When you have two different ways of looking at nature, none of them is right or wrong. it’s just a matter of looking from different perspectives. Both of them are true from its own perspective. If we make a full acritical integration, as many people say, we lose the essence of both systems, instead if we establish a collaboration maintaining their individuality it will be possible to find new paradigms – that’s good for both systems. However, to overcome the differences we really need to find something that’s a breakthrough in science.
Now we are participating in a study with the Charitè University in Berlin on a very pragmatic problem – osteoarthritis of the knees. For this we redesigned the clinical study protocol completely so that it could match the needs of both Modern and Ayurvedic medicine. We presented the new concept of Collaborative Medicine and Science (CoMS) 2 years ago at the 6th World Ayurveda Congress. This is something that gives more possibilities to evolution than just integration. The word integration is good but it has a double meaning: “two things that become one” and “ work together with the same aim”.
For our purposes the right definition is the second one. To work together collaborating for the same target. But when we speak about integration this word can be misinterpreted. It’s better to make another definition. Instead of speaking of integrative medicine we can speak about collaborative medicine and science. There are many possibilities of breakthrough in this area.
We made the initiative INDRA – International Network for the Development of Research of Ayurveda – The real meaning of this initiative is to coordinate research at international level in a coherent way. Because now the research in Ayurveda is very scattered. We don’t have to always demonstrate that Ayurveda is working. What we need is to demonstrate how and why it is working. If we do this, then we can do it along with the modern science because the answers that we get from Ayurveda are also useful for modern science.
New concept of health
A few years ago we started working on the concept of health. This topic has been chosen because it’s important to define a transcultural baseline of such a basic concept like health. In 2013 we published a book “An Integrated View on Health and Well-being”. We asked doctors and scientists from both ayurvedic and modern system to find the way to define health in such a way that this definition would find a further agreement between the systems.
For Modern Medicine health is “the absence of disease”, for WHO health is “not only absence of disease but a state of complete physical, psychological and mental wellness” which is impossible to reach. The word “complete” is very difficult. The conclusion of our book is that health can be defined as resilience – the capacity to adapt to the change of the environment. And the state of disease is when you lose your capacity of adaptation and recovery.
This definition of health is very suitable for both Ayurveda and the modern medicine. This definition really changes the perspective of the modern medicine. Thinking of health as of the resilience completely changes the way of managing not only disease but also prevention, aging, disabilities. For example, in modern medicine a person without a leg is considered to be handicapped. But thinking in terms of resilience, a person without a leg can be more resilient than a person with two legs. This changes the perspective of health.
Dr. Antonio Morandi, the president of the Ayurvedic Medical Association of Italy.
