My guest today is Dr Shankardev Saraswati, who is a medical practitioner with over 40 years experience. He combines psychotherapy with meditation, yoga, nutritional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine in his practice. In this episode, we discuss the importance of personalised medicine for the future of healthcare and Shankardev explains the guiding principles behind ayurvedic medicine.

Selected Links from the Episode

Dr Shankardev Saraswati website

Unstress episode with Dr Shankardev Saraswati on finding life's purpose

Unstress episode with Dr Shankardev Saraswati on mind-body connections

Unstress episode with Dr Stephen Cabral on the rain barrel effect

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Dr Ron Ehrlich:             Hello and welcome to Unstress, I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Now, if you were to ask any forward-thinking medical practitioner where health care is going in the future, personalized medicine, that is an individual approach recognizing that everybody is different is the way of the future. So today's topic is interesting for many reasons, not the least of which it takes a personalized approach to a person's health and it's thousands of years old. It's Ayurvedic medicine. It's been around for all that time and been in a constant state of development. It is so interesting for many reasons.

One, it recognizes that detoxifying cleaning of the system is important. Two, it recognizes that on the one hand, your genes are important but on the other hand, it's the things you expose your genes to. Nutritional, environmental, thoughts and lifestyle that determines how those genes are expressed. And three, it's a way of identifying variations in body types and subtypes.

My guest today is Dr Shankardev Saraswati. He was on a few episodes ago, talking about finding life's meaning. Go back and have a listen. It's a great episode. Shankardev is a medical practitioner, he trained in Sydney, Australia, has practised medicine for over 40 years. His practice currently focuses on psychotherapy and apart from a very eclectic mix of psychotherapy, his approach also incorporates meditation, yoga, nutritional medicine and of course Ayurvedic medicine in his practice.

He's also a great friend and we caught up for this interview in my home office, face to face, which I always enjoy with my guests if it can be arranged. It's not always easy. At some point, it may get into a lot of detail but don't be put off. Let it wash over you and realize that personalized medicine is far more complicated and involved than the simple disease symptom prescription model which characterizes our current chronic disease management system we call healthcare. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Shankardev Saraswati.

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Welcome back to the show, Shankardev.

Dr Shankardev Saraswati:          Thanks, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich:             Shankardev, last time we spoke, we touched on a subject which I think is of interest to most people and that is finding life's purpose.

Dr Shankardev Saraswati:          We did.

Dr Ron Ehrlich:             And we talked about chakras and we talked about meditation. And we touched on Ayurvedic medicine and I wanted to get you back to explore that a little bit more. Can you give us a little bit of a historical perspective on Ayurvedic medicine?

Dr Shankardev Saraswati:          Sure. Well, the word Ayurveda, ayus, means life and Veda means knowledge. So it's the study of life, longevity and the things that prevent us from living full lives and having a healthy long lifespan, a healthspan. And it's been around for a long time. It's evolved out of the Vedic sciences, so the Vedas in India go back a long way and they are the Indian classical texts, the original texts, that describe all of the various sciences required for society to survive. So architecture, politics, war, health and everything. So the whole thing. And religious and spiritual studies as well.