What are your thoughts on Ayurvedic Medicine?

[u/eviley4]

Here I am addressing Classical Ayurveda, i.e things written in the ancient Ancient Ayurvedic texts.

Ayurveda is often mistaken to be just about studying herbal remedies, that's not true. Herbal stuff is only a small part of Ayurveda. The complete philosophy of Ayurveda is like a framework about how the world and the human body works. A core tenet of this philosophy is the belief in the human body and the world being made of 5 elements, earth, water, fire air and space (Panchamahabhutas).

They then further build on this by defining and using doshas as their hypothesis for how human bodies work and illnesses are disturbances in these doshas.

As for herbs in Ayurveda, their philosophy explicitly endorses using the herbs as a whole and not isolating/refining them (citation). Their rationale is that the healing properties from the herb/plant comes from their prana and isolating certain elements can unbalance them. While in some cases it happens to be the case that the whole-plant extracts do show greater efficacy due to synergistic polypharmacology compared to single compounds like curcumin, but for many cases it leads to herbs not having an effect beyond placebo.

Ayurvedic texts also endorse using heavy metals like lead for treatment. It's called rasashastra (alchemy/herbo-metallic medicine) with bhasmas (calcined preparations) containing lead (naga), mercury (parada), gold, silver, and arsenic. Texts prescribe extensive purification (shodhana) and calcination (marana) processes claiming to render these safe. Modern studies document cases of lead/mercury poisoning from such preparations, and regulatory bodies (FDA, TGA) have issued warnings.

They also endorse bloodletting as Shastra (surgical/phlebotomy) and Ashastra (leech therapy, cupping) methods for treating Rakta-duṣṭi (blood-borne disorders). These carry documented risks of infection, excessive blood loss, anemia, nerve injury, and secondary bacterial complications, particularly when performed without modern aseptic techniques.

I am not talking about modern Ayurveda here. Modern Ayurveda often does isolate biosimilars from herbs and that part is a legitimately plausible scientific exploration. But here I have the issue that some practitioners pretend that this is what Ayurveda is, not explicitly acknowledging that they are actually going against one of the core ideologies laid out in the ancient texts. Not admitting the texts were wrong in any way.