Ayurveda's Contributions To Science

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Ayurveda is a millennia-old traditional Indian system of medicine, which has given us many effective herbal remedies, and some good complementary practices such as yoga and mindfulness

  • It’s also not at all rooted in modern scientific method, bases many of its suppositions on a system of five elements and three humors, amongst other components.

  • The presence of heavy metals in sometimes dangerous quantities is also a risk factor for many ayurvedic medical preparations

• We know that 10almonds readers like being presented with facts, and then left to make your own informed decisions.

  • Today’s sponsor 1440 has a similar view, and they specialize in presenting just the facts of the news so that you can form your own conclusions.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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100 Push-Ups a Day for 30 Days, With Unexpected Results! (9:55)

We don't do clickbait, so: the unexpected result is that after her month of effort, she went from being able to do 12 at once, to being able to do…

13 at once.

However! She also learned why this was, and we'll link you a shortcut to that explanation:

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One-stop menu, so consider this the plat du jour:

• 6:50 | The explanation of what she’d need to do differently to see more improvement

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🪷 MAIN FEATURE

Ayurveda's Contributions To Science (Without Being Itself Rooted in Scientific Method)

Yesterday, we asked you for your opinions on ayurveda, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses. Of those who responded…

• A little over 41% said “I don't know what ayurveda is without looking it up”

• A little over 37% said “It is a fine branch of health science with millennia of evidence”

• A little over 16% said “It gets some things right, but not by actual science”

• A little over 4% said “It is a potentially dangerous pseudoscience”

So, what does the science say?

Ayurveda is scientific: True or False?

False, simply. Let’s just rip the band-aid off in this case. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily without merit, though!

Let’s put it this way:

• If you drink coffee to feel more awake because scientific method has discerned that caffeine has vasoconstrictive and adenosine-blocking effects while also promoting dopaminergic activity, then your consumption of coffee is evidence-based and scientific. Great!

• If you drink coffee to feel more awake because somebody told you that that somebody told them that it energizes you by balancing the elements fire (the heat of the coffee), air (the little bubbles on top), earth (the coffee grinds), water (the water), and ether (steam), then that is neither evidence-based nor scientific, but it will still work exactly the same.

Ayurveda is a little like that. It’s an ancient traditional Indian medicine, based on a combination of anecdotal evidence and supposition.

• The anecdotal evidence from ayurveda has often resulted in herbal remedies that, in modern scientific trials, have been found to have merit.

  • Ayurvedic meditative practices also have a large overlap with modern mindfulness practices, and have also been found to have merit

  • Ayurveda also promotes the practice of yoga, which is indeed a very healthful activity

• The supposition from ayurveda is based largely in those five elements we mentioned above, as well as a “balancing of humors” comparable to medieval European medicine, and from a scientific perspective, is simply a hypothesis with no evidence to support it.

Ayurveda gets some things right: True or False?

True! Indeed, we covered some before in 10almonds; you may remember:

Bacopa Monnieri: A Well-Evidenced Cognitive Enhancer

(Bacopa monnieri is also known by its name in ayurveda, brahmi)

There are many other herbs that have made their way from ayurveda into modern science, but the above is a stand-out example. Others include:

• Ashwagandha: The Root of All Even-Mindedness?

• Boswellia serrata (Frankincense) Against Pain and Depression/Anxiety

Yoga and meditation are also great, and not only that, but great by science, for example:

• NCCIH | Yoga for Health: Clinical Guidelines, Scientific Literature, Info for Patients

• The Neuroscience of Mindfulness: How Mindfulness Alters the Brain and Facilitates Emotion Regulation

Ayurveda is a potentially dangerous pseudoscience: True or False?

Also True! We covered why it’s a pseudoscience above, but that doesn’t make it potentially dangerous, per se (you’ll remember our coffee example).

What does, however, make it potentially dangerous (dose-dependent) is its use of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic:

Heavy Metal Content of Ayurvedic Herbal Medicine Products

Some final thoughts…

Want to learn more about the sometimes beneficial, sometimes uneasy relationship between ayurveda and modern science?

A lot of scholarly articles trying to bridge (or further separate) the two were very biased one way or the other.

Instead, here’s one that’s reasonably optimistic with regard to ayurveda’s potential for good, while being realistic about how it currently stands:

Development of Ayurveda—Tradition to trend

Take care!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals – by Oliver Burkeman

This is not, strictly speaking, a time management book. It's more a "contemplating mortality and making things count while still doing the necessaries".

Burkeman's premise is that we get around 4,000 weeks of life, on average. If we live to 120, it's more like 6,200. Unlucky souls may have to do the best they can with 1,000 or so.

The book is thought-provoking; consider:

1. how was your last week?

2. how will your next week be?

3. what if it were your last?

Of course, we cannot necessarily liquidate all our assets and spend next week burning out in style, because then the following week comes. So, what's the solution?

That's something Burkeman lays out over the course of the book, with key ideas including passion projects and figuring out what can be safely neglected, but there's far more there than we could sum up here.

Bottom line: if you ever find yourself struggling to balance what is expected of you with what is of value to you, this book can help you get the most out of your choices.

Click here to check out Four Thousand Weeks, and make yours count!

Feliĉan Z-tagon al ĉiuj niaj abonantoj,

The 10almonds Team