Understanding Diabetes: Uncovering the Leads from Ayurveda

Abstract

Diabetes is observed as a pandemic upsurge in recent decades. It is proposed to become the world’s biggest cause of impending deaths in the future. Diabetes is found to have a variability of distribution in various geographical areas having a few areas affected heavily while sparing others. India is among the few countries worst hit by diabetes sharing a substantial sum in total global diabetic population. Ironically India has a pluralistic model of health care in existence since long where a number of alternative therapies including Ayurveda are available to be practiced. This is obvious to speculate that in Indian context, such pluralism of health care should have added value to the conventional health care in the areas where this alone has not been found to offer optimal care. Unfortunately, despite highly illustrious descriptions of diabetes in Ayurveda, the knowledge had not efficiently been utilized by its caregivers. We present here some novel and yet unexplored areas where inputs from Ayurveda may bring a paradigm shift in diabetes understanding in terms of its early clinical diagnosis, management, and complication prevention. This further illustrates a high translational value of some Ayurvedic concepts referring to diabetes in contemporary sense. The same seems highly desired in India if our current understanding of diabetes is needed to be brought to the next level of care.