Auto Immune Disorders Ayurvedic Therapies and Management

Autoimmune diseases are accounting for a great proportion of the total agony caused to the world. A substantial number of diseases are grouped under this relatively less understood clinical entity where the main presenting features are related to sub-acute inflammation and subsequent manifestations. The most enigmatic feature of autoimmune pathology is that it arises out of the blue and just does not go. It is rather progressive some times and can lead to a systemic involvement in many situations. Unfortunately there are no satisfactory cures available to autoimmune diseases so far and all the treatments available either refer to the supplementation of deficits caused by a gradually malfunctioning organ or the immune suppression in order to reduce the auto immune reactions. Both of these options are associated with their own inherent risks and benefits. Immune-suppression if adopted for a long time, eventually leads to the lowered body immunity causing opportunistic infections to creep in having their consequences subsequently.

Ayurveda seems to have a special association with Autoimmune diseases. Prima facie it is a group of diseases often landing up in Ayurvedic clinics in want of cure as there are no satisfactory cures available in biomedicine. Arnavata or the group of autoimmune arthritic disorders and kitibh or the group of auto immune skin disorders are sharing the largest sum of patients seen in ayurvedic clinics. Although , this is an exaggeration to say that ayurveda truly offers a cure to these conditions , this is important to understand this substantial input of patients from a particular set of pathology as an indicator to what people are looking for from ayurveda and where the research of ayurveda should focus upon. There are huge sum of works which can be offered from ayurveda to give a better understanding and a better management to these conditions. As these conditions are devoid of any immediate specific reasoning to land upon, this is important to look into ayurvedic concept of viruddha ahar, where an unhealthy food or its combination is consumed repeatedly. Being unaware of what viruddhahara might. be, many of us keep on consuming it and some time end up with ama pathologies which are much akin to autoimmune conditions of biological medicine.

Ayurvedic fundamentals of treating a disease also require due attention in reference to auto immune conditions. Considering it as an Ama related pathogenesis, this is imperative to treat ama, improve the agni both at intestine level and also at tissue level and then to offer symptom specific or disease specific treatment. Without being attentive to these principles of ayurveda, the ayurvedic treatments also do not reach to the expected benefits.

Researches, both in the fundamental sense and also in the clinical sense are essential to enrich ayurveda with updated knowledge. A repeated dialogue is essential to keep the flow of knowledge not only intact but also to keep it flourishing with new elements of knowledge. This 21st national seminar of Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth on 'Auto immune disorders and their ayurvedic management' is a humble step towards the ultimate goal of enriching the mind with new components of wisdom emerging through experience or experiment. Present seminar is presenting a good sum of clinical researches, case reports and in depth reviews on the subject substantiated by a chain of key note addressed by a few luminaries of the subjects. We sincerely believe that this event would be able to add to the existing knowledge in the subject and would help up doing more competently to offer a better relief in the clinical conditions related to auto immune pathologies.

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