Healthy Living - The Ayurvedic Way

I would never disagree to the statement that the Ayurvedic system of medicine does not have emergency medicines. I'm a practitioner of public health in the allopathic stream and my knowledge on Ayurvedic practices is practically null. But I can make a claim with a good degree of certainty, that Ayurveda is essentially pristine preventive medicine. The concepts of wind (vatha), bile (pittha) and mucus (kapha) are theories of intangible occult to many. In this age of molecular chemotherapy with cellular organelles as targets, one would take no second thought in throwing the millenia-old conceptions into the trash bin.

Ayurveda has its roots in spirituality. It is probably the only system of medicine that stressed enormously on the fourth dimension of health - the spiritual dimension. We are all spiritual. Individuals vary in the degrees of exhibiting their spiritual desires. It is said that atheists do dream. Dream is a state of the mind that links it with the soul in the realm of sub-consciousness. All dreams have a valid interpretation. Turning back on pages of human history, one has to search for when exactly has the bug of indifference bit mankind. Today, we brand anything unknown to us as 'occult'. The 'truth algorithm' starts with ignorance. Ignorance, when uplifted, acquires belief. Belief, when adjudged, can prove to be one or more of misconception or superstition or a principle. The principle grows into occult, when there are other principles which the larger majority follow or practise. When the occult gets proven by application of previously established hypotheses, it transforms into truth. A collective of truth is called science. Science, as everyone knows, is the systematic compilation of knowledge. Everybody wonders what can science transform into. At this juncture, esoteric questions are raised. Is everything around us scientific? Is science everything? Are there phenomena science has failed to reason? The list of questions can be infinite. One particular question inquires about God's relationship with science. If science explains everything under and over the sun, where does God stand? Does He exist? The answer is simple, yet worth a lifetime's ponder. He does. Science is only the medium to communicate with Him.
Ayurveda has borrowed the principles from the Vedic knowledge on God and humans, and employed those principles in the mission of maintaining a sound mind inside a sound body. Ayurveda is a Sanskrit term that means the science (veda) of life (ayush). The current health-seeking trend has people seeking Ayurveda after a diagnosis of the disease condition. The belief is that Ayurvedic medicaments do not have side-effects and an unduly long course of therapy would cure them of their ailment. The misinterpreted paradox here is the fact that Ayurveda is the science of life and not the science of disease or science of cure. The science of life advocates the importance of maintaining positive health by adopting right living practices. It advises people about how building up good health and immunity can prevent one from acquiring disease of all sorts, infectious and non-communicables. It is as simple as understanding that constructing a wall across the coastline can prevent inundation of coastal inhabitation. Without the wall, or having a weak barrier keeps one at continuous risk of contracting disease. More so with the lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cancer, the science of life has several recommendations for leading a healthy and happy life. If healthy lifestyle practices are adopted early in life, one can prevent diseases in the long run.
Having understood this, one can weigh the justification in the question: Does Ayurveda have drugs like adrenaline for emergency care?
The answer is a solid 'No'. But if you had inculcated Ayurvedic principles earlier in life, you would not have landed in this emergency. The old adage of crying over spilled milk holds good here.