Dear colleague,
We have taken up a research project entitled Development of Protocols for Systematic Reviews in Evidence Based Ayurveda, sponsored by NSTMIS division of Department of Science and Technology. This is being taken up by our Institute mainly to develop systematic review protocols for evidence based Ayurveda. In this connection we developed a questionnaire to consolidate the opinion of some of ayurveda workers. Kindly find enclosed questionnaire on research methodology for conducting studies in Ayurveda. Please spare your valuable time to go through the questionnaire and indicate your appropriate responses to the items included in the same. I request you to return it at your earliest convenience.
As part of the project, it is also proposed to conduct a workshop to discuss the methodology for systematic reviews of Ayurveda literature. The responses obtained through this questionnaire from selected practicing doctors/researchers in the field of Ayurveda will be discussed in the workshop. We plan to invite selected respondents to participate.
I hope you would appreciate the need to create a collective opinion and discuss the same to work out framework for a methodology to conduct systematic reviews of ayurvedic literature.
Expecting a timely favourable response in this regard
Please furnish the information from downloaded prescribed form – [download the form]
Yours faithfully,
Dr. S.R. Narahari
Director, Institute Of Applied Dermatology, KMC VI/1665, Nayaks Road,Kasaragod. 671121, Ph: 04994-230116, 227084, Website: www.indiandermatology.org
The importance of being inert
After more than four decades of testing in tandem with other drugs, placebo gained approval for prescription use from the Food and Drug Administration Monday.
“For years, scientists have been aware of the effectiveness of placebo in treating a surprisingly wide range of conditions,” said Dr. Jonathan Bergen of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “It was time to provide doctors with this often highly effective option.” Those two paragraphs are the opening of a satirical report fabricated by the staff of The Onion, a humorous “news” website. (For the entire spoof, see the HSI e-alert “Wonder Drug” from 10/23/04 at www.hsibaltimore.com.) The sly joke here, of course, is that placebos used in clinical trials are completely inert — just “sugar pills.”
Right?
Most people would never think to question the contents of a placebo. After all, everyone knows that placebos have no active ingredients. But if a placebo could talk, it would respond just like any con man caught with his hand in your pocket: “Who ME? Would I lie to you?”
Sugar coating
There was a time when doctors sometimes prescribed phony medication to their patients who they regarded as hypochondriacs. They called the pills “placebo” (a Latin word meaning “I shall please”), and when the patients reported positive results the concept of the placebo effect was born. These days, placebo pills are used in clinical trials to measure the true effect of a drug or supplement. They are thought to be made of inert substances designed to have no effect. But consider this: there’s no such thing really as an inert substance.
For instance, placebo pills are commonly called sugar pills. But is sugar inert? Far from it, of course. If you take a sugar pill, your body will have a reaction, especially if you happen to have an insulin disorder. But if you’re given that same pill as part of a drug research trial, your reaction becomes a factor in the research.
That may seem like nothing (what real difference could a tiny boost of sugar make?), but a little sugar is not the issue here. Far from it.
A dirty little secret
When a pharmaceutical company tests a product in a placebo-controlled trial, where do you suppose they get placebo pills? Do they place an order with a placebo pill manufacturer? Or does Nestle’s candy company run a side business that supplies researchers with sugar pills? The fact is, drug companies make their own placebo pills for research purposes, and for each individual study they create a unique placebo formula — sometimes including ingredients that match ingredients in the drugs being tested. But the contents of placebos are never revealed.
Does that sound “inert” or “inactive” to you? Suddenly the idea of a “sugar pill” doesn’t seem so innocent anymore.
Before conducting human trials for drugs, pharmaceutical companies are often fully aware of many of the side effects of the products they’re testing. So, for instance, if a drug is known to cause dizziness and nausea, the drug company running the test may want the placebo to have the same side effects. And they have an explanation for this. They say the placebo should mimic the drug being tested so that the control group of the experiment will have side effects similar to the placebo group. Without that, they claim, the results of a blind study would be compromised.
There are plenty of gray areas to debate in that logic, but for the moment let’s focus on the idea of what they call an “active placebo,” designed to mimic the side effects of a tested drug. And with that in mind let’s look at an advertising campaign for a popular allergy medication. In the TV ads, when the moment arrives to list the side effects, the voice-over says, “The most common side effects — including headache, drowsiness, fatigue and dry mouth — occurred about as often as they did with a sugar pill.”
A sugar pill? Really? Just what kind of “sugar pill” were the researchers using that caused headache, drowsiness, fatigue and dry mouth? Sounds like a sugar pill with a little something added. But they want you to believe that this medication will produce side effects no more serious than what you’d get with a TicTac.
Inertia standardized
Dr. Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and has been actively fighting the research establishment’s claim that placebos are inactive substances. Dr. Golomb wants scientists to provide a list of placebo ingredients so trial results can be properly evaluated.
To level the playing field, Dr. Golomb suggests that drug companies start divulging all placebo ingredients. She also recommends that standardized placebos should be developed so that side effects will be uniform and predictable. This would go a long way toward eliminating the pharmaceutical industry’s cynical manipulation of test data.
As you might suspect, the drug companies are not very receptive to Dr. Golomb’s idea of letting go of this aspect of product testing that they have full control over. Meanwhile, what about physicians and researchers who work independently from the pharmaceutical giants—do they know the truth about placebos supplied by drug companies? Right now it’s hard to tell just how widespread this knowledge is. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the placebo effect is defined as “desirable
physiological or psychological effects attributable to the use of inert medications.” From that statement it would appear that the NIH either believes that placebos are genuinely inactive, or they’re not saying. Or maybe they’re just feeling drowsy, dizzy, irritable and nauseous from a sugar pill someone gave them.
Source:
Chemistry and Industry, Vol. 21, Pg. 900, 1995
Tantra yoga is not that simple. Various people wrote the experiences … look forward at Xpression of [ayurvedaresearch.wordpress.com]
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AYURVEDA (NIA)
Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, Madhav Vilas Palace, Amer Road, Jaipur-302002
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Learning Ayurveda is not that simple. The theories of Ayurveda are always complicated and application and practice of them are really Herculean task. Many teacher may be influenced you to learn and practice Ayurveda. You may write about such influenced Ayurvedic personalities in the box below. Please take pains to participate in the poll below.
My successful learning Ayurveda is because of …
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The importance of being inert
