Vaidya Mita Kotecha and Vaidya Rajesh Kumari Singh
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Altern Integ Med
According to Ayurveda, Acharyas have classified Dravaya (herbs) into Aushadha (medicine) and Ahara (food). This shows that equal importance had been given to both types of Dravya. Ayurveda gives lots of emphasis on Ahara Dravya. According to Acharya Kashyap, ?In the whole universe there is no medicine like food, only a well balanced diet can cure numerous diseases, sometimes even good medicines are unable to cure certain diseases without balanced diet?. That is why food is said to be most important medicine. Ahara is quoted as Mahabheshaja (Best medicine). Obesity and overweight are emerging as a major problem within the urban environment in India. Due to this, Indian population is exposed to more and more incidences of metabolic disorders. According to Ayurveda Oats is known as Jai and this is inferior variety of Yava (Barley). If we take a diet that is considered as Pathya (wholesome diet) which provides nutrition requirements but also has a tendency to reduce body weight or we can say having Lekhana activity, then it is helpful to address this issue of obesity. Yava (Barley) is fulfilling this criteria and its Lekhana activity is also mentioned in Ayurveda texts. Carbohydrate plays an important part of normal Indian food. Yava (Barley) and Jai (Oats) are rich in carbohydrate and also providing Lekhana effect. Nowadays, Oats is becoming very much popular diet for the issues of obesity and metabolic disorders. Due to aggressive marketing, Oats is very much costly but in this study we have tried to show that Yava is better than Jai (Oats). In this study it has been observed that Yava is statistically significantly better than Oats in reducing lipid markers and body weight. More over on certain nutrition parameters also, we have observed that Yava is better than Jai.
Vaidya Mita Kotecha has completed her M.D. (Ayurveda) in 1991 and has completed her Ph.D. (Ayurveda) in 2006. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dravyaguna, National Institute of Ayurveda at Jaipur. She has 22 years of PG teaching experience of Ayurveda. She has guided 13 M.D. scholars and 5 Ph.D. scholars for their research projects. She has published more than 15 research papers in reputed journals and presented papers / delivered expert lectures in more than 42 seminars and workshops. Her main interest area of research is to explore food and nutrition aspects from Ayurveda perspective.
Alternative & Integrative Medicine received 476 citations as per Google Scholar report
Spanish 
Chinese 
Russian 
German 
French 
Japanese 
Portuguese 
Hindi 