Applied aspect of shadvidh upakrama in life style disorders

Abstract

Nowadays our way of living life is drastically changing and our desires are growing day by day. This results in excessive growing needs of people due to which they are facing numerous diseases. Lifestyle diseases are defined as diseases resulting from the way people live their life. They are commonly caused by lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating habits. This may increase the risk of developing certain critical illness in the later stage of life. In Ayurvedic text Acharya’s have mentioned six basicmodalities of treatment, known as Shadvidha-Upakrama1,which can be very beneficial in prevention and management of lifestyle diseases.In Ayurveda the origin of a disease is broadly classified in two ways (1) Santarpanjanya and (2) Aptarpanjanya. Both types of diseases are caused by unhealthy food habits and decreased physical activities. Santarpan is considered as taking foodexcess in quantity and which is over nutritious along with lack of physical activities while Aptarpan is considered as intake of food which is less in quantity and is under nutritious along withmore physical activities, both the conditionscomesunder improper life style.Acharya Charaka emphasized on the concept that the method of treatment depends on the intelligence and yukti of a physician3 and the treatment should be formulated according to accumulation period of dosha.