to triguna or not to triguna???

8i8

hi experts,,,
i'd like to see an ayurvedic doctor in delhi. it seems there's one on every corner, so i fear a lot of them have just hopped on the bandwagon, so to speak. as i'm new to the whole ayurveda thing i'd really like to go to one with personal recommendations that i can fully trust.
some people mentioned ayurveda-kendra hospitals. any particular dr.?
and i also read about dr. triguna, who sounds almost like a witch-doctor. did his stuff work for YOU???
many many thanx,
d

shashank.aggarwal

I can help you out with this one..I know a person, he is the father of the guy from whom we purchase computers and peripherals from quite some time...

His name is Dr.Thakral and he is a qualifies Ayurvedic doctor...however do not commercial practice..

If you want, you can meet him, it won't cost you anything...and he is no impostor for sure...and if your ailment requires more attention than he can offer Or require multiple visits he can refer you to some other doctor...

__________________
Travelogue - Around India
Random Reviews

atala

Ayurveda always requires multiple visits. Depends on your condition whom you should see.

The mystery with Triguna or any other experienced Nadi-reader (i.e. pulse-reader)is, believe it or not, the quantity of patients that he sees. One doc told me you need about fifty thousand pulses read to learn to distinguish the different flows. Triguna reads that many at least in half a year. (on the basis of 150 patients a day, he might have the double or triple or more)

The medicines he gives are rather common ones, nothing spectacular. I have never seen a remarkable result (or any at all) in western patients that I brought to him and he treated. But someone said he saved him when he almost died from a tropical disease, forgot which.

Trouble with him is, he gives you just about ten seconds of his time. The rest comes from his son.

If you have no experience with Ayurveda, why would you try it? Ayurveda is a big hype nowadays, it works well as a life-style adjustment, while to treat specific chronic conditions it takes years.

shashank.aggarwal

Why do you say its Big Hype ?? It was never meant to quick as western medicines..It is well known that it is slow in its process however does it without side effects and more effectively..

8i8

hi,
thanx for your answers. the reason i want to try ayurveda is because according to the WESTERN medicine i'm completely healthy!!! and yet i have pains, and i'm extremely sensitive to cold. so i thought that since i'm india, it would be a good place to try it... i'm not looking for an instant cure. i don't believe our bodies work that way...
thanx again,
d

atala

Well, I meant to say in the West (and in Kerala which is marketed to the West via Ayurveda) it is a big hype. In India, only the rich (or at least middle class people) can afford it, there it will hardly be a big hype. Just a small hype sometimes . At best, Indians speak with pride about it, as part of their ancient heritage, without really living up to it. No Indian would change his diet if he found out that his doshas or his prakruti required it.

As to your other points, I think they are disputable. If you see how Ayurveda is marketed by Ayurvedic pharmaceutical companies and Ayurveda doctors themselves, you would see how they equate it with Western medicine in many ways. First of all, everything is always "no problem", ( we all know these words, don't we ). Everything is curable, they generally say, while in reality very few diseases are curable even for modern Ayurveda, and if so, only from the hands of a real expert, and they are very very few.

Generally a practitioner has a number of remedies of which he knows reliably that they work well. But he cannot make a living of them alone. Therefore he needs to lay claim also to be able to cure all other problems, just to keep his practice going. And the reality also is like that: you get patients with all kinds of problems, not just two or three kinds.

There is too much mass production and mass treatment in Ayurveda. If I treat 300 patients a day with any kind of treatment, does not matter what it is, there will be a certain number who will benefit, they will shout my glory to the world. Those that do not feel any difference will stay away. And those who think they were helped a little, will come back with hope to get better.

Since in Asian medical practice, records are always with the patient, not with the doctor, he will never know how many failures he has. Only the successes come back. That is why the practitioner gets a wrong idea about the value of his treatment. This creates a dynamic of its own which is misleading.

The stereotype about "no side effect" is also misleading. It is a thoughtless remark which is not really true. Everything has side-effects. Even the drinking of plain water. Drinking too much may damage the kidneys. Any substance can over time cause a significant damage. I think the Chinese have a better approach with the yin-yang paradigm which implies that everything requires a balancing-out, which also implies that everything has many side-effects.

You may object that you actually mean "detrimental side-effects from toxic substances involved". Even that is present in Ayurvedic remedies. Many Chyavanprashes (Amla paste that is recommended and taken by millions and availabe in a zillion brands)have silver-foil spread over it. That is heavily toxic, and most Indians will eat it with delight thinking how beneficial it must be. Often mercury is used in Leghyams (pastes), one of the most toxic substances there is. I do not even want to name all the environmental toxins entering a substance during its processing. Not to mention the bird-shit, the flies and what else.

Am I too hard on Ayurveda? As a researcher in Indian indigenous medicine systems, not just Ayurveda, for many years, I have visited so many practitioners and seen types of approaches, that I may at least claim to have a certain degree of direct knowledge with the things I am saying. But, of course, I leave it open how findings are assimilated and made use of.

Faith is an important factor in any treatment method. If somemone wants to believe, I would let anyone believe what they want or need. But on an intellectual level we can analyse and point out what is fact and what is fiction. It is human that we tend to surround facts of life and death with a lot of fiction. And disease is a matter of life and death in the long run. The hype that is created around Ayurveda in the West (and a bit also in India) is a lot of fiction around a few well grounded facts which this valuable ancient knowledge-system has given to the world.

shashank.aggarwal

I agree that it is marketed the wrong way...and the things that are marketed cannot be afforded by an average Indian...

But when we talk about its use in India, even an Indian would not know how much we use it in our daily life ?

All our food habits, routines, granny remedies they are based on principal of Ayurveda...even though adulteration is coming into them however they are still followed not as a medicinal system, but as a normal way of life..

atala

I think a way that Ayurveda would be helpful for you is if you read some books on Ayurveda and learn about your prakruti which means which Doshas are predominant in your body. Then you learn to see which types of food affect you in which way. Which are cooling, which are heating and so on. How to prepare and eat a balanced diet, balanced in terms of tastes and so on. You cannot get this sort of understanding by seeing a doctor.

Mr. Triguna labels most Westerners as predominantly Pitta types. From hearing what type you are supposed to be, you do not get to any deeper understanding of yourself, and cannot change your diet and other factors properly.

From the fact that you think that visiting some practitioner in India would bring you benefits, one can conclude that you expect some result within two or three months, isn't it? Would you call that an instant cure? For a longstanding chronic condition that would be instant in deed.

Yet the reality may well be that you could be happy to experience any slight improvement at all. There are many Ayurvedic people ready in India to give you a treatment that may cost you upto a hundred US dollars a month, which you may take for half a year or a year, and you do not feel any better at all. If one thing did not work after so many months, they would give you something else. It is mostly a haphazard situation, whether you happen to find a practitioner who knows his trade really well (well, actually not the trade but the remedies), and they all claim to do that, and meet the person who is the one appropriate for your particular condition.

atala

Okay I think I know what you mean. And I do agree with your mentioning all the home-remedies, even though most of them are technically not Ayurveda-based. But I do understand the way in which you characterize them as "Ayurveda".

Another thing are the food habits that you mention, some of which are a bit questionable. Like no water in vegetables but only oil. And all the sweets. Diabetes becomes increasingly the most deadliest disease in India, and kidney failure is predominant because of much too much use of salt. And the Chillies... But it sure tastes well, Indian food.