Coronary heart disease is becoming more and more common in India and every year there is an increase in the number of people who die from myocardial infraction which is caused by the narrowing of the coronary arteries. A recent study from England has shown that Indians living in that country are more prone to attacks of coronary disease than others living there. Interestingly the incidence of coronary disease in the west has come down considerably and is on the decreasing trend. This has been brought about largely by a change in diet and by decreasing the cholesterol level in the blood.
There are certain factors known as risk factors which make it more likely for a person to get coronary attack. High blood pressure and diabetes are tow of the risk factors. Smoking, a diet high in fats, a sedentary life with lack of exercise and a high level of cholesterol in the blood are other risk factors. There are two types of lipoproteins circulating in the blood: the high density lipoproteins (HDL) which protect a person from coronary disease and the low density lipoproteins (LDL) which could cause the disease. What are the ways in which western countries have reduced this disease? Giving up smoking
And regular exercises are two of the things which have definitely helped. Changing one’s diet-giving up mutton and red meat, doing without cakes, pastries, puddings and eggs and taking instead largely vegetarian diet with some fish and chicken has also helped. Meditation and yoga, along with the other measures outlined above, have been shown to reduce cholesterol and increase the high density lipoproteins.
There are very few drugs which can reduce the cholesterol level of the blood and these are associated with side effects. However a plant, Commifera mukul (gum guggal) was mentioned in the well known Sushruta Samhita treatise as a plant which could cure disorders related to obesity and lipid metabolism. It is amazing to realise that in the year 600 BC, when this ancient text was written, this relationship between the beneficial effects of the gum of this plant, largely growing in Rajasthan, had been described. Till 1964 no notice was taken of this shloka.
Work carried out by Indian scientists from 1964 onwards resulted in guggulipid becoming available in the Indian market as a drug which reduces the cholesterol level of the blood and which therefore can be used to prevent coronary heart disease in people who have high level of cholesterol.
The saga of the development of modern drug from a shloka written 2,594 years ago need to be briefly recounted. The first experimental work on Commifera mukul was carried out at the Banaras Hindu University College of Medical Sciences in 1964 by Dr. G.Satyavati who wrote a doctoral thesis on the effects of the plant substance on disorders of lipid metabolism. She was guided in this by the ayurvedic scholar and teacher Pandit Dwarkanath.
The work was later taken up in bigger way, following the results obtained by her, by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow. Chemical work was carried out at the National Chemical Laboratory at Pune. It was due to this effort of scientists working at different centres like Banaras, New Delhi, Lucknow, Pune and Bombay that eventually a drug, which reduces cholesterol and is reported to increase the high density lipoproteins, has now been made available to the world, based on an ancient ayurvedic text.
0 comments:
Post a Comment