Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

Note: I wrote this post on Wednesday, 17 March, and have only now gotten some internet time to post it.

Day 2 at the Ayurvedic College proved to be even more informative about matters besides Ayurveda. I started by discussing quantitative dietetics with Dr. Gupta while she answered, or at least tried to answer, all of my questions from a book in front of her. Again, not much about Ayurveda was learned. Nearly all of the diet advice prescribed goes right along with what a Western doctor would tell you: less fried foods, less heavy foods, less fat, more fruits, more water, etc. They just have different reasons for it, but more often, no reason for it. I found two points that should be updated to reflect modern times, but they haven’t been and won’t be. First, they say that the best salt is crude rock salt because they believe that iodine occurs naturally in salt, which it doesn’t. It’s added as part of the manufacturing process to provide iodine to people who do not get it from vegetables grown in iodine-rich soil, like Indians. The second area is that they say rainwater collected from the sky is the best water to drink, but that may not be so true anymore, depending on the area you call home. Acid rain and all. It ain’t so tasty.

More interesting was when I visited the hospital for the first time. I found it to quite an eye-opening experience. Now, I’m not that naive, and I didn’t expect a spotless, well-organized hospital ward with Noah Wylie flirting with a patient in the next room. Yet I was still shocked by what I saw. The place is filthy, stained and smells of standing water. The lower floor doesn’t even get running water. I will compliment them by saying that this is the first time in India that I didn’t see trash all over the floor; it was well-swept. But what hospitals in the U.S. would consider minimum sanitation wasn’t even being considered here. For example, the door to the operating room was wide open. While a minor surgery was taking place. I worked in a hospital a couple of summers ago, and the sanitation standards that we had to follow were mind-boggling. This place was more like a daycare in terms of organization and cleanliness.

People crowding the exam rooms were another big difference. Let’s just say that HIPPA isn’t followed very well over there. 4 or 5 people are waiting their turn in one exam room while the doctor is examining a patient. Just another example of how privacy isn’t the same here. Plus, I was able to just walk right in and interrupt the doctor with my questions or his translations while he is in the middle of an exam. All in all, it was a very awkward experience.

After my initial tour, I sat down with a doctor to talk about how they diagnose people and classify them according to the vat-pitta-kaph system of digestion and physical makeup, or dhosa. The standard workup sheet that is filled out for every patient contains many of the same things as we analyze in the U.S., like blood pressure, urine and physical examination. It didn’t contain the methods used to analyze dhosa, so I asked the doctor to do mine. He asked me about my excretion, urination, appetite, stomach irritation, sleep habits and level of social interaction. He also observed my complexion, hair, body hair, age, body type and intellect. From all this information, which took less than 5 minutes to collect, he determined that I am predominately pitta. Ideally, all three characteristics, should be in equal balance, but there are times and stages in life when imbalance is completely normal and expected. For example, healthy males at my age should be predominately pitta, which means that I am just as healthy as I should be.

And it means that my system is able to digest more alcohol than normal. That’s a nice thing for a doctor to tell me on St. Patrick’s Day.

I came up with some observations about the analysis. For example, skin complexion is one factor, but I’m whiter than most Indians. He explained that it’s just one of the many factors that contribute to dhosa, which makes sense, but still, how can they use skin color, body hair or IQ to determine normal physical functions? These things are objectively determined and do not have much effect on our physical makeup. They also differ greatly from one culture to another. Maybe one group of people in Africa consider it normal to not sleep much, have dark skin and no body hair. Does the analysis of their dhosa change accordingly? I hope so.

Let this be a lesson about alternative medicines and their usefulness. Sure, it’s great when they give you the okay to drink every day and give into your sexual urges, but most of these practices are culturally biased and don’t necessarily reflect the best interests of people all over the world. They should be taken with a grain of salt, preferably one that has been iodized.