AYURVEDA FOR RICKETS

  RICKETS- CLINICAL INTERPRETATION AND TREATMENT

 Rickets disease is one among the most frequent childhood disease which involves the softening and weakening of bones. And. It is a lay man verse that vitamin D deficiency is the cause of rickets .  Being reported as an epidemic as per very recent studies, it is high time to have an ayurvedic clinical study over this.

SYMPTOMS:

Enlargement of head, delayed closure of anterior fontanel,bowing of leg , wrist joint swelling, chest deformities etc are the very common clinical signs of rickets in Indian children, bowing of leg being the prominent one. Bowing of legs is absolutely physiological up to the age of two and a half, and if the inter patelar distance remains greater than 10 cm even after this age, child is to be screened further for rickets via biochemical evaluation. Another evident sign is the deformities of wrist joint which on X ray of bilateral wrist joint shows cupping, fraying, flaying and wedging.

BIOCHEMICAL EVALUATION:

 A confirmatory biochemical evaluation mainly includes serum calcium, serum phosphorus and  serum alkaline phosphates. On a critical analysis, it is very clear that reduced serum calcium level is never an essential indicator of rickets. I.e. for a child with rickets, serum calcium and serum phosphorous may be found normal, while serum alkaline phosphate level is found to bounce double or triple.

Diving to the pathology, it is vivid clear that in such cases, the availability of calcium in food or blood Is not the one which matters, but the inability of calcium to get mineralized into an usable form is the determining factor. That means, calcium in the food is absorbed from GIT to the blood but bone tissues are not able to utilize this calcium due to an altered physiology of mineralization of the calcium in blood. That is, it is not completely caused due to the absence of calcium in the blood but there are some basic metabolism affected causing the disease.  Also the fact that, irrespective of the socioeconomic background, children if found affected by rickets simply means that this disease is never confined to a single cause like deficiency of calcium in food or so. This reveals the metabolic error leading to rickets and also the wider sky for ayurveda in such basic metabolic error related disease.

AYURVEDIC VIEW

Ayurvedic physiology explains this biochemical problem with much more clinical basis. Asthi dhathu, when affected by dhathwagni mandya or srothorodha, becomes defective in taking up its required nutritive part from the common circulating pool of rasadhathu, and results in malformation of asthi dhathu i.e. bone deformities as discussed in head Para.

CLINICAL INTERPRETATION

In such a clinical context, loading a patient with immense calcium can never yield good results.  The clinical approach in such cases can be better aided by correction of biological fire and there by the correcting the metabolic errors in the body. Biological fire regulation followed by Drugs which possess specific action on asthidhathwagni, so that asthi dhathu is formed perfectly- is the method to be adopted. Also, rasayanas, which can influence deeper dhatus like asthi dhathu are proved to have commendable results in such clinical conditions. To support such internal medications, VITAMIN D support externally, like basking morning and evening sunlight, proper exercise can support the treatment to a greater extend.

Along with this internal medication strategy, bedside treatment methods like vasthi, udvarthana, abhyanga are all found very effective in correcting asthi dhathwagni

However, in those cases where, severe bone deformity is diagnosed, ie, the sthayi asthi dhathu is affected, oral or para-enteral VITAMIN D supplement or simply a direct supplement of asthi dhathvagni is vital. Along with this Ayurvedic assistance for metabolic correction is proved to have good results and obviously, not only a vitamin supplement corrects the issue from root level.

CONCLUSION:

Thus, the innovative clinical efficiency of ayurveda greatly suggests having a metabolic correction rather than a blind A to A move in such cases where the basic metabolism seems altered.