Cultural perspectives on health and well-being
Various approaches to achieving and maintaining optimal health and well-being have developed in different societies throughout human history. Long-standing, traditional cultures around the world have tended to emphasize holistic concepts, such as equilibrium, balance and harmony with oneself, nature and the spiritual realm. Integrated health systems evolved over thousands of years in which specific problems and disorders were considered within a broad biological, social lifestyle and spiritual context, encompassing general health promotion as well as the treatment of specific disorders of mind and body. The ancient Eastern systems of Indian Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine are perhaps the best known and documented examples of these broad holistic health approaches. In contrast, modern Western medicine evolved from its early Greek roots to emphasize the relative isolation and out-of-context analysis of separate physical components and disorders of the body, with primary focus on the treatment of specific aspects of disease.
The health systems of the ancient cultures are generally grounded in a sophisticated knowledge of local environmental conditions, nutrients and herbal medicines. The industri-alized West has, until very recently, tended to discard traditional nature-based, dietary and lifestyle approaches in favor of reliance on isolated compounds or synthetic drugs, and sophisticated surgical and other “high tech” diagnostic and remedial procedures. These varying cultural health perspectives can be seen as emphasizing different points on a continuum, encompassing the holistic promotion of general health and well-being on one end, through the prevention of anticipated high-risk disorders, to the specific therapeutic treatment of ongoing diseases and disabilities at the other end of the health care dimension.
Modern Western medical science has made major advances in the understanding of basic anatomy and physiology, the role of germs and hygiene in disease, and the identification and diagnosis of physical disorder. Effective methods have been developed for handling emergency physical crises, preventing many infectious conditions and curing a wide variety of communicable diseases. However, the Western medical system has not been able to cope with the growing array of chronic degenerative environmental, lifestyle and stress-related physical and mental disorders that plague modern society. These latter conditions are the leading factors in illness and premature death in the West - and are currently vastly overloading and bankrupting the public medical systems throughout the industrialized nations of the world. Furthermore, the same stress-related diseases are now emerging as health crises in developing nations worldwide.
In addition to major personal dietary, exercise and other lifestyle factors, the mental and biological stresses caused by the demanding and rapidly changing physical and social environments of modern urban life have introduced a non-specific malaise of epidemic proportions, which the traditionally fragmented approach of modern medicine is ill equipped to handle. These are some of the central topics addressed in this book, which makes a strong case for a major role for holistic Ayurvedic perspectives, and Tulsi in particular, in the prevention and treatment of these pervasive modern illnesses.
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