[MUSIC] I'm honored to introduce you with Dr. Anju Kumar, who is the Deputy Ambassador of India in Israel and also a medical doctor. And we are fortunate that you came to this ecological garden in the Technion Institute of Technology. >> Thank you so much for inviting me, Dr. Dedan. And I'm privileged and happy to be here. And it is such a lovely setting, and such a lovely morning. And I'm very happy to be here and talking to you. >> Thank you again. And I would like to ask you about Ayurveda, this is the topic of our session. And to ask you to what degree Ayurveda is part of the medical system in India? Is it considered an alternative practice, or complementary, or integrated in a sense? >> See, Ayurveda is an integral part of the national health delivery system in India. So we have special Ayurvedic hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, people use it as a household remedy also. And we have co-existing, co-located Ayurvedic facilities in practically all department. Like the primary health center, the dispensaries, the district hospitals. So it is integrated with our conventional delivery system of the health, as far as the government is concerned. Now then there are big private hospitals also, by and large they all have Ayurvedic department there. And we use Ayurveda, as I said, for a simple remedies initially, when we grew up as children we are all exposed to that as a culture. And then we use it as a integrative system for chronic diseases and several lifestyle diseases. So it's a huge prevalence of Ayurveda in India. >> And I understand that from a national point of view you're very, very advanced in deciding that Ayurveda and other health systems in India are researched and that are considered as a special office in the government, AYUSH. Can you elaborate a little bit about what AYUSH is and how you decided to promote it into that high place of hierarchy of medicine? >> Mm-hm. See, you can understand the importance that we give to Ayurveda and the Indian systems of medicine by the simple fact that we have a central ministry of AYUSH, which is called the Ministry of AYUSH. Which is basically an acronym that stands for Ayurveda, Unani medicine, yoga and and the other system, homeopathy. So it is a system of Indian medicines that we use very commonly in our setup. See for example, to give you statistics, we have about 400,000 practitioners of yoga, and about 800,000 practitioners of Indian systems of medicine. We have about 3,000 colleges, over 3,000 colleges of Ayurvedic studies in India. We have universities, we have post-doctoral research institutes in India. We have about, on an average, about 250 million people visit Ayurvedic centers in India for Ayurvedic treatment, for all kinds of ailments, all kinds of prevention, and all kinds of therapies. Yeah, so the scale is very high. And we have always believed in the concept of Ayurveda. There is lot of work going on. And the oldest studies that we have in Ayurveda, the colleges and universities, they all are governed by the government bodies, the Indian Counsel for Medical Research. And we have separate counsels for homeopathy, separate counsels for other systems of medicine. So they all validate the studies that have been performed by the students, and then they become practitioners. >> I see. >> Yeah. >> Our course is more focused on cancer care. I would like to ask you to what degree patients with cancer in India have accessibility to Ayurveda? I mean, do patients with cancer seek Ayurveda? And if they do that, is it on private basis or part of the governmental health system? >> See, as I told you, the Ayurvedic system is integral part of our healthy delivery system. So if a patient, be it of cancer or any other chronic ailment, if he goes to a clinic he can choose for himself to have either the conventional medicine or the Ayurvedic system of medicine, or the other Indian system of medicine, or combine both of them. So he has that insurance. And secondly, yes, there is a lot of requirement and a lot of attraction for Ayurveda in our system in terms of the patients of cancer, prolonged diseases, and of course, as you said, cancer is the main issue here. Which is the conventional medicine has been able to understand and diagnose cancer to an extent only. There are other aspects which are still not decipherable. So what Ayurveda does is it looks into the root causes of cancer. And the researchers have found that the lifestyle and the dietary intake, they have a major role to either prevent or curb the side effects or the intensity of the cancer once it has happened. And many people are getting this treatment either through the co-located conventional and Ayurvedic centers themselves, or through separate Ayurvedic clinics. So if I understand correctly, you perceive Ayurveda with a role of prevention, either in terms of primary prevention, of people that wouldn't be diagnosed with cancer, or as secondary prevention. I mean, to minimize the risk of recurrence by adopting lifestyle changes which are weaved within the school of Health. >> Yeah that is basically the idea. We feel that [INAUDIBLE] can play a very significant role in following things. One is to prevent the occurrence through proper dietary intake and through, because there are some people who are genetically predisposed or some people who show pre-malignant lesions. So can actually aim to cure that part and also prevent recurrences through modified diet and medicines and everything. And it can also improve the overall well being and the quality of life. It is a holistic well being of the human being that can be improved through the Ayurvedic practices. So, some of them have been very well researched, some are in the process of being researched. >> Our experience here with patients that come from all kinds of communities, from the Jewish and Arab communities, is the patients with cancer expect sometimes, there's attention, in their expectations, some of them expect us as integrity therapists or traditional medicine therapists to provide herbs that would stop the disease, cure the disease, and prolong survival and so on, on one hand. And the other expectation is to promote the well being to lessen, to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy and so on. What is your feeling regarding patients in India? I mean, are they seeking Ayurvedic herbs or lifestyle changes, because of this cure pull or because of the quality of life pull? >> See, I think it is very difficult to segregate the two things. I think when a patient is diagnosed with a very serious kind of condition, which all cancers are by and large, the patient feels that he should live longer, he should live a healthier life. Because see, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, they themselves are already challenging. They may prolong your life a little bit, but they may end up ruining the total overall quality of life. What Ayurved does is that it can reduce the side effects. And the dietary changes and the lifestyle changes, they can have a psychological effect also on the patient for the overall well being. So that's the, and of course that doesn't mean that Ayurved has no curative role. Many times, the researchers have shown that Ayurved has been, the Ayurvedic practices I did individually or as a complimentary system of medicine has been able to prevent reoccurrence, reduce the side effects and maybe prolong the lifespan for a considerable time >> Yes, so it's a complexity of quality of life, of cure, and so on. And actually if I would see oncologists in India, would some of them have any idea how are you Ayurveda is practiced, do they have any collaboration within the hospital, with Ayurvedic physicians? Or is there segregation between, you either pick that or that? I mean, is it side -by-side systems, or is it incorporated in the same room, let's say? >> See what is happening in India, not only there is a validation of studies on Ayurveda, there's lot of research going on to understand the efficacies. So I can give you few basic examples. Say, for example, for the genetically predisposed people or the high risk people, or the premalignant conditions, research has been done with curcumin. And it has been found that it is a highly efficacious method. It has been seen that [FOREIGN] has been very important as far as concerning the side effects of oral mucositis is concerned, for the patients who have undergone radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, expecially for the head and neck region. So those kinds of research are happening, and then the conventional practitioner is naturally attracted to such kinds of studies and is very happy to offer that to his patients. I want to ask you again about the more global perspective. I mean, Ayurveda is so interesting and fascinating with its structured diagnosis and treatment, it's really a systematic school of health. Is there any interest now, in India, to establish collaboration with other systematic, traditional systematic methods like Chinese medicine or Middle Eastern medicine, trying to build up across Asia something that would be an really integration of several traditional medicine schools as part of the oncology realm, part of supportive cancer care. >> See right now, there has been a lot of focus on integrity of medicine lately because patients have realized that the allopathic medicine and the conventional system of medicine has not been able to solve many of the problems, in terms of either cure of ensuring the quality of life. For that reason, as all over the world, in India also, I read in the Indian systems of medicine are becoming more and more popular. In realizing this, of course we had this establishment of this Ministry of AYUSH, and also now there is All India Institute of Ayurveda, which is the apex institute for all Ayurvedic research and all new drug clinical trials and everything. And now what has happened is, because of this institute coming up, there's a lot of international collaboration happening. For example the National Institute of Health of United States, they have joined hand with this group, and they want to With this institute, newly created institute. And they want to research on drugs and see the efficacy of herbs and single herb lines, and the medicines and the herbal metallic compounds. How they can be effective for the treatment as well as a rehabilitation kind of therapies for a patient. And so slowly it is increasing. But right now, there are other thing, for example, as I mentioned earlier, lifestyle change and dietary change. And there is a therapy in Ayurveda which is very integral to Ayurveda called panchakarma. When you detoxify the body with all kinds of herbs and that prolongs longevity and can also cure maybe cancer. But enough work has not been done on that, enough clinical trials, enough research has not been done, and we are in the process of doing that. And once the credibility of Ayurveda is established internationally, and I'm sure the work is going on in that direction. Once it is done then I think the next step would naturally be that to integrate it further with other systems which offer a advantage to the patient in terms of quality of life and longevity of life. >> So what is your vision regarding research, medical education, clinical practice? If we focus on cancer care regarding Ayurveda, where would you like to see it in the next years? >> Yeah, so as I said, my government is very strongly focused on promoting of Indian System of Medicine. Not because it is an Indian system, because we believe in it. We have seen the results, for example, yoga is also one of the Indian systems of therapies that we have seen, and we have seen the results. And it is a very practical result, you can see it. I challenge anybody to practice yoga for 21 days and feel the same as he was feeling 21 days ago, because things changed. The mindset changed. And in today's world, the way we are leading our lives is, lot of stress we are accumulating, lot of junk we are consuming. A lot of unwanted environmental inputs we are giving to our body. So Ayurveda and and the other traditional systems, they want you to come back to the nature, and look for solutions there. So I think we as a country, and I personally, although I'm a medical graduate, a conventional medical graduate. But I still feel that there is a lot we can gain from there. And as I said, we have established this new institute which is an ethics body. And so my government is totally focused, and I think coming here, more and more people will get aware and get conscious of availability of such remedies and they will see the efficacy, and may be benefited by them, hopefully. >> So if I understand right, your interest is not just on the molecular level or the specific ingredient of herbs that can be anti-cancer that way or another. But you see the context, not just the content of different herbs that can potentially impact cancer cells. But the context of lifestyle, the context of systematic prospective to healing if I understand right. It's more than specific herbs that can be used here and there, as turmeric, ginger, licorice and so on, ashwagandha and so on, it's more than that, isn't it? >> Yeah, it's more than that, but the two are not mutually exclusive, in the sense while there is research going on the specificity of herbs. And the molecules that are found to be anti-cancerous. For example, holy basil, the we call it, it has been researched and it has been seen that this has the capacity to reduce the level of extrusion in the body. So if that is a cancer that is being stimulated by estrogen that is definite possibility that it will kind of subdue it. So those kind of research that going on, and I'm sure in the future as more and more people realize the relevance of it, more investment will come, more researchers will be attracted towards this. And more studies will be conducted to prove how efficacious the medicines could be for the treatment of cancer. But right now, what we are seeing is even the overall wellbeing of a patient can be highly improved by the use of Ayurvedic medicines in collaboration with the conventional system of medicine. >> So with this saying of integration, and complementary, and notions of the two systems, the traditional one and the conventional ones. I would like to thank you for participating in this interview and coming here, thank you very much. >> I would like to thank you for taking this initiative and helping us. Because it's very important, see, we understand, we have grown up with Ayurveda. But it is very important for us, for people to understand how it can benefit the humankind. And thank you so much for inviting me. >> Thank you very much. [MUSIC]
