Change Is Life: Dr. B M HEGDE (Transcript)

Mind is universal. Mind is a canvas on which your thoughts are projected. And mind is consciousness.

The Problem with Mental Health Treatment

And when consciousness came into science, mind had a new connotation. But even today, what we do for mental illnesses, we still give chemical drugs. What do they do? They go to the brain and damage the brain.

So there’s a professor of neurosurgery and neuropsychiatry, this girl, Grace Elizabeth Jackson in New York University, she wrote a book, “Dementia, a Drug-Induced Crime on Mankind by Doctors.” We say, “Oh, he has got dementia, he has got Alzheimer’s disease,” it’s all created by us, by the chemicals that we give. Every chemical that we give is dangerous.

Exploring Alternative Medicine

So I said, why not take the help of other systems of medicine also, even there’s something good about it. So I looked at the reason why modern so-called Western medicine has become dominant, because it’s the money power of the drug lobby that has made it, and the government helped it, the American government helped it.

Actually, there was a demand in the American Constitution itself to demand that this monopoly of medical treatment should not be there, but that was deleted, because the drug lobby worked, because drug lobby was held by the richest people in America.

The Power of the Drug Lobby

And even today, the drug lobby is the one that runs science. And you all say Western medicine is evidence-based, Indian medicine is not evidence-based. What is the evidence? It is the evidence that is created. You can create evidence. For example, for 50 years, I’ve been saying cholesterol is not a disease. Coconut oil is the best oil because coconut oil and mother’s milk contain the same fatty acid. So coconut oil can’t be bad, and other oils are not good.

The Truth About Cholesterol and Coconut Oil

But nobody believed. They laughed at me. Now, United States of America has found out that’s true, and now everybody says coconut oil is good. Coconut oil prices have gone up, skyrocketing, because America has said that.

So we want everything come from America because we are 200 nearly 300 years of Western rule. We have become mental slaves, we have become politically independent for the politicians, but not for you and me. You and me are still resident non-Indians, RNI I call you.

The Sugar Lobby’s Influence

You are staying here, but thinking with American mind or the English mind. These RNI mentality has to change. Now, if you go deep and find out what happened was, in the 50s, it was found that sugar is very bad for the heart. Sugar is a poison, which is true, but the sugar lobby got worried.

So they hired three scientists, so-called quote-unquote scientists, who is a scientist? I’ll tell you later. If I forget, remind me, three scientists to create a myth saying that fat is bad, not the sugar. So they created a beautiful thing called cholesterol, fat.

The Myth of Cholesterol

And even today, you lot of people call me and say, “My fat profile is bad, doctor.” I said, “What is the fat profile? Don’t worry, if it is bad, it’s good for you, you will live long.” But they worry about it. Then we have a drug for everything.

So we always believe that or the patient believes that the pill for every ill. And I change that to say that while there is no pill for every ill, there is an ill following every pill. Even aspirin has got so much of side effects.

The Dangers of Aspirin

The people used to swallow an aspirin tablet after the age of 40 to keep the heart attack away. The audit shows while aspirin may or may not reduce the heart attack rate, it is a 10% of aspirin takers certainly get fatal cerebral hemorrhage, brain hemorrhage. I have lost a very important education, a patient of mine, who was the vice chancellor of so many universities in Karnataka, very important man, very nice man.

He was given aspirin. So I told him and his family, “Please stop that aspirin.” But they wouldn’t listen because they said no, our doctors have given it, we should take it. He continued and one day he was phoning up a friend of his in the evening, and then just collapsed and became unconscious.

The Importance of Minor Illness Syndromes

And when scan showed, he had bled into his brain completely and the brain was completely suppressed by the brain and he died on the spot. So this is what is happening. So even aspirin, so don’t take medicines unnecessarily. Take medicines very carefully.

Then I said, you know, what are the common things, an audit in Canada showed that when a doctor sees one patient, a heart attack patient in society, he will have seen 36,000 common illness syndromes, which are called minor illness syndromes. We don’t even teach that in the medical school.

Natural Remedies for Common Ailments

We teach about the coronary artery branches or the facial artery branches, but not about minor illness syndromes. What are the minor illness syndromes? Common cold, feverish cold, flu-like illness, sore throat. And for all these things, today we go to a hospital doctor and get so many medicines or television advertisements.

Do you have a headache? Yes, I do. Do you have this too? Yes, I do. Do you have this too? Yes, I do. So give him five medicines, not just one.

The Power of Ginger and Hot Water

Take these five and he swallows that and immediately the whole thing becomes normal. So you believe that. It was Harvard University, one professor, Simon, who showed that our old granny’s ginger is the best antiviral drug. Ginger, pepper and garlic together will probably solve most of these problems without any side effects at all.

Last but not the least is the commonest thing that you get is a sore throat. And you go to a doctor and take an antibiotic. An antibiotic spoils your health, but you will be surprised to know that the best treatment for a sore throat is hot water sip.

Spreading Awareness

You sit quietly, take a mug of hot water. If you want, put a little lime in it to make it tasty and keep on sipping for about an hour. When your sore throat becomes one degree centigrade higher, the viruses die and you are OK by afternoon. So simple.

And all this is because we have wonderful treatments in other systems also, which we say do not have evidence base. Now we know the evidence base of Western medicine is evidence manufactured. I told you how fat became an evidence for heart disease.

Conclusion

Similarly, all other medicines are like that. So all these things you have to spread now. So all this, I do an average every week at television view and I do one or two YouTube videos. So all these go around.

And now I have got statistics. They have got about five million people in the world for influence. I get calls from Australia, America, China, everywhere. And I get consultations on the YouTube, on email from all these places.

A Personal Approach to Medicine

Because I’m free, I’m doing this free. I just can’t cope with it because I get about 200, 250 email consultation requests every day. And people have missed that saying that I don’t have to see the doctor. My reports can be seen by the doctor.

So I always tell them I have got a set written. I have not learned how to treat reports. I have learned how to treat a human being. And I don’t believe in disease, but I believe in the patient. Hippocrates said, “Know thy patient more than his disease.”

The Importance of Knowing the Patient

And when once I know the patient, it’s very easy to treat. Because supposing I have a headache, I don’t have to go for a tablet. I know if I know the person very well, and if I know that he and his wife are not getting on very well, I just have to pat him and say, “Why did you fight with your wife yesterday? Just take it easy.”

The headache will go. And I had a patient, a very important man in India. If I told his name, you’ll all know, stand up. This man keeps seeing me every time I go to Chennai.

A Case of Psychosomatic Headache

“I have a small headache here.” Yesterday again he came. He’s 94. And he said, “I have a small headache here.”

So I told him, “Dear sir, because you have a head, there must be an ache. And I have a treatment for that.” He said, you know, he’s a colleague of our CNR Rao and all. So when CNR Rao got the Nobel Prize, Bharat Ratna Award, this man did not get it.

The Power of Understanding

After that, the headache started. So I said, “I would, if I have the power, I would request the government of India to give you a Bharat Ratna or whatever, Bharat Ratna, your headache will go.” He laughed. And his assistant told me afterwards, “Sir, this is exactly our view also, but we can’t tell him because he’s a big man.”

That’s the right treatment. So yesterday again he came. So I told him, “Don’t you worry. Nothing will happen.”

The Danger of Excessive Medical Tests

Your head is all right. And he has had all things, CAT scan, tox scan, PET scan. And each time he goes to the doctor and says, “I have a headache,” they scan his head. And I said, “At this rate, you will have cancer in the head because you’ve been scanning so many things.”

So this is the story. So if I know the person, I know the treatment, which doesn’t require medicines. My suggestion is you require as less medicine as possible. Life is very good.

Personal Experience with Stroke

I had a stroke recently. You know, I followed all the rules of the game to lead a healthy life. But one day I was lecturing like this in a college for about two and a half hours. I was standing lecturing.

After that I went for a meal. Then I found my leg was a little weak. And there’s a story started there. But anyway, I recovered.

The Mind as the Seat of Disease

Thank God. Let’s cut the long story short. I’ve written an article about it. It’s called autopathographies. I’ve written how it happens and why it goes.

All this is because it’s in the mind. Ultimately, the mind is the seat of all the disease. And mind has to be corrected.

The Need for a Mindoscope

I was telling that scientist yesterday who saw me for a headache. I said, “Sir, we have all the gadgets, but we don’t have a mindoscope. If you can get into your mind and see, decipher your mind, your headache will have gone.” He said, “Yes.”

“Mindoscope. That’s a very good idea. Where did you say?” Then I said, “No, I didn’t say it.”

The Difficulty of Change

I just thought about it. I thought about it after seeing you. See, that’s how it happens. But mind you, this is very difficult to change.

Change is very difficult. But these days we are better off. When in the 18th century, Semmelweis said doctors don’t wash their hands and that’s why patients die. The other doctors thought he was mad.

Challenging Medical Orthodoxy

And he was put into the mental hospital and he died there. But thank God they have not put me into the mental hospital, though they wanted to. When I first wrote 40 years ago, I wrote a book called “What Doctors Don’t Get to Study in Medical School.” Such a bad review was there in Indian journals.

They said this man is mad. He doesn’t know medicine. He has to be put in jail, etc., etc. But then after a week, the British Medical Journal wrote a review on the same book.

Recognition and Acceptance

We said this is not a textbook of medicine, but this is a holy text of medicine written by a prophet. Then Indians changed. Then they said, “OK, this book must be good.” So the book is in several editions now.

But that didn’t change much. You know, the day I changed myself, I was a young man and had a lot of degrees and things like that. I had lost my head and I didn’t know who I was.

A Life-Changing Encounter

But one day, a young lady lost her husband at two o’clock in the morning. Absolutely fit person, had a massive heart attack and died at about two o’clock. My juniors called me and said, “Sir, please come. This lady is uncontrollable. You come.”

So I went there at two o’clock in the morning and I had not put on my shoes. I had gone in my chappals, walked into the ICU. This lady was rolling on bed and she caught hold of me with a big grip of my ankle and asked one profound question. “Doctor, why did my husband die?”

The Limits of Medical Knowledge

I thought for a while, my God, with all my lore, I’m a bloody fool today. I don’t know the answer to this question. If she had asked me, “How did my husband get a heart attack?” I would have given her a big lecture on what the textbooks say.

But when she said why, I didn’t know. So I went out into so many things from teleology to philosophy and found that ultimately a Nobel laureate physiologist said, “Positive sciences never answer the question why. They answer at best how or how much.”

The Importance of Empathy in Medicine

I as a doctor can say, how does the heart contract? But I can’t say why does the heart contract. To know why does the heart contract, you got to go to teleology. So that is where I went into Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and now I find all these systems are equally good.

Then I found a study done in Thailand where there are five systems of medicine concurrently working in society. Western medicine, pure Chinese medicine, integrated Western Chinese medicine, Samoa system where the father tells the son what to do and quackery.

The Power of Faith in Healing

And the study after five years showed that all these people are equally effective as long as they had interest in the patient. So I always tell my students after that, whether you like homeopathy, oomopathy, agorapathy or whatever it is, as long as you have empathy and sympathy, you are a good doctor.

Now my slogan to my medical students is be a good human being. You are a good doctor. Don’t have to have any big degree, etc. Because patient must have faith in you.

The Placebo Effect in Surgery

And once he has faith in you, that’s called the placebo effect. You will get cured. So many people say, “Oh, what is this man talking about? When I get bypass surgery done, it’s bypass surgery done on me. So where’s the placebo effect?”

My former chief in Harvard did a very good study. Six hundred people over the five years were sent for bypass surgery to Harvard Medical School. And he examined them and found none of them needed bypass surgery scientifically.

A Groundbreaking Study on Bypass Surgery

But then they have come. They have paid the money anyway. The hospital has received the money. So we have two theaters, theater A and theater B. And he sent the patient blindly into one to A, said two to B.

And the protocol in A is anesthetize, operate, send. Because those days we were doing the laser beam so you don’t have to cut the chest. And B was anesthetize, keep him sleeping. When he wakes up, tell him he had a wonderful operation, send him home.

The Surprising Results

And now after ten years they found that those who went to theater B had nothing. They were all normal. Their blood supply had come back to normal. Their scanning had become normal.

But those who went to A, half of them did not get relief. So they had a cut open surgery. The other remaining half, half of them are in heaven with their maker. The remaining half are suffering from the drugs that they are receiving.

The Power of Belief in Medicine

So the conclusion was even bypass surgery is a placebo effect. And in India it is definitely a placebo effect because after having paid 10 lakhs, if you don’t get a placebo effect, you are not a human being.

So friends, change is a must because knowledge said Karl Popper, who was a physicist, became the professor of science philosophy in the London School of Economics in the 50s, and a colossus in that, he said, I quote, Karl Popper said, “Knowledge advances not by repeating known things but by refuting false dogmas.”

Look at what the police commissioner did. The knowledge was that the crime statistics helps. Actually that’s what is being repeated even now in the papers, crime statistics. But he found out that it’s a myth.

The Need for Change in Medical Knowledge

Crime statistics doesn’t really give the image of the police. So he changed that. So knowledge advances by changing myths and not by repeating known things. So a lot of myths in medicine, my dear friends, a lot, a hell of a lot.

And we have to change that. I’m trying to do that. Now I’ve got a lot of followers.

Inspiring the Next Generation

Medical students come to me and say, “Sir, can I get an internship with you for two months? I want to learn something, sir.” And they can bring their parents to me for consultation. And this is how the world changes.

Medicine also changes, needs change. And everything else in life changes because life changes itself. Change is life.

The Importance of Change in Science

And there is a big case in the New York court between creationists and scientists. And the court, the judge in his wisdom gave a judgment saying that science has changed. Medicine has, I mean, creationist ideas have not changed.

So you can’t be scientific. You are just religion. And religion is not science. So, friends, science has to change. And change is science. Thank you very much.

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