Ayurveda

Curcumin has been implicated in the treatment of certain eye dis- eases and conditions, including chronic anterior uveitis, an inflam- matory condition of the vascular layer, particularly the iris. In a small study, curcumin (375 mg t.i.d.) was administered orally for 12 weeks to 32 patients with chronic anterior uveitis. The participants were divided into two groups; the first received only curcumin while the second was treated with a combination of curcumin and antituber- cular therapy. All patients treated with curcumin alone improved, compared with a response rate of 86% among those receiving the combination therapy (42).

Ayurveda, India’s traditional 'science of life,' has the remedy for swine flu in the form of the basil leaves commonly known as Tulsi.

Tulsi is well known in India for its remarkable healing properties. But the anti-flu property of Tulsi has been discovered by medical experts across the world quite recently. Tulsi improves your body's overall defense mechanism, including its ability to fight viral diseases.
Apart from acting as a preventive medicine, Tulsi can also help a patient recover faster

See http://in.news.yahoo.com/242/20090812/1512/tls-indian-natural-herb-tulsi...

Oxidative stress has been implicated in the degeneration of retinal ganglion cells in the optic nerve in glaucoma. Antioxidants protect against oxidative stress and are therefore considered important in neuroprotection strategies. Turmeric has been shown to be an effective antioxidant. For background info about oxidative stress and glaucoma, see this article: Glaucoma, Inflammation and Oxidative Stress: An Attempt to Unify Recent News

You will need three items to get started:

1. glass eye cups (quantity two) [product choices: here and here]

2. empty tea bags [product choices here and here and here]

3. triphala powder [here]

I put about 1/4 tsp of the triphala powder in a tea bag and steep in about a half a cup of boiling water. I let it sit for about 5 minutes.

Read the abstract or download the article here...

 I thought it might be interesting to do a series of profiles on top glaucoma specialists around the world. I was inspired to start this because of my recent visit with Dr. Robert Ritch. He is certainly one of the top glaucoma specialists in the world from a variety of points of view. He is highly respected by his peers and he has been voted "Best Doctor" many times by his patients.

I've never really heard anybody give an educated guess on when we may really have the ability to reverse the damage done by glaucoma.. Whether through stem cells or any other medical advancement ... can anybody reasonably predict a timetable on being able to repair the damaged nerves?

I'm especially interested in this because - at 55, and in good health otherwise - I have pretty bad glaucoma. I lost 90% of the vision in my right eye, and maybe 50% in my left before I even noticed any problems.  I sure wish I'd been paying attention ...

Is there such a thing as Ayurvedic Pizza? Today I undertook to make a Kapha-balancing Pizza and it turned out wonderful. Here's the story.

Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey has famously stated, “The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today …whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.”

Here is another healthy recipe featuring foods that health the eyes. This is a pasta dish with healthy vegetables in lieu of tomato sauce. (You can actually add some tomato sauce to it if you wish and the taste is good. I prefer it without tomatoes myself.)

Vegetables (all organic):

 "Ayurvedic medicines sold via Internet may contain lead, mercury or

>arsenic"
>http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/jaaj-ams082108.php

Aggarwal BB, Harikumar KB:

Potential therapeutic effects of curcumin, the anti-inflammatory agent, against neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, pulmonary, metabolic, autoimmune and neoplastic diseases.

Int J Biochem Cell Biol 2008;

Cytokine Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Therapeutics, The
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United
States.

Ancient treatments are ignored because neither their active component nor
their molecular targets are well defined. For centuries it has been known
that turmeric exhibits anti-inflammatory activity, but extensive research
performed within the past two decades has shown that the this activity of
turmeric is due to curcumin, a diferuloylmethane. This agent has been shown
to regulate numerous transcription factors, cytokines, protein kinases,
adhesion molecules, redox status and enzymes that have been linked to
inflammation. The process of inflammation has been shown to play a major
role in most chronic illnesses, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular,
pulmonary, metabolic, autoimmune and neoplastic diseases. In the current
review, we provide evidence for the potential role of curcumin in the
prevention and treatment of various proinflammatory chronic diseases. These
features, combined with the pharmacological safety and negligible cost,
render curcumin an attractive agent to explore further.

I'm reading an article from 2007 on the New York Times Magazine website. It is a long article. I'm on page 3 of 12 right now. But I am finding it so interesting that I want to let everyone know about it. Here is the link to the easy to read version.

Just wondering what foods are bad for your eyes?  Everybody says carrots are good for your eyes.

I hope watermelon is good for your eyes cause I just ate a lot....

What's in the bottle on the right in the photo below?

The bottle on the right contains ghee for topical ocular use. This is experimental.

In 2006 I wrote about the news that Ocufors, a plant-based pharmaceutical product for glaucoma, had received regulatory approval from India's equivalent of the US FDA (the Drugs Controller General of India - DCGI).

Ocufors is a natural, plant-derived product that has been found to be 30% more effective at reducing intraocular pressure than existing glaucoma drugs, according to its manufacturer.

On September 06, 2006, some very interesting news for glaucoma patients was released. The business technology magazine Red Herring broke the news of a novel drug approval. The drug Ocufors is made from the ancient Ayurvedic herb Makandi. This is the first pharmaceutical product ever approved in India that is completely plant derived, according to Red Herring.

Makandi (Coleus forskholii) is one of the most broadly useful herbs of Ayurveda, but until recently it was not well-known in the West. So wide-ranging are its therapeutic applications that it has been called a pharmacopaea in a single plant.

If you allow yourself to see things through the eyes of another, you will be rewarded by better sight.

Just in case that statement sounds a little too quixotic, let me frame this in terms of intraocular pressure and glaucoma and tell you what myself and others are finding by carefully measuring our eye pressure with professional quality tonometers.