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I'm a holistic healer, an Ayurvedic professional. Ayurveda is an ancient medical science of India (dating centuries back). While I thought to join Health stack exchange to provide tips from my 8 yr of medical experience, it seems that users here are more interested in asking for 'references' than believing 'age old' science.

Ayurveda is an alternative medicine with little scientific or laboratory evidences of scientific researches, laboratory testings, animal testings and so on. If I say that yoga helps in 'x' thing, I mean it. Because we have the results. Finding how yoga works with parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system, how herbs penetrate a human cell and how do they work on hypothalamus to bring down fever will be not only difficult but amusing!

Alternative medicines work like 'dogmas'. Believe it (as it is actually a personal evidence based medicine) or leave it.

Having said that, observing the number of 'downvotes' to my answers simply because 'no scientific evidence' provided, I feel that I should deregister from this site.

Your opinion (preferably from disinterested people/moderator) will be appreciated.

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    Related: Should alternative medicine be on-topic?, Should acupuncture meridian questions be on topic?, Should we require references to back up all answers?
    – kenorb
    Apr 4, 2015 at 13:24
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    Hmm. I don't see anything objectionable in your answers, and even up-voted a couple. I would encourage you to stay. I would also encourage you to make your answers longer than the shortest ones. This answer was too short and not particularly helpful. The OP was talking about disinfectants, and you answered for infection. Not criticisms, just observations on why, perhaps, you received down-votes.
    – anongoodnurse
    Apr 4, 2015 at 21:15
  • I'm a little bit confused. You claim it's evidence based medicine but seem to also be saying there is no evidence that can be provided.
    – Sterno
    Apr 7, 2015 at 15:08
  • @Sterno evidence based medicine in a sense that folk practitioners have been using the herbs and only they know (based on their experience with their own patients) that the herbs work for a particular condition. The herbs for that conditions might not be mentioned anywhere in the books. Nor do they have research on that. It's actually (personal) evidence based medicine.
    – Maulik V
    Apr 8, 2015 at 5:13
  • "Alternative medicine that has been proven to work is called medicine."
    – Tom Medley
    Apr 8, 2015 at 10:47
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    @MaulikV I feel like it's important to point out to people that the way you're using the term "evidence-based" has no correlation to how the majority of the medical community uses the term evidence-based. Thanks for updating your question to make that clearer.
    – Sterno
    Apr 8, 2015 at 10:57

2 Answers 2

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Part of the problem is that some of your answers have no evidence to support them when they are easily testable.

Are essential oils good disinfectants?

Your answer to this question is something that is not influenced by belief at all and you have provided no evidence why non-synthetic non-alcoholic products should be used as a disinfectant. Doing a study to show the effects that they have on the bacteria and viruses on the object they are being used on and how long they stay around afterwords is not hard to do. Even if all you do is provide a study that shows the differences in how effective they are in keeping things free of bacteria and viruses.

Why does whooping cough last so long and can the duration of cough be reduced?

In this one you give some theories but you don't seem to actually provide an answer

What causes body parts to fall asleep?

I might just be picky in this case but you are stating wrong information here, while oxygen is critical to a cell's survival it isn't used as food but rather to transform the food it gets into energy and water.

How exact are the times for how long to wait between pills?

It shouldn't be that hard to find some evidence on this one to support not taking a double dose to make up for a missed on or what should be done when you miss a dose.

One thing I will point out is that when it comes to medicine there will always be controversy over what is good "Science". A quick place to look is at the vaccine debate where you will find that both sides have "Evidence" and "Proof" that they are right. Even if it has been later shown that one of the major anti-vaccine studies was falsified and not at all accurate.

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I don't think you should delete your account. As you could see, some are open to the kind of answers you provide, some are not, and all for valid reasons: belief, culture, science...

As you said "believe it or leave it". You cannot expect those who don't believe in Ayurvedic to upvote an answer based on Ayurvedic. You cannot blame them for downvoting either, as if you don't believe in it, it just doesn't work as per what you clearly said (which doesn't mean it works otherwise, this is another question I don't want to dig into here).

This doesn't prevent those who believe in it to welcome such answers.

And it doesn't prevent you from documenting your answers with Ayurvedic sources. I'm quite sure this exists.

The rest is all statistics. Out of 100 users, how many are open to such answers and how many aren't? We actually don't control the users. Which is fine, this is the purpose of SE: the site is owned by its community.

The only limits, thoroughly discussed elsewhere in this meta, are the scope (what is off-topic is likely to receive close votes), the law (substituting for a doctor is not legal is many countries), the documentation (whatever your school is, "I think" answers or "The common belief is" answers are not welcome here as answers are expected to be established), and so on.

This question is not limited to Ayurvedic by the way. A similar issue happened today with chiropratic, which has a legal status in certain countries, just tolerated in some others, and legal but criticized in others... Let the community decide. Users are not just followers, they are also experts for a part of them. Just back up your answers with your branch's best sources.

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