Bringing Ayurveda to Patients
In her own practice, Dr. Gokani is committed to using an approach that integrates allopathic and Ayurvedic medicine. “If we can combine them, we can have the best of both worlds,” she said.
The traditional approach is important and necessary for quickly reducing pain, she noted, while Ayurvedic care seeks to reconnect patients with their needs, their environment, and their ideal state. “There’s an emotional component in there too,” Dr. Gokani said. “Often when [patients] come in, they’re so disconnected from their balanced state that they can’t really understand what an ideal day would be like for them.”
However, training is necessary to learn to effectively recognize and treat patients’ imbalances through Ayurveda. “You have to change your thinking about how you look at migraine patients, and that can take a year or two of studying to understand,” said Dr. Gokani, though she encourages more headache specialists to pursue integrative models. “[Ayurveda] is just another tool to help us understand this very complicated process of migraine,” she concluded.
—Lauren LeBano
To hear an audiocast related to this news article, please click here.