Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes To Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly, host for the show and founder of the UK charity Yes To Life, that’s been promoting the benefits of integrated medicine for cancer for the last 20 years. There’s one thing you can say with certainty about integrated medicine is that it’s not one thing. In fact, it’s a collection of resources and techniques so broad and such a moving feast that it almost defies definition. One vast category of approaches it espouses is traditional medicine and just one immensely comprehensive item in that list is Ayurveda. It’s a hugely mature discipline, an extraordinarily interesting art and science of healthcare and the testimony of many people I know leads me to understand that Ayurvedic practice is capable of achieving results that are hard or maybe impossible to duplicate by other means. This appreciation has led me to want to put the spotlight on Ayurveda and to do this I’ve decided to speak to Dr Vijay Murthy, highly experienced practitioner.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Hello, Robin. It’s been great. You just contacted me to interview me on Ayurveda and its role in cancer management. I truly am very thrilled to be speaking with you for so many years.

Robin Daly
But well, it is actually, it’s nearly nine years ago, would you believe I looked it up. You were on the show number 17 and then about another 450 shows have gone past since then. Anyway, real pleasure to have you back. Yeah, as you say, I want to use this up into the spotlight Ayurveda. It often gets mentioned on the show, often referenced to you, but we haven’t really spent enough time focusing, writing on what can be an extraordinary resource for people with cancer. So before we get stuck into the Ayurveda, I want to mention to listeners that you do in fact have many strengths to your bone, as it were, you’re highly trained and skilled in several arenas of medicine. Would you like to elaborate a little bit on your training and your approach?

Dr Vijay Murthy
Hey, so yeah, I would say my approach is really highly personalized, patient-centered approach which takes into consideration all aspects of health, whether it’s nutrition, lifestyle, stress resilience, mind-body connections, exposure to toxins, or improving detoxification. So what has become more popularly known as functional medicine today? Which I would say, if we had English 5000 years ago when Ayurveda was at its peak, probably Ayurveda would have been turned a functional medicine. So I was really fortunate to have had the training in medical sciences, conventional training, Ayurveda, and then in New Zealand, I studied naturopathy to become a naturopathic doctor. And that’s when I looked at, is there a way how we can bring in all of these amazing knowledge systems and approaches to be also of value in public health.

Dr Vijay Murthy
So I did a master’s in public health and my PhD from Australia’s. Again, in public health on women’s health. And my postgraduate research during my master’s in surgery was linked to cancer of the cervix, which was a very interesting study, which really taught me a lot. And perhaps I always had this opportunity to work with the chronic illnesses. And as you know, Robin, cancer is a chronic condition. And it’s not like we detect cancer, it’s treated conventionally, and it’s gone. It has to be addressed through one’s entire lifetime, whether it’s prevention or preventing relapse or maintaining good health after cancer treatment. So my approach really is, you know, it’s a very individual base to consider the individual as much as we are considering the conditions that they come to us with or diagnosed with. You know, that’s the basic tenet of Ayurveda, is really to look at a person as a whole, and then to optimize their health and being in all possible ways that can contribute towards better health outcomes.

Robin Daly
Okay, so Ayurveda, most of our listeners are going to probably know, is super ancient, the practice. Do you want to start out by telling us, well, what is it describing Ayurveda and some sort of definition?

Dr Vijay Murthy
Okay, the most popular definition of Ayurveda is how we translate the word Ayurveda itself as are you meaning life and Veda, the knowledge of life or the science of life or the science of longevity. But if you look at historically the development of Ayurveda, obviously like many ancient cultures, there was a great interest in living to the best of our health for as long as we can. And there was a great interest in rejuvenation in restorative health. And in fact, we could predict all anti-aging too. And so Ayurveda is really highly invested for 5,000 years in how we can engage with what is available in nature, whether it is food, plants, or being in nature, living in alignment with how biologically we have evolved to adapt ourselves without impediment and to master all of these to remain as healthy as possible for as long as one could.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Perhaps, you know, that’s how I would say Ayurveda is the whole package of optimizing health at any given point in time. Obviously, Ayurveda has both preventative aspects as well as it looks at treating conditions too. Many, you know, mostly it’s of great value in chronic conditions, which is the biggest burden that we are facing today in our health cases.

Robin Daly
Yeah, okay, and maybe a bit of a rundown of the kind of treatments that are on offer within iOvator.

Dr Vijay Murthy
You know, we can think of traditional or what we would say classic Nile Veda, where it looks at first of all, living a healthy lifestyle, which would be termed in Sanskrit Dinnacharya, that’s daily routine. How do we live in accordance to natural principles based on our Ayurvedic personality, which are called Prakriti. There are seven different types as vata, pitta, kapha and the combinations, which are determined not necessarily genetically, but by the conditions which are prevalent at the time of conception and during pregnancy. Which we today know, like if the mother was under stress during conception or if the quality of the sperm was not the best due to, let’s say, use or rather abuse of harmful substances by the father or if there was actually psycho-emotional stress during the time of pregnancy and poor diet, maternal diet, how that can affect one’s correct microbiome and also predispose one to have more tendency towards developing conditions that are related to genetics.

Dr Vijay Murthy
That, I would say, while in a popular media, the Prakriti or Ayurvedic personality is mostly looked at as, okay, is it a personality type? This is much more than that. It defines how you as an individual will develop your ability to adapt to the external world once you are born. These are called Prakriti. Ayurveda has guidelines. It’s not very prescriptive, but it has guidelines as to how we should be living in alignment with our Ayurvedic type, vata, pitta, kapha and the combination. But then as we live a healthy lifestyle, obviously, with age, with our environment circumstances, exposure to factors that might pose a challenge on our health, such as toxins, it could be infections, it could be heavy metals or other environmental toxins, that also with age, Ayurveda interestingly thinks of aging also as a form of slow disease.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Yes. How we need to then make sure that our detoxification is optimized, which in Ayurveda is called shodhana. Shodhana in Sanskrit literally means to purify and there are methods to purify, which popularly today has become known as panchakarma, which literally in Sanskrit means five actions or five different methods of propensity, which many retreats, let’s say in the UK, Europe or mostly in India, would take somebody through this whole process of, we could call it detoxification, but I think scientifically would be more about improving our bio-transformation to get rid of toxic burden, to be able to metabolize toxins well, so we can achieve a proper tissue repair or optimization of tissue repair. So that is one of the key Ayurvedic methods which are quite distinct from other modalities that I’m aware of is about seasonally and also in disease-specific conditions to introduce these cleansing or bio-transformation processes called panchakarma or shodhana.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Ayurveda obviously because it evolved by observing nature and using what is available in nature as tools such as food and plants and yeah, whatever the earth can actually offer us, there’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of understanding of how we can use plants or what we today call phyto-medicine or phyto-constituions, which we today use quite extensively in the discipline of longevity. You have heard of biohacking, antioxidants, adaptogens, many of them are actually derived from nature. So adaptogenic herbs are anti-inflammatory herbs or plants. So plant-derived anti-inflammatories, adaptogens, antioxidants, you know these form a very large part of what we can call Ayurvedic pharmacopeia.

Robin Daly
Interesting. So, you know, some of the things he’s just spoken about their ideas, if you like, which are really coming in to general acceptance now, the science behind some of those things appearing in the last couple of decades, which is making them more mainstream. But how how much was that formed already 5000 years ago? And how much has it been developed over that period? Is it a more recent or have they known this stuff forever?

Dr Vijay Murthy
It’s a very, very good question and a very important one to ask whenever we are thinking of any modality of healthcare. With Ayurveda, Ayurveda has always emphasized a systematic methodology or systematically observing the cause and the effect. If you are thinking about evidence, whether it is a more modern, well-recognized form of validating, which is through evidence-based, or if you are thinking about very ancient methods before we had this language of evidence-based, for example in Ayurveda, one thing that is common between the ancient methods of Ayurveda or the modern scientific methods is to establish a relationship between cause and effect, or causality, to understand causality, or are they the confounders, or is it just by chance, or these results, can they be repeated, or can we actually improve the results by modifying our intervention.

Dr Vijay Murthy
This has been very much there in Ayurveda from the times of its inception, let’s say 5000 to 8000 years ago, so that we are logically understanding why something works, what’s the cause and effect, whether it is in diagnosing a condition or whether it’s in treating. Obviously, the language has changed. The good thing about Ayurveda is because it always has looked at cause and effect, even though today, for people like yourself and myself and my colleagues who are trained in scientific methods, it is possible to correlate Ayurvedic methodologies with that of modern evidence-based methodology, but as you know, even evidence-based is an emerging field. It always changes and so it’s evolving all the time, and I would say Ayurveda is very amicable to scientific inquiry from that sense, because it’s not based on a set of beliefs, it’s based on very strong understanding of certain principles.

Dr Vijay Murthy
If I actually can go into some of the technicalities of it, say Ayurveda looks at three aspects when it comes to practice, and I’ll use the Sanskrit words because that’s then easy for me to actually translate and define. One is shastra, which is the text or the scriptures or the rhetoric, and the second or the tatva, which are the principles, so there’s this well-documented codified knowledge system of Ayurveda, much like how we have a well-documented codified system of understanding medicine. But that’s not always possible to implement that in the real world, as we know even in evidence-based, yes, we have all these golden standard randomized control trials, but they’re highly controlled. But when a patient walks into a practice or through a medical facility, they are not coming with all those controlled variables, they are coming with an entire baggage or host of many other factors which overlap with the condition that we are looking at.

Dr Vijay Murthy
So, really rhetoric, shastra, or knowledge is one aspect of it, which Ayurveda was very familiar with. The second part is the tatva, which are the principles, so where you really look at very strong foundational principles of how to understand a person, a condition, and how to treat. And the third aspect is what’s called rudhi, rudhi is practice. So, we can see that people apply knowledge and principles of Ayurveda or let’s say any medical system in many different ways, and they’ll have their own individual take on it. So, what we see is current Ayurveda is a combination of its rooted in its original knowledge system, which is in Sanskrit, which is codified, and well-qualified practitioners will stick to the principles of Ayurveda, much like a good doctor will stick to the principles of good medicine.

Dr Vijay Murthy
And then there’s the third part, which is every practitioner is also an individual. So, they have their own take. For example, I might adapt some of the Ayurvedic principles to suit the culture and the environment and what is available within where I practice in the UK or in London. Say there are certain allowances that we make for application of it, but without compromising with the true principles and the knowledge system of Ayurveda.

Robin Daly
Oh, how interesting. Thank you for that. Okay, so at the beginning, you were kind of saying that functional medicine is our equivalent of Ayurveda in the West. Is that fair? In this matter, it embraces similar principle.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Yes, yes, because at any given point in time, whether we are thinking of health and let’s say particularly illness, so I mean let’s think of cancer in this instance, is we understand the expression of the body which is cancer. So we understand it through cancer markers, but actually that is not really understanding the causes of it. So understanding root causes is very different from understanding the manifestation in the form of disease and this is the cornerstone of functional medicine as well is it’s called the root cause medicine or understanding the causes as opposed to understanding only the symptoms and this is very much the focus of Ayurveda and I think you know to simplify that even when one is not healthy, there are many other functions, physiological functions which might be still okay or in fact even then there is no clear manifestation of the disease that we can diagnose, there will be imbalances in one’s physiological function.

Dr Vijay Murthy
So it’s understanding that before a set of pathological manifestations happen, there is a duration or there are processes where there are physiological imbalances and then we are able to identify those physiological imbalances before they manifest into a pathology, we perhaps can prevent it better or manage it better or even prevent it from escalating into an established disease. So this root cause analysis is very much integral to Ayurveda which is what we today in functional medicine focus on. For example, if I get a patient who has just been diagnosed with cancer or is undergoing cancer treatment, either alongside looking at the cancer markers and the treatment that they are going through, I’ll be looking at their gut health, how is their gut microbiome, do they have enough resources to have stress resilience,

Dr Vijay Murthy
how is their social connectedness so that they don’t actually get into the dysfunction that’s caused in health due to lack of social connection or how is their exercise, how is their sleep. So all of these factors which form the basic tenets or the roots of functional medicine are very much similar to what we see in the original descriptions of Ayurveda.

Robin Daly
interesting. So, Ayurveda itself, is it going to kind of USB something that only Ayurveda can offer really, in your opinion? Or is there something that doesn’t really translate into Western medicine?

Dr Vijay Murthy
That’s a difficult question, Robin, to, you know, the very definitive opinion to have about it. But otherwise, in my observation, what I see is what Ayurveda can offer, which is its USB, which perhaps many other emerging systems of integrative health now are not yet able to, or really the experiential knowledge and wisdom of understanding plants, how we can actually use plants to have a positive and a strong effect in either reversing modifiable disease factors or in managing a disease condition better. Because what I would say is, you see, we have certain popular foods or phytonutrients, which have come to become a common knowledge of those who are health-conscious, such as turmeric or maybe ginger, black cumin or black seed oil, flax seed, or now in functional medicine more of saprophanes from broccoli, all of these, whereas if we really look into the richness of Ayurvedic pharmacopeia, there are more than 16,000 plants which have been continually used,

Dr Vijay Murthy
studied, and applied in the management of human diseases. And I think if we were to find a new molecule, that will take decades and it will cost billions of pounds, whereas if we look into the Ayurvedic pharmacopeia and if we can get leads from there to understand how we can use plants to optimize our health, to even manage diseases or treat disease conditions, I think that’s where Ayurveda has its very unique contribution to the humankind because it’s done up to over 5,000 years.

Robin Daly
I was going to say that’s a unique thing in a way, is this amazing track record of being used for so long for so many people. Extraordinary. Okay, well look, I’d like to now sort of move to looking at Ayurveda in the context of here we are in the West and we’ve got lots of people with cancer and using it as a support for Ben in all the different ways it could be. So, first of all, how well do you feel it integrates in with other approaches?

Dr Vijay Murthy
It integrates very well, Robin, because especially I work with oncologists or I work with oncologists of my patients if I don’t know the oncologist myself that my patients are working with. And very interestingly, you know, from the time of diagnosis to conventional management and post-cancer treatment, by incorporating Ayurvedic principles of healthy living, making changes to nutrition, by integrating Ayurvedic nutrition with that of evidence-based nutrition, then the mind-body techniques, looking at the practices that are very closely linked to Ayurveda, that of yoga, breathing, and optimizing the parasympathetic nervous system, avoiding exposure to toxins, or getting rid of toxins, or in cancer treatment.

Dr Vijay Murthy
For example, one thing that I have found which is very helpful or to maintain good gut microbial diversity and richness. Most patients have actually richness of gut microbiome, good gut microbiome, but what they lack is diversity because most of us in our modern day and living, even if you’re very health conscious, we get into the habit of eating same kinds of food all the time. I remember even for myself for years, I just would have the same breakfast for years, and I would use the same ingredients for breakfast, and I would be very scared of actually trying something else, simply because either I’m not familiar with that, or I might think it’s not healthy from my perspective. But of course, I have overcome that limited thinking, now understanding that actually one needs to be able to eat a diverse range of foods. I mean, this is what Ayurveda actually also highly emphasizes for.

Dr Vijay Murthy
If I may use Sanskrit, for example, to say Ayurveda says somebody who is able to respond well to treatment, whether it’s cancer treatment or any other treatment, somebody who is able to actually stay healthy would have the capacity to ingest and digest a variety of foods, which in Sanskrit is called Sarva Rasa Pyaasa. Sarva is oil, Rasa is taste, a Pyaasa is practice. If I’m able to eat a variety of food, healthy food, of course, I’m talking about wholesome food, healthy food, not processed foods or ultra-processed foods or hyper-palatable foods, and then I would have a better gut health, better gut microbiome, which we know today that makes a huge difference in cancer treatment, like to maintain a good gut health. But unfortunately, a lot of us, even if we don’t have a celiac condition or even if we don’t have any non-celiac gluten sensitivity, we may not be able to actually eat a variety of food. Many of us are not able to digest well, gluten or dairy.

Dr Vijay Murthy
I’m not saying that everyone should go for it, but capacity to digest a variety of food has become limited or less and less in my practice, what I see. But if you use Ayurveda and functional medicine to really help one be capable of eating a variety of food, because you see, it’s not just vitamins and minerals, macros and microbes. They are very important, but most importantly, it’s the phytonutrients, which have the highest amount of antioxidants. Even if you take something as simple as, let’s say turmeric or ginger, it’s not just ginger oil or curcumin, but there are millions of other phytonutrients within these plants. And if you are able to actually ingest them as old foods, we are increasing antioxidant capacity. And I’ll work towards educating, understanding and also trying to help my patients with cancer, how we can improve their antioxidant capacity by engaging with old foods.

Dr Vijay Murthy
And for that, Ayurveda really greatly helps. The other thing is toxic burden. Many of us, we live in highly polluted cities and water supply, exposure to fumes, modern lifestyle. So there is a degree of toxic burden that none of us are immune to. And in cancer, particularly when there is greater toxic burden, it becomes even more difficult for the tissue to repair or for the DNA to actually be translated properly and to result in recovery and tissue repair. And unfortunately, when one is already undergoing cancer treatment or has, let’s say, symptoms or complications of cancer, doing detoxification at that stage becomes difficult. And Ayurveda greatly helps that way is to build that capacity for detoxification for biotransformation.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Because I’ve seen if the gut health is fine and if we are going to help reduce toxic burden by assessing their toxic elements, which can be done through a 24-hour urine test to see if there are toxic elements that the body is processing to see how it is metabolized, using Ayurveda can greatly help in improving both this detoxification and digestion and assimilation, which will create a positive environment, whether it is in the recovery of cancer or preventing collapse or during cancer treatment.

Robin Daly
They’re giving a taste of just what an amazing, supportive approach it is, just for making you stronger to deal with everything. Yeah, amazing. So can we maybe just walk through the kind of scenarios, somebody comes to you early stage, they’ve just been diagnosed with cancer, the kind of ways in which you can help them along the way through their journey, say they haven’t begun treatment or anything, they’ve come to you first. Maybe just say some of the ways in which you think you can really support them with Eye of Aid.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Yes, you know, this is something which happens very frequently in my practice that let’s say somebody is just being recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now obviously the treatment is not in many cases urgent or immediate, so it gives time to then understand their lifestyle, their nutrition, to give them these tools of optimizing their nutrition, optimizing their lifestyle, to incorporate, you know, better circadian health, good sleep, good rest, and to introduce these positive behavioral changes in them while, it is time for us to find out more about what treatment might become necessary or what decisions that these patients would have to make about their treatment. So I support them by giving them all information that’s out there to help them take a decision about their treatment. And Robin, as you know, like while for me as a practitioner, it’s quite common to see patients with cancer.

Dr Vijay Murthy
But for the person when they’re diagnosed, after it’s a huge process, it adds its own level of stress in terms of one understanding it, accepting it, and then to take decisions. So in that phase Ayurveda can greatly help because it can attenuate the unnecessary stress that usually becomes part of this journey in cancer. And I would obviously as a functional medicine doctor, as I said, like I would be investigating their gut health, I’ll be looking at their hormonal health because hormones, particularly adrenals or thyroid, and their capacity to metabolize hormones, if we can understand these and their toxic burden, whether we establish that through their lifestyle using questionnaires from an Ayurvedic perspective or if we actually test for it to create a blueprint of where this person is at functionally.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Alongside the diagnosis of cancer, and then to start to optimize them, every patient is an individual, some would already be living a very healthy lifestyle, and they would be actually these are the individuals when they are diagnosed with cancer who also become very stressed because then they start to question, I live such a healthy lifestyle, and am I suffering from cancer? And you know, that’s the time when I also look at their genetics because there are different genetic markers that we can look at today. And in fact, when I use Ayurveda, if I’m looking at them as whether they are individuals who are predominantly of vata, pitta, kapha type, it also helps me to understand what kinds of genetic factors that might be implied and then to test for them. And then once we have this knowledge and understanding, then it’s largely about taking a very collaborative approach with patients because they need to become experts of understanding their own body, their own health, their own condition.

Dr Vijay Murthy
And I see that, you know, that work in partnership greatly helps one, they feel empowered. Secondly, they actually take this opportunity not to think of it as, OK, this is something very bad that’s happened to me, but they think actually because of this diagnosis, I have made so many positive changes in my lifestyle feel much healthier than I ever have been. And that’s one thing that I noticed is when we don’t just see diagnosis of cancer as only crisis, but we see that as an opportunity, actually incorporating Ayurveda and functional medicine, my experience has given a set of tools for my patients who many of them, they say that they actually are living much more healthily and they actually can appreciate how well and how well healthy they are while they are going through various stages of assessment of cancer or its treatment problem.

Robin Daly
Amazing. So the thing that’s coming through is interesting. Ayurveda, in a way, it captures an awful lot of separate disciplines that we’re, we work with here in Ingegrid in medicine, you know, five, 7,000 years ago, they were looking at things which, as I say, they’ve turned out that, oh, yeah, we noticed exercise. Oh, yeah, we noticed that in a relationship to nature is good. But these things are actually all been incorporated in Ayurveda for so long. It’s a extraordinarily advanced system in many ways, it’s kind of, you know, integrated medicine, right from the start. And that in the way that it looks at people in such a rounded way, their well being and health. Yeah, yeah.

Dr Vijay Murthy
You’re right. It sounds extraordinary for us today because we live in a world of specialization. Yes. I see the degree of sub-specialization that has become the reality of today’s practice makes us any approach which is holistic, which is common sense, which is person-centered, very extraordinary. But for those times, you can see they did not have a need for too many specializations. It was all about the person and supporting that person to the best of their capacity from one practitioner so that one single practitioner, which in Ayurveda, the term given to a highly accomplished holistic doctor is vaidya, who had the capacity to listen, to understand, and also to offer everything that’s possible, hands-on, or knowledge. That vaidya would be the teacher, the healer, the counselor, and the physician. So that kind of partnership model was not extraordinary vaidya because there was nothing else that we could have looked at at that point in time.

Dr Vijay Murthy
But today, it feels extraordinary because we have moved away so much individualized approach, very specialized approach where actually we completely actively separate the patient from their markers and treat the markers.

Robin Daly
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I see that and it’s very much the case that conventional medicine has actually taken out all of the material and just hived it off and say there’s nothing to do with medicine, which was actually included originally. But the subdivisions happened and then some things were just hived off as being irrelevant. And we’ve ended up with this very mechanistic idea of what health looks like. So it’s great. I mean, integrated medicine, we’re now having to put all common sense back together again, you know, by including all these different aspects of what it means to be a human being, which are quite obviously connected with how well we are, but we need psychoneuroimmunology to demonstrate that common sense is actually true. But anyway, that’s the way we’ve had it. Look, we’re out of time already. What a fascinating conversation, Vijay. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been very enlightening. I’ve been delighted that I’ve taken the move to actually spot mlighty Ayurveda because it’s such an interesting topic. There’s so much in there. I think we could talk a lot more about this for sure. So thanks very much indeed.

Dr Vijay Murthy
Robin, you know, it’s been great talking to you. And yes, I would say, yeah, Ayurveda is a fascinating system of knowledge that can have a huge contribution to healthcare, whether it is cancer or any other area. And certainly, I benefit from looking into it all the time, you know, to learn so much from it. Thanks for having me on your radio show. And yeah, all the very best for all your projects.

Robin Daly
I hope you enjoyed that chat as much as I did. As I said at the outset I have a huge respect for the capabilities of Ayurveda and so thoroughly recommend further investigation. It’s just a week to go until our annual online conference pushing the boundaries on the 22nd of June and pushing those boundaries we have Patricia Peat of Cancer Options, Michael Lerner who I described as one of the founders of integrative medicine, Arpan Arpan Talwa from the art of healing cancer in India, Dr. Sean Devlin integrative doctor and expert in cannabinoids as medicine from the US and also from the US but captured whilst here in London the amazing Dr.Nasha Winters. From Australia we have Dr. Olivia Leslar expert in psychoneuroimmunology amongst other things, Dr. Heidi Kussmann naturopathic oncologist from the UAE and also Dr. Michael Castro from the US speaking about the repurposing of drugs.

Robin Daly
So all in all an amazingly international lineup of experts being presented in one extremely affordable event. Find out more and book your place at yestolifeannualconference.org. Thanks so much for joining me today I’ll be back next week so please do join me for another Yestolife show here on UK Health Radio. Good bye.