By Harold Wiley
Star Staff Writer
Muncie - In an office visit, the first thing Dr. John C. Peterson does is take the patient's pulse.
At first glance, that's just standard procedure. But when Peterson does it, he's looking for more than the strength and rate of the heartbeat.
He's checking the relative states of the patient's Vata, Pitta and Kapha. He's searching for Vikriti.
It sounds like mumbo jumbo, but Peterson says it's part of a medical technique that has stood the test of time - maybe 8,000 years.
Peterson is a practitioner of Ayurveda, an ancient form of medicine. It began in the Himalayas as long as 80 centuries ago.
With one foot firmly entrenched in traditional Western medicine, he straddles the gap between East and West - and he's finding more and more patients who are willing to stand with him.
'Knowledge of life'
Ayurveda (pronounced eye-yur-VAY-dah) means "knowledge
of life" or "science of life," and it was introduced in
the United States in 1985 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru who brought
Transcendental Meditation to the Western world decades ago.
Peterson's practice is part of Family Practice Associates in Muncie. Peterson, 40, finished his pre-med studies in Grinnell College in Iowa, and went to medical school at the the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He finished his general-practice residency in 1977, and started practicing that year.
He says he had been interested in Vedaic tradition of knowledge for years, and in 1972, he learned Transcendental Meditation.
"Because of my exposure to that tradition, I started looking to see what Vedaic tradition had to say about medicine. And that's Ayurveda."
In 1984, he consulted with several Ayurveda practitioners in the United States - people who could practice only if they had conventional physicians like Peterson observing their work.
One of the practitioners, D.B. Triguna, so impressed Peterson with the accuracy of his diagnoses - simply by studying the patients' pulses - that Peterson decided, "This knowledge is so profound that,
Star Staff Writer
Muncie - In an office visit, the first thing Dr. John C. Peterson does is take the patient's pulse.
At first glance, that's just standard procedure. But when Peterson does it, he's looking for more than the strength and rate of the heartbeat.
He's checking the relative states of the patient's Vata, Pitta and Kapha. He's searching for Vikriti.
It sounds like mumbo jumbo, but Peterson says it's part of a medical technique that has stood the test of time - maybe 8,000 years.
Peterson is a practitioner of Ayurveda, an ancient form of medicine. It began in the Himalayas as long as 80 centuries ago.
With one foot firmly entrenched in traditional Western medicine, he straddles the gap between East and West - and he's finding more and more patients who are willing to stand with him.
Peterson's practice is part of Family Practice Associates in Muncie. Peterson, 40, finished his pre-med studies in Grinnell College in Iowa, and went to medical school at the the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He finished his general-practice residency in 1977, and started practicing that year.
He says he had been interested in Vedaic tradition of knowledge for years, and in 1972, he learned Transcendental Meditation.
"Because of my exposure to that tradition, I started looking to see what Vedaic tradition had to say about medicine. And that's Ayurveda."
In 1984, he consulted with several Ayurveda practitioners in the United States - people who could practice only if they had conventional physicians like Peterson observing their work.
One of the practitioners, D.B. Triguna, so impressed Peterson with the accuracy of his diagnoses - simply by studying the patients' pulses - that Peterson decided, "This knowledge is so profound that,
In 1985, Peterson took a course in Ayurveda medicine at Maharishi International University in Iowa. Then he started using Ayurveda techniques in his own medical practice. Today, he says, about 1,000 of his patients are undergoing varying degrees of Ayurveda treatment.
In Ayurveda, a person's physical, mental and spiritual constitution is believed to have been determined at birth by the combination, in varying proportions, of three doshas, or governing principles:
· Vata - the principle of space and air, lightness and movement.
· Pitta - the principle of fire or heat, including metabolism and enzyme systems.
· Kapha - the principle of water and earth including structural components of the body: stability, thickness.
As long as the proportion of doshas stays the same as at birth, problems are unlikely to arise. But when any of the doshas changes, an imbalance occurs, and illness results.
Peterson says the pulse examination is the most important part of Ayurvedaic diagnosis. It is done with three fingers pressed against the inside of the patient's wrist, on the same side as the patient's thumb. Each of the three fingers senses one of the three doshas - and each dosha has five sub-doshas that become apparent with lessened finger pressure.
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A Vata person will have a light, thin build, an aversion to cold weather and irregular hunger and digestion.
If it's Pitta, the
person will have, among other characteristics, a moderate build, an aversion
to hot weather and an inability to skip meals.
A Kapha type will have a solid, heavy build, slow digestion and mild hunger and a tranquil personality.
If the dosha proportions have changed since birth - because of stress, a polluted environment, bad diet or psychological trauma - the resulting imbalances, Vikriti, will cause health problems. After the Ayurveda practitioner determines what imbalances are troubling the patient, treatment is twofold.
The first element, as Peterson puts it, is "reestablishing the memory of wholeness." This involves the use of Transcendental Meditation. "The patient directly experiences wholeness, which is the source of healing and reestablishes balance."
The second part is physical: The patient changes diet or exercise habits, uses nutritional supplements or undergoes oil massage. Many treatments function through the senses - Ayurveda uses taste, aroma, music and color therapies.
Strange as those treatments sound, Peterson says they're compatible with conventional Western medicine.
For example, a person with an excess of Kapha might be ill because of obesity. That patient will eat Vata-type foods - a lighter diet that will help him lose weight.
Treats fatigue, asthma
Peterson says he has used Ayurveda to treat patients for
fatigue, depression, asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis
and digestive ailments. He says they've responded well to treatment.
"Some, who had little hope of improvement through traditional medicine, have no symptoms now."
Peterson says Ayurveda is undergoing scientific scrutiny, with favorable results. He says he believes that, in the next 10 to 15 years, Ayurveda will be as widely accepted as other non-traditional procedures - acupuncture, for example.
He says that when he considers any medical methodology, he applies three tests: "Does it make sense experientially - does it work? Has it undergone scientific scrutiny? Has it withstood the test of time?"
When he considers Ayurveda, he says, the answer to each question is yes.
A Kapha type will have a solid, heavy build, slow digestion and mild hunger and a tranquil personality.
If the dosha proportions have changed since birth - because of stress, a polluted environment, bad diet or psychological trauma - the resulting imbalances, Vikriti, will cause health problems. After the Ayurveda practitioner determines what imbalances are troubling the patient, treatment is twofold.
The first element, as Peterson puts it, is "reestablishing the memory of wholeness." This involves the use of Transcendental Meditation. "The patient directly experiences wholeness, which is the source of healing and reestablishes balance."
The second part is physical: The patient changes diet or exercise habits, uses nutritional supplements or undergoes oil massage. Many treatments function through the senses - Ayurveda uses taste, aroma, music and color therapies.
Strange as those treatments sound, Peterson says they're compatible with conventional Western medicine.
For example, a person with an excess of Kapha might be ill because of obesity. That patient will eat Vata-type foods - a lighter diet that will help him lose weight.
"Some, who had little hope of improvement through traditional medicine, have no symptoms now."
Peterson says Ayurveda is undergoing scientific scrutiny, with favorable results. He says he believes that, in the next 10 to 15 years, Ayurveda will be as widely accepted as other non-traditional procedures - acupuncture, for example.
He says that when he considers any medical methodology, he applies three tests: "Does it make sense experientially - does it work? Has it undergone scientific scrutiny? Has it withstood the test of time?"
When he considers Ayurveda, he says, the answer to each question is yes.