Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR When the Austrian paediatrician, Clemens von Pirquet, MD, first used the term, allergy, in the early 1900s — from the Greek allos, for altered state, and ergon, for reaction — to illustrate excess physiological responses to substances in the environment, the fascinating expression caught the fancy of the world. Today, allergy

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR The homeopathic physician aims to understand every individual patient’s unique features in health and illness. They also focus on their subject’s compass and radar to understanding contrasting, or different, levels of reactions, or responses, in the individual. This is in sharp contrast to a conventional, or allopathic, medicine physician, who invariably

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR It is a fact that we are riddled by the overriding premise that microbes, or microorganisms, are our ecological foes and that they are meant only to be destroyed. This is how the origin of the word, ‘bug,’ first came into vogue for bacteria — illustrating a creepy sense of apprehension

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR Osteoarthritis is a bone-joint disorder. In a purely literal sense, it simply means inflammation of one, or more, joints. Here is everything you wanted to know about the disorder, but did not ask. There are several forms, or types, of arthritis. It is estimated that there are over one hundred, or

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR The greatest faux pas in the treatment of illness, or disease, is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul — although the two cannot be separated. The amazing fact about this reference is it is more than 2,500 years old — an ageless aphorism accredited to

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR Diabetes means different things to different people. For some, it is a disease that affects kids. For others, it is something that affects people who are overweight, or fat. It may also, for some people, be something they would never ever get affected with. “It can’t happen to me.” For others,

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR Mindfulness is about guiding our attention inwards, in the present moment, and relating to the sensations we are feeling, and what thoughts and emotions we’re going through. When diversions occur — a child crying, or TV jabbering, a bird singing, a new recollection surfacing — we just let them go. The

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR A person in good health and optimal well-being is apparently in a state of homeostasis. This is a harmonious state. It mirrors our ability to maintain reasonably constant metabolic activity, notwithstanding zillions of incessant goings-on within the body. Such functions are, of course, part of the normal physiological process — internal,

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR The philosopher Aristotle eulogised, that, “Just as you ought not to attempt to use eyes without head or head without body, so you should not treat body without soul.” The Roman poet Virgil, likewise, postulated that ‘mind moves matter’ — a postulate that ancient Eastern philosophers and physicians emphasised upon and

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR There is a definitive reason why chronic illnesses are so rampant in our culture. A major factor, for one, is conventional medicine provides suppressive treatment and transforms acute diseases, at times, into chronic illnesses. We all seem to belong to a chronically ill and weak society. Children, in particular, are becoming