A survey to validate the traditional Siddha perception of diabetes mellitus

Abstract

To investigate the influence of gender, marital status, specific food, and lifestyle habits that could possibly be the causative factor according to ancient medical texts. Exploring the alternative medicinal knowledge about diabetes mellitus (DM) and validating its authenticity by carrying out a modern-day study with a scientific perception in identifying the specific food and lifestyle causing DM. Our study was conducted during the period 2015 to 2017 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala States, South India. Data was collected from 1206 individuals aged between 18 and 89 years through a predesigned questionnaire which included seven novel questions acquired from the traditional Indian texts of Siddha medicine. A questionnaire-based study conducted using which a total of 1206 subjects (men: 55.4%; women: 44.6%) were evaluated with a mean age of 42.88 ± 13.212 years. A higher number of males were affected than females. It is also evident that married people get more affected by Type 2 ,whereas unmarried subjects were found to be more affected by Type 1. There is a significant effect of gender and marital status, and also the influence of specific food and lifestyle habits listed is evident. The antiquity of early descriptions of diabetes underscores the importance of the observation and recording of medical conditions as humans evolve; more similar studies should be conducted to validate the data in ancient medicinal texts and to prove their authenticity in the modern scientific era.