Having known people who benefitted from ayurvedic treatment, I tell you that the regimen (medication and food restrictions- you are not assigned one without the other) is one of the toughest I have seen. the people who successfully get through it, swear by ayurvedic medicine. I have been to some of the facilities and met the doctors and they are above average ( by Indian standards). This is why, this mode of treatment in still popular among many in india. needless to say many treatment centers are based in cities and visited by what you might call a more educated and worldly crowd (I mean no offense here, but could not find a better way to say it :)
I am willing to forgo my personal observation as an one off, but please qualify your comment.
> Having known people who benefitted from ayurvedic treatment
Anecdotal evidence.
> needless to say many treatment centers are based in cities and visited by what you might call a more educated and worldly crowd
Appeal to authority.
How about some actual scientific evidence? I'm no expert on the matter, but from what I can find on Wikipedia[0], the benefits of Ayurvedic medicne were inconclusive at best.
As someone who has spent time in medical research, I will admit my opinion is skewed. I've worked with plenty of researchers from India, and none of them have given any credence to Ayurvedic medicine. These are people who (like any researchers) will use any and all means available to them to come up with scientifically viable theories that they can use to get grants. If Ayurveda were as great as you claim it is, then they would have definitely given it a shot.
is it anecdotal even if it is one of your best friends? I am not so sure. ok, here is some more information.
A study comparing ayurveda with allopathic treatment for Rheumatoid Arthritis.
http://journals.lww.com/jclinrheum/Abstract/2011/06000/Doubl...
"Conclusions: In this first-ever, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled pilot study comparing Ayurveda, MTX, and their combination, all 3 treatments were approximately equivalent in efficacy, within the limits of a pilot study. Adverse events were numerically fewer in the Ayurveda-only group"
Ayurveda is recognized by nih as alternative and complimentary medicine.
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/ayurveda/introduction.htm
I think at some level, you need to believe not all doctors wear white coats. modern medicine is a few hundered years old , but people have been getting sick and have been treated since the dawn of time. When a country sets up regulatory agencies ( http://www.ccimindia.org ) , qualifies practitioners and monitors the practice ( albeit poorly) , to dismiss the structure based on wikipedia articles is incorrect to say the least.
if only conclusive evidence , agreed upon by everyone is acceptable we should have stopped taking aspirin a long time ago:) http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/950817/aspirin.shtml
"Best friend" has nothing to do with quality of data, in fact it might taint it. Also, causation must still be established, i.e. uncovering the mechanics of the treatment.
Also, your last few sentences are difficult to understand.
I like how you start by pointing out logical fallacies in someone's argument and then go on to say things like "I'm sure they would have definitely given it a shot if it's as great as you claimed".
Like I said elsewhere here, I know several medical doctors (well qualified ones as well) who recommend ayurvedic treatments in certain situations (not the commercialized medicines you get in shops, but more basic 'take these things and grind them and eat it before lunch' medicines and they work reasonably well.
I think I'll take my anecdotal evidence over your link to a Wikipedia article stating inconclusive evidence.
You can believe whatever you would like to believe, but the fact of the matter is that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that ayurvedic treatments are effective whatsoever.
For instance an year back for patient with chronic trigeminal neurological pain, we have given cyberknife treatment. Most advanced radiation thearphy for this kind of pains. Initially everything was ok and the pain bounced back in 3 months. We kept the patient continuously in pain killer for so many months, before they found a very old Ayurveda practitioner somewhere deep inside southern part of India. He assured them they can take the ayurvedic medicines along with our allopathic medicines and can discontinue all the allopathic and pain killers gradually.
We have accepted to that as honestly, we left with no other option as this is an very rare case and we recorded the patient status on day to day basis. After 2 months of consumption, to our surprise, the patient has shown gradual improvements and discontinued the pain killers in the 3rd month. After an year, she discontinued ayurvedic too and living a normal life.
We still have the entire medical history of the patient, and using ayurvedic as a lost resort for trigeminal neurologia issues. But I agree, this is a rare case, and it has to be thoroughly experimented for general practice.
"Various occasions" do not prove anything. Sample sizes need to be much larger, and even then, the mechanics of the treatment must be uncovered.
Also, there is no reason to use "scientific" as a qualifier for proof. There is either sufficient evidence to constitute proof, or not, but there is no distinction between "scientific" proof and other proof.
It's pretty crazy that this sort of crap still gets attention in this day and age.