PANCHAKARMA

 What is panchakarma and its relevance

 Ayurvedic treatment is divided into two 

1.     Symptomatic treatment (samana)

2.     Detoxification treatment (shodhana)

Panchakarma belongs to shodhana or detoxification therapy of Ayurveda which is more effective and prevents the recurrence of diseases. 

Nature has given us different routes to expel toxins from our body, like voiding, urination, sweating and in in emergency situations vomiting. Our liver, kidneys and rectum take part in this natural process. But some toxins which body cannot expell remain in our system including deeper tissues and liver. So shodhana or detoxification therapy works in expelling these toxins.

But how is it possible to reach deep seated tissues and clean them? This is where the importance of fatty acids come into play. 

Ghee is a milk-fat product from India, very few materials can penetrate deeper tissues of our body, ghee is one among them. It is believed that ghee can even breech the blood-brain barrier. 

A copious amount of medicated ghee is administered to patient/subject in metered doses day by day, increasing the amount daily. Inside our body ghee molecule can penetrate the cell walls better. Most of biotoxins are soluble better in ghee medium and they come out to alimentary canal as waste product. When the situation is conducive for their explusion, a induced purgation, enema or vomiting is done in the patients. Procedures like medicated enema needs more sessions to get full result.

Apart from the oil administration internally (orally) patients are also given oil massages followed by sweating. This is to facilitate the expulsion of toxins near to skin through sweating. An Ayurveda massage is incomplete if sweating (steam bath) is not done.

Panchakarma is a time-consuming procedure as it takes few days to complete and there should be some restrictions on the diet too.

Historic Importance: One of the limitations of any indigenous or herbal system is that most of the medications are given enterically, or through mouth. And ingested medicine undergoes the same digestive process like our food. So many medicines which are in protein nature lose their molecular structure and cannot reach site of action.

In olden days nasya (nasal infusion) and vasti (enema) could bypass the alimentary canal by their entry through nasal and rectal entry where medicines could reach blood stream in its original form.

Any medication given via nose can reach the site of action fast too, in earlier days nasya was an important treatment in treating snake bite as anti-poison herbs could reach the blood stream soon through nasal mucosa. 

Apart from above mentioned benefits panchakarma procedures can be done to healthy people if they wish to do rejuvenative type of treatment.

In yoga also there are some detoxification therapies called as 'shat kriyas'

Yoga considers our lungs has an excretory function too where toxic gasses are expelled after respiration. Some pranayama practices mentioned in yoga are purely detoxifying in nature.

It expells mental toxins too!