Prakriti Case Study

Increase in the sale of OTC drugs in the recent years implies that people often forget the fact that health cannot be bought over the counter of pharmacy. Several forecasts state that the world OTC market will reach 4 92.8bn in the year 2015 with a strong growth until 2025. With Ayurveda based OTC’s contributing over 26% of sales, India ranks 11th in terms of OTC market size globally and is expected to reach 9th rank in the next five years.
Many people have a belief that regular intake of vitamins and minerals or nutritional tonics will help them stay healthy. But this is not sufficient according to Ayurveda. Unlike the general treatment approach of modern medicine, the approach in Ayurveda is individualized / personalized based on one’s Prakriti
Dominance of particular dosha in a Prakriti predisposes the person to certain disorders belonging to that doshas. So by knowing one’s Prakriti, one knows the diseases he is likely to suffer. Only precaution is to be taken to avoid diet and lifestyle that may provoke dominant dosha of one’s Prakriti. By avoiding the etiological factors, which can aggravate the dosha dominant in the Prakriti, one may be able to prevent those disorders associated with that dosha. Prakriti will help to assess the disease process and prognosis, predicting the response and planning the remedial measures viz. treatment, herbs, diet and lifestyle. In healthy individuals, it will help in designing the correct lifestyle, diet, etc. to maintain health. As a preventive measure in day-to-day life, one can adopt diet and lifestyle suitable to one’s prakriti thereby maintaining health and preventing diseases. In simple words, indulgence in diet and lifestyle, which increases the doshas of a particular Prakriti may lead to diseases belonging to that doshas. Whereas indulging in diet and lifestyle opposite to the qualities of that dosha may help to prevent the
Lifestyle disorders occur mainly due to not adopting the way of life according to Prakriti. Prakriti creates awareness of do’s and don’ts in daily life which when followed can help avoid many lifestyle disorders. To stay healthy and keep off diseases, one should follow diet and lifestyle conducive to one’s Prakriti. Although diseases are innumerable, Ayurvedic texts specify the most commonly manifested diseases caused by individual doshas alone as 80, 40 and 20 types caused due to vitiation of Vata, Pitta and Kapha