I had my heart problem. I had to undergo surgery. My uncle has also a bad heart but he did some herbal treatment. Years ago, Dr. Akhilesh Thakur, an MD and my brother-in-law had narrated me a story about the self mending of heart trouble of a woman vendor of vegetables. When the woman was brought in the hospital, the doctors diagnosed that her heart was blocked and required surgical operation. She could not afford the cost, lived on medicine, and soon started selling the vegetables going from village to village. After some years, the woman was again brought in the hospital but this time for a fracture. While she was getting treated, the cardiac doctor who had attended her earlier wanted to find out the condition of her heart. Surprisingly, the woman didn’t show any sign of heart trouble. The doctor then investigated further and found that the heart had developed a new artery to feed the heart. Perhaps the amount of physical exercise she had to do for living led to creation of the artery. That was Dr. Akhilesh’s explanation.

I read a news item today that confirms what Dr. Akhilesh concluded.

An international team of researchers that included a Canadian-born Indian neurosurgeon Dr Ratan Bhardwaj has found that the heart can regenerate itself. “We have shown for the first time that the heart is capable of regeneration,” Dr Ratan Bhardwaj – who gave primary inputs for the research under lab supervision of Jonas Frisen at Stockholm’s Nobel Medical Research Institute – told TOI just after the research paper was published in the prestigious journal, Science. (TOI, Kolkata, April 3, 2009)

I wonder why Dr. Akhilesh and his peers couldn’t have continued with some research on the subject and got the credit of the research team mentioned in the news report.

Here is another case of opportunity lost for an indigenous Indian product as reported in Business World.

According to the Gujarat-based Psyllium Husk Processors Association, in 2007-08, India produced 9 million tonnes – 98 per cent of the world’s total production – of Isabgol, a traditional Indian laxative made of psyllium seed husk. But the bulk of this produce was exported and sold as ‘value-added’ products in the US and Europe by multinational companies (MNCs) such as Procter & Gamble (P&G), Kellogg’s, Reckitt Benckiser and GlaxoSmithKline. Interestingly, Isabgol is widely used in the US and Europe as a breakfast cereal and is marketed as health food according to Dr Anita Gupta, senior gynaecologist at GM Modi Hospital in Delhi.

PS: Interestingly, when I searched for’ Broken heart can mend itself’ on Google, I came across a number well written poems with the same caption. The lyrics proved to be right.

I wish I would have taken my 5-km morning walk as seriously as I do take today. Further, I wonder why none of the manifestos for Election 2009 include setting up a Yoga Centre in each village as preventative measure to keep our population physically fit. Perhaps, it may sound against the secular image that all parties are trying to project.</font