WHAT ARE AUTOIMMUNE CONDITIONS AND WHY DO WE CALL
DR. AKIL’S APPROACH TO HEALING THEM GROUNDBREAKING?
The simplest way to describe an autoimmune disease is that it occurs when the body’s immune system starts attacking a particular organ, causing it to malfunction. Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome are all auto-immune diseases. If we take type 1 Diabetes as an example, here the immune system is activated to destroy the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, leading to insulin deficit and the body’s inability to digest sugar. Similarly, in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system starts attacking the small joints of the hand, such as the wrist and the knuckles, leading to stiffness, joint pain and decreased flexibility.
If you google any of these conditions right now and visit conventional medical sites, you will see a disclaimer on each that these autoimmune disorders have no cure.
But the great news for us is we don’t need to restrict ourselves only to a conventional allopathic approach!
WHY DOES DR. AKIL’S APPROACH WORK?
Dr. Akil does not focus on suppressing symptoms of disease, which Western medicine often does, but on fixing the root cause of disease.
We are used to viewing wellness through the lens of symptom and treatment – we fall sick, we consume pills. But Ayurvedic and yogic sciences treat wellness as a way of life that transcends boundaries of the soul and mind, putting the entire machinery of your being into working rhythm, whether you show symptoms or not. Unlike the medicine most of us have grown up with, Ayurveda is proactive, not reactive.
And this brings us to another, very important question.
Western medicine tells us there is no cure for autoimmune disease, that these are life-long conditions which will degenerate over time.
Dr Akil’s famous gas pedal analogy helps us answer this question. Think of the body as a car, with the immune system controlled by the gas pedal and the brake. Autoimmune disease occurs when the gas pedal is pressed all the way down to the floor and the immune system is out-of-control.
Western medications like steroids and methotrexate suppress the immune system by slamming on the brakes. But the gas pedal is still pressed, meaning that the underlying disease process is still active.
And this means that the disease resurfaces when you stop the medicines.
The Ayurvedic approach on the other hand, takes the foot off the gas pedal by removing the triggers for autoimmune activity.
This gives us an entirely new and exciting way of looking at how disease progresses and can be reversed.