Background: Trigeminal neuralgia, known in Unani medicine as 'Isa & strns;ba", is a recurrent, excruciating pain affecting the areas innervated by one or more branches of the fifth cranial nerve. In Unani medicine, the principle of management of such headache disorders is expulsion of morbid humors and neuromodulation with drugs. Case presentation: Herein we describe a case of a 32-year-old female who reported to our hospital with severe paroxysmal pain on the right side of face. She had previously taken allopathic treatment, which gave temporary relief, and caused somnolence. She had been advised surgery, which she was skeptic of; hence, sought Unani treatment. At the time of presentation, the patient was in severe pain (indicated as 10 on NRS scale by her). Vital signs, local and systemic examination, laboratory and radiological imaging revealed no abnormality. Intervention and outcomes: The patient was prescribed Unani formulations containing ingredients such as Terminalia chebula Retz., Prunus amygdalus Batsch., Santalum album L., and Borago officinalis L., which exert many actions including neuroprotective, anxiolytic, general tonic, and pro-cognitive. Besides, she was advised wet-cupping therapy on the nape of neck and supra-scapular region. There was significant relief after the first session of wet-cupping and negligible symptoms after the 4th session. All medicines were discontinued after 4months, and the patient is symptom-free till date. Conclusion: The exceptional improvement in this case reiterates that Unani neuromodulator (Musakkin-e-A'sa & strns;b) drugs and wet-cupping may be a potentially effective and safe treatment option for Trigeminal Neuralgia. Larger studies are warranted to substantiate the observations.
Background: Integrative medicine intake requires a multidomain assessment. However, the necessary information is often scattered across electronic health records (EHRs), laboratory reports, clinical notes, and patient uploads, creating pre-visit and post-visit bottlenecks for care planning and insurance-support documentation. Objective: To introduce and evaluate a clinician-in-the-loop, automated, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted intake model designed for data completeness, clinical usability, and reimbursement readiness improvement. Methods: To support the objectives, the system connects to compatible Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-compliant EHR and patient-portal sources, accepts patient uploads of fragmented records, consolidates available information, identifies gaps, generates adaptive intake questions, and prepares a clinician-facing summary. This quality-improvement evaluation examined information added or clarified after traditional intake, with manual verification against source records and patient responses. Automated laboratory interpretation and draft treatment strategies were assessed through clinician review. Results: Autonomous Health (AH) Intake recovered previously undocumented medication history and adverse reactions and organized functional limitations, safety concerns, and supporting test results for clinician review and prior-authorization submission. Using the methylation workflow as an example, we demonstrated that treatment strategies were approved without modification in 22/25 cases (88%); clinician review took approximately 10-15 minutes per completed case. In the separate laboratory test results evaluation, concordance with clinician review was 100% for 1927 extracted biomarker values and 72% (18/25) for overall care-plan summaries. Conclusions: The findings support the feasibility of automated, interactive, AI-assisted intake as a preparatory and documentation-support workflow for clinician review.
The human body is commonly approached through the language of anatomy, yet anatomy alone may not fully capture the lived experience of being embodied. This reflection explores the relationship between anatomical structure, embodied consciousness, spirituality, and healing through an osteopathic perspective. Drawing on osteopathic philosophy, phenomenology, fascial science, interoception, and embodied cognition, it considers the body not merely as an anatomical object but as a medium through which awareness and experience are expressed. Particular attention is given to fascial continuity, palpatory experience, therapeutic touch, stillness, and the subjective experience of healing. The reflection considers whether these phenomena provide a conceptual meeting point between physiological processes and experiences traditionally described in spiritual or consciousness based language. Rather than presenting spirituality or consciousness as established anatomical mechanisms, the paper explores them as dimensions of embodied human experience that may broaden how healing is understood. It proposes that healing may be understood not only as a change in physiological function, but also as a transformation in the individual's relationship with bodily experience, awareness, and selfhood. This perspective invites continued dialogue between anatomy, neuroscience, osteopathic philosophy, consciousness studies, and spirituality without prematurely reducing one domain to another.
Objective: Postoperative pain represents a complex interplay of neurophysiological and psychosocial processes involving nociception, autonomic regulation, and stress responses. This study compared the effectiveness of slowstroke back massage and hot stone massage, alongside standard care, in reducing acute postoperative pain following orthopedic surgery. Methods: This three-arm randomized controlled trial included 99 male orthopedic surgery patients assigned to slow-stroke back massage (n = 33), hot stone massage (n = 33), or routine care (n = 33). Pain intensity was assessed using the Visual Analog Scale before and after the intervention. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), adjusted for baseline pain scores and type of surgery, was used to compare postoperative pain among groups. Adjusted mean differences with 95% confidence intervals were calculated for pairwise comparisons Results: A significant overall treatment effect was observed after adjustment (p < 0.001, partial eta(2) = 0.382). Compared with routine care, slow-stroke back massage (AMD = -2.59, 95% CI -3.52 to -1.66) and hot stone massage (AMD = -2.52, 95% CI -3.44 to -1.60, p < 0.001) significantly reduced postoperative pain (p < 0.001). No significant difference was found between the two massage interventions. Conclusion: Slow-stroke back massage and hot stone massage demonstrated comparable analgesic benefits in orthopedic postoperative care. The findings suggest that diverse sensory stimulation pathways may contribute to similar pain-relieving effects, highlighting massage therapy as a promising complementary intervention within multimodal pain management frameworks.
Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) have transformed the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes, yet individual responses vary substantially. Some patients achieve marked improvements in glycemia, weight, and cardiometabolic risk, whereas others have limited benefit, gastrointestinal intolerance, excessive weight loss, or clinically concerning loss of lean tissue. Genetics may explain part of this heterogeneity, but Ayurveda suggests an additional question: are we applying the same metabolic intervention to patients with meaningfully different digestive, nutritional, and metabolic phenotypes? Ayurveda has long described prameha as heterogeneous and evaluates agni (digestive and metabolic capacity), ama (incompletely processed or accumulated material), srotas (pathways of transport), and suitability for langhana (reducing or lightening therapy) before selecting treatment. These concepts should not be equated literally with modern biomarkers. Rather, they provide a framework for a testable contemporary hypothesis: identifying and, where possible, modifying gastrointestinal, nutritional, and metabolic phenotypes before and during GLP-1 therapy may improve tolerability and the quality of response.
