Kala Shekhar, a 48-year-old homemaker in Bangalore, started getting searing pains in her left hip in 2009 and found herself limping to compensate. Shekhar took the painkillers prescribed by her allopathic physician and found that while she would get relief for 7-8 hours, the pain would return. She was told that she needed hip replacement surgery. She chose to change her course of treatment and went to the Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (I-AIM), Bangalore, for Ayurvedic therapy—this reduced the pain. In May 2012, the pain returned with such severity that she couldn’t get out of bed. She returned to I-AIM, where she took a sustained course of treatment; she is now free of pain and can walk without support. Read More
Sujata Kelkar Shetty, PhD, writes on public health issues and is a research scientist trained at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, US.