complete the Human Being's evolution and is a logical next step for longer life. I know this makes sense to you. You should be able to sense these things when they occur rather than going to a doctor for tests. Going to a doctor for tests is not a bad thing, but it should validate what you know is happening and not be the discovery of it. ..."

Placebo effect may be 'down to genes'

BBC News, 24 October 2012

Related Stories 

• Child placebo pill is criticised
• Placebo sparks brain painkillers

Placebo acupuncture looks real, but
the needles don't go into the body

Why some people respond to treatments that have no active ingredients in them may be down to their genes, a study in the journal PLoS ONE suggests.

The so-called "placebo effect" was examined in 104 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in the US.

Those with a particular version of the COMT gene saw an improvement in their health after placebo acupuncture.

The scientists warn that while they hope their findings will be seen in other conditions, more work is needed.

Edzard Ernst, a professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, said: "This is a fascinating but very preliminary result.

"It could solve the age-old question of why some individuals respond to placebo, while others do not.

"And if so, it could impact importantly on clinical practice.

"But we should be cautious - the study was small, we need independent replications, and we need to know whether the phenomenon applies just to IBS or to all diseases."

Gene variants

The placebo effect is when a patient experiences an improvement in their condition while undergoing an inert treatment such as taking a sugar pill or, in this case, placebo acupuncture, where the patient believes they are receiving acupuncture but a sham device prevents the needles going into their body.

Two groups in the study had this type of treatment. One group received it in a business-like clinical manner and the other from a warm supportive practitioner. A third randomly chosen group received no treatment at all.

After three weeks the patients were asked if they had seen an improvement in their IBS, a common gastrointestinal disease that can cause abdominal pain and discomfort.

The team then used blood samples to look at what variant the individual had of the catechol-O-methyltranferase (COMT) gene. This plays a role in the dopamine pathway, a chemical known to produce a feel-good state.

Placebo dosage

Paper author Dr Kathryn Hall, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), said this gene had been chosen because "there has been increasing evidence that the neurotransmitter dopamine is activated when people anticipate and respond to placebos".

The researchers found individuals with a COMT variant that triples the amount of dopamine in the front of the brain felt no improvement without treatment but an improvement with the placebo acupuncture.

Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter at BIDMC, said: "We wanted to tease apart the different doses of placebo.

"We got an effect in individuals with this specific genetic signature for the general placebo, but an even bigger effect in the elaborate placebo where warmer care was given.

"You can really see the advantage of a positive doctor-patient relationship."

Fabrizio Benedetti, professor of neurophysiology at the University of Turin Medical School, Italy, warned that dopamine may not be the only chemical involved with the placebo effect.

"A previous study on the genetics of placebo in social anxiety disorder showed that it is serotonin that is associated to placebo responsiveness and not dopamine," he said.

"While this is a very interesting work, what we have learned in the past few years is that there is not a single placebo response and a single mechanism, but many, across different medical conditions and therapeutic interventions."

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Study: Placebo or not, acupuncture helps with pain

"The Recalibration of 'Shoulds' " – Jan 26, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion/Worship, Lightworkers, Food, Health, Prescription Drugs, Homeopathy, Innate (Body intelligence), New Age movement, Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text version)

“… In this new energy, there is something else that you can try if you are in this category. Do the following with safety, intelligence, common sense and logic. Here is the challenge: The principle of homeopathy is that an almost invisible tincture of a substance is ingested and is seen by your innate. Innate "sees" what you are trying to do and then adjusts the body's chemistry in response. Therefore, you might say that you are sending the body a "signal for balance." The actual tincture is not large enough to affect anything chemically - yet it works!

The body [innate] sees what you're trying to do and then cooperates. In a sense, you might say the body is healing itself because you were able to give it instructions through the homeopathic substance of what to do. So, why not do it with a major drug? Start reducing the dosage and start talking to your cells, and see what happens. If you're not successful, then stop the reduction. However, to your own amazement, you may often be successful over time. ...”

Study: Placebo or not, acupuncture helps with pain

Associated Press, Lindsey Tanner, Sep. 10, 2012

FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 file photo, Anah McMahon, L. Ac. adjusts
 one inch seirin acupuncture needles in the muscles around the spine of a patient
to relieve lower back pain, at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Chicago.
Acupuncture gets a thumbs-up for helping relieve pain from chronic headaches,
backaches and arthritis in a review of more than two dozen studies - the latest
analysis of an often-studied therapy that has as many fans as critics. The new analysis
 was published online Monday, Sept. 10, 2012 in Archives of Internal Medicine.
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

CHICAGO (AP) — Acupuncture gets a thumbs-up for helping relieve pain from chronic headaches, backaches and arthritis in a review of more than two dozen studies — the latest analysis of an often-studied therapy that has as many fans as critics.

Some believe its only powers are a psychological, placebo effect. But some doctors believe even if that's the explanation for acupuncture's effectiveness, there's no reason not to offer it if it makes people feel better.

The new analysis examined 29 studies involving almost 18,000 adults. The researchers concluded that the needle remedy worked better than usual pain treatment and slightly better than fake acupuncture. That kind of analysis is not the strongest type of research, but the authors took extra steps including examining raw data from the original studies.

The results "provide the most robust evidence to date that acupuncture is a reasonable referral option," wrote the authors, who include researchers with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and several universities in England and Germany.

Their study isn't proof, but it adds to evidence that acupuncture may benefit a range of conditions.

The new analysis was published online Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine. The federal government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine paid for most of the study, along with a small grant from the Samueli Institute, a nonprofit group that supports research on alternative healing.

Acupuncture's use has become more mainstream. The military has used it to help treat pain from war wounds, and California recently passed legislation that would include acupuncture among treatments recommended for coverage under provisions of the nation's new health care law. That law requires insurance plans to cover certain categories of benefits starting in 2014. Deciding specifics is being left up to the states.

Some private insurance plans already cover acupuncture; Medicare does not.

In traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture involves inserting long, very thin needles just beneath the skin's surface at specific points on the body to control pain or stress. Several weekly sessions are usually involved, typically costing about $60 to $100 per session. Fake acupuncture studied in research sometimes also uses needles, but on different areas of the body.

Scientists aren't sure what biological mechanism could explain how acupuncture might relieve pain, but the authors of the new study say the results suggest there's more involved than just a placebo effect.

Acupuncture skeptic Dr. Stephen Barrett said the study results are dubious. The retired psychiatrist runs Quackwatch, a Web site on medical scams, and says studies of acupuncture often involve strict research conditions that don't mirror how the procedure is used in the real world.

The new analysis combined results from studies of patients with common types of chronic pain — recurring headaches, arthritis or back, neck and shoulder. The studies had randomly assigned patients to acupuncture and either fake acupuncture or standard pain treatment including medication or physical therapy.

The authors explained their statistical findings by using a pain scale of 0 to 100: The patients' average baseline pain measured 60; it dropped to 30 on average in those who got acupuncture, 35 in those who got fake acupuncture, and 43 in the usual treatment group.

While the difference in results for real versus fake acupuncture was small, it suggests acupuncture could have more than a psychological effect, said lead author Andrew Vickers, a cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The center offers acupuncture and other alternative therapies for cancer patients with hard-to-treat pain.

The analysis was more rigorous than most research based on pooling previous studies' results, because the authors obtained original data from each study. That makes the conclusion more robust, said Dr. Andrew Avins, author of an Archives commentary and a physician and researcher with the University of California at San Francisco and Kaiser-Permanente.

Acupuncture is relatively safe and uncertainty over how it works shouldn't stop doctors from offering it as an option for patients struggling with pain, Avins said.

"Perhaps a more productive strategy at this point would be to provide whatever benefits we can for our patients, while we continue to explore more carefully all mechanisms of healing," he wrote.

Online:

Archives: http://www.archinternmed.com

Acupuncture at NIH: 1.usa.gov/igK6l

Related Article:

"The Mysterious Innate" – Aug 31, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version) - New

"... About Innate

What is innate? Where is it? This is difficult to explain. We told, you dear Human Being, that the elusive Akash information is not in your brain either. You cannot go to your brain to find out who you used to be in a past life. The innate is the same. It's not in your brain, but instead it's in every cell of your body and every molecule of your DNA. The difference between innate and the Akash is that innate is on top (a linear concept for you), and it is always broadcasting, always there. If you know how to listen to it and where it is, you can tune in. Muscle-testing is one way of knowing, a very basic way. Some of you also know that innate responds to acupuncture. Did you know that? Your brain does not.

The Merkabah - Innate's Quantum Field

Innate is aware of all things at the cellular level and is broadcasting all the time. It broadcasts so well that it flows into that which you call the Merkabah of the body. Now, the Merkabah is a quantum field around your body that pulses very strongly with esoteric information, including corporeal health. Many have the ability to see and read this field.

A medical intuitive can stand before you in various degrees of success and read the messages from your innate. This intuitive person does not have to muscle-test to know you've got something going on within your cells. They can see it or sense it within the field around your body. Now, you may have thought that a medical intuitive is looking at your liver or your heart, doing some kind of analysis. That's very linear thinking and is not what is happening. That's your box of belief working overtime. Instead, the medical intuitives are sensing the quantum energy within your field that your innate is broadcasting about your health, of what's going on in the chemistry, and of what might be developing inside you. It's different than you thought, isn't it? That's the innate and that's only one of the things that innate does. ..."

"... The Second Brain

Innate does so many things for you! Some of you are starting to get a bigger picture of where I'm going with this discussion. Here is a concept that we've not really broached before. We're going to give it a name, but please do not misunderstand it. You only have one word for your intelligent control center, and the word is called brain. So we are going to give you a concept that the innate is your second brain. It doesn't function like your first one at all, but it is smart and it is intelligent and it knows what you need. Sometimes it can even replace a function that your logical brain normally does. ..."