Allopathy - Strengths and Limitations
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
Allopathy refers to medical practice that is commonly known as western medicine, modern medicine or evidence-based medicine.
The term allopathic medicine is most often used to contrast conventional medicine with alternative/complementary medicine, or homeopathy.
The term 'allopathy' was coined by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) to designate the usual practice of medicine (allopathy) as opposed to homeopathy, the system of therapy that he founded.
According to MedTerms Dictionary, allopathy is defined as "The system of medical practice which treats disease by the use of remedies which produce effects different from those produced by the disease under treatment."
Strengths
Allopathy is wonderful in case of infection, emergency or life threatening conditions.
Limitations
- Allopathy treatment is symptomatic one ie, it treats the symptom but not the root cause.
- The ailments like cold, fever, head-ache are just symptoms. They are the warning signals from our physical system. That's how the body can talk... You see ! The body, through symptoms, says 'Hey, something is wrong inside, please correct it !!!'.
- But the root cause might be a completely different one...it might be the imbalance due to lack of sleep/rest, physical/emotional stress, improper food at improper time etc.
- Allopathy drugs try to bring down the symptom by chemical effects which may give some temporary relief.
- Beware ! ...body's signals are misinterpreted, symptoms are treated with synthetic chemicals, but the root cause is not touched upon and it accumulates silently. Really a ticking time bomb !
- Allopathy which is the most widely followed system uses laboratory synthetic chemical composition as drugs and hence it definitely carries side effects. To cure those side effects again new drugs are prescribed !!! Total mess !!! So it's better to avoid any prolonged usage of allopathic medicines.
- Whereas alternative medicines like ayurvedic ones are from herbs and they are natural plant extracts (natural chemicals). They are largely derived from the leaf, flower, fruit, root or bark of the plants. Right dosage for a prescribed time doesn't harm our system. No side effects.
A world-renowned spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev talks about chronic ailments, Allopathy and Yoga:
Yoga sadhana can cure chronic ailments - Sadhguru
Question: Can yoga help alleviate my diabetes?
Sadhguru: When it comes to a chronic ailment, whatever may be the ailment, the root cause for it is always in the energy body. Your energy body functions the way it functions for various reasons. It may be because of the kinds of atmospheres you live in, the kind of food that you eat, the kinds of relationships that you hold or because of your emotions, attitudes, thoughts and opinions. It may also be because of certain external energy situations that disturb your internal energy. In some way, your energy body is disturbed which will naturally manifest both physiologically and psychologically. Once this one layer of the body - the energy body - is disturbed, the mental body and the physical body are bound to be disturbed. Actually it becomes a doctor’s concern only after it becomes a medical problem. Till then it is not a doctor’s concern because there is no physiological manifestation.
Unfortunately, medical science understands only disease. It does not understand the roots of health, as to where it comes from and what the basis of health is. If you are a diabetic, sugar is not the problem with you. It is just that your pancreas is not functioning properly. As an emergency measure you reduce the sugar intake because in the Allopathic system of medicine, they have no other way to activate your pancreas, so this is the only measure they have taught you-“check your sugar every day and take a little more insulin”. The Allopathic system is symptomatic in treatment - the doctor looks at your symptoms and gives you the treatment.
Allopathic system is a fantastic system for any infections. Allopathy is the best thing as I see for anything that comes to your body from outside. But it does not offer any solution for the simple ailments which man is creating for himself from within, like diabetes, blood pressure, or migraine headaches. Modern medical science only offers to manage the diseases and never really talks about freeing you from those diseases. There are whole systems of medicine and so many kinds of specialists to manage diseases within certain limitations. A lot of money and time is being spent on just managing those diseases. It is just like people talking about stress management. People want to manage their stress, people want to manage their diabetes, people want to manage their blood pressure. It is ridiculous. This kind of foolishness has entered, simply because they have not understood the fundamentals of how their own life energies function.
In yoga, if there is diabetes, we see it as a very fundamental disturbance - diabetes is not taken lightly as a disease. We see that the fundamental structure of the basic body is being disturbed. That is why diabetes happens. And it is different in each individual. For each person, the level of disturbance and the type of disturbance that happens in each system is very different. So it needs to be handled individually. However, irrespective of what the disease is, yoga only aims at balancing and energizing or activating the energy body. The basic premise in yoga is that if your energy body is in full flow and properly balanced, there can be no chronic disease either in your physical body or your mental body. Diabetes will go because we are not treating the disease as such, we are seeing disease only as a manifestation of the disturbance that could be existing in the energy body.
So if people are willing to do a certain amount of sadhana to balance and activate their energy body, they can definitely be free of all chronic ailments.
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Here Dr. Harish Trivedi who suffered from his own medical conditions speaks about the usage of allopathy and alternative medicines:
"My medical problem had no solution. Being a doctor myself, it was very frustrating. If I cannot help myself, how will I help others? Being a doctor, I have suffered so much and for so many years, what about layman? Their condition would be worst and highly frustrating...
Allopathic drugs are good in life threatening diseases and emergency treatment. But when the diseases become chronic in nature, they do nothing but suppress i.e. palliation. How many times will you treat infected tonsils with anti-biotics and anti-inflammatory drugs? Why not treat them with alternate system of medicine and get rid of them once and for all. And save yourself from all the side effects of anti-biotic and anti-inflammatory drugs."
- Currently in most of the cases, medical insurance and reimbursement benefits can be availed only for allopathy treatment. Sincere thought is...alternative medicines should be given their due respect too.
From Allopathy to Drug Free Living Home
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