Ayurveda and Transdisciplinary Approaches: A Way Forward towards Personalized and Preventive Medicine

Abstract

Swathı et al.: Ayurveda and Transdisciplinary Approaches Ayurveda is an age-old medicinal practice gaining global acceptance because of its personalized approaches toward healthcare. The current review focusses on the concepts of Ayurveda and the science behind the traditional knowledge of Ayurveda by combining transdisciplinary approaches, enabling an evidence-based framework. The foremost principle of Ayurveda is to understand tridoshas (Vata, Kapha, Pitta) and Prakriti (inherent nature of individual) to determine the individual's susceptibility to diseases and treatment regimen. In the clinical field, reverse pharmacology can unravel the mechanism of documented Ayurvedic medications, thus facilitating knowledge transfer. Ayurveda positively impacts both phenotypes (Deha Prakriti) and genotypes (Janma Prakriti) through epigenetics by addressing lifestyle behaviour, diet, stress and environmental factors.As a result, the modern biology and Ayurveda will better correlate and understand each other through the Ayurgenomics approach, which outlines the substantial variances in biochemical and genome-wide analysis of differential prakriti phenotype. The protein targets and lead molecule of an ayurvedic drug can be retrieved from traditional knowledge-based information databases involving Ayurinformatics. The impact of Ayurveda's lifestyle and diet principle can be explored through Ayurnutrigenomics, which untangles how Ahara (Diet) and Pathya (diet-dietetics) foster wellness by influencing the phenotype and genetic makeup of an individual with respect to tridoshas. Tridoshas has its own house for the gut flora, underlining the significant association between Prakriti and the microbiome's composition as well as psychobiotics. Incorporating these approaches in Ayurveda could make a paradigm shift between traditional and modern medicine by providing scientific validation to Ayurvedic medicines, thereby aiding health management.