Translational Potential of Ayurveda Prakriti: Concepts in the Area of Personalized Medicine

The term “personalized medicine” has acquired a new meaning in western medicine based on the relatively recent growth in health, wellness and disease prevention approaches. Traditional practices that emphasized uniform, standardized treatments for illnesses or pathologies en masse have given way as modern genetics revolutionizes disease prevention and wellness for the individual. Ayurveda, however, has emphasized individual, personalized medicine and wellness since its foundation thousands of years ago. Western medicine lacks concepts pertaining to prakriti that recognize a person’s inherent individuality and the doshas, Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, that are the basis for individual behavior, physiology, and spirituality and, hence, the health, wellness, or predisposition to illnesses for each person. Ayurgenetics represents the union of western science with the philosophy of eastern traditional Ayurvedic medicine. From this merger, personalized medicine across many cultures can encompass the philosophy and spirituality of Ayurveda while utilizing modern western science and technology. Application of technologies in genomics, diagnostics, pharmacology and therapeutics in the context of prakriti for western medicine focuses on the individual, representing a new frontier in medicine, health, and wellness. The east welcomes the west to personalized medicine.