Factors of easy-to-cure diseases.

This sutra comments on the diseases called Sukha sadhya. The word Sukha means lightness, joy, easiness, cheerfulness, happiness, and the word Sadhya means control. Together they mean an "easy-to-cure" disease. The sutra is simple and easy to understand, but practice tells us that to recognize a simple disease is rather difficult if you do not observe the principles of the Ayurvedic practitioner and do not view the patient and diseases according to Nidan.

The principle of Nidan states that the Ayurvedic practitioner should first understand the disease and the patient by sight. The goal is to discover all unnatural phenomena, mental and physical fluctuations. This will provide a rough draft of all the Hetus (psychosomatics, Tridosha, Dhatus, Agni etc.). By asking questions, the practitioner then specifies and clarifies the whole scenario of the disease, narrows it down, and discovers the more specific causes of the disease and the involved Doshas. Another instrument of the Ayurvedic practitioner is touch, which confirms the cause and unambiguously clarifies the Dosha fluctuations.

The Ayurvedic practritioner definitely does not take into account solving the symptoms according to the concepts of modern medical science, where one symptom may have many types of cause. If the Ayurvedic practitioner begins to treat the diseases as defined by modern medicine science, he loses his bearings in the treatment that must be according to Nidan.

Sukha sadhya diseases are, for example, constipation connected with joint pain, dry skin, migraines or palpitations, which automatically fall into one Dosha, although they have different names. Such a disease is easily cured. If the disease is due to two Doshas or it is complicated - for example acne or inflammation combined with constipation or osteoarthrosis, which implies the presence of two Doshas, Vata and Pitta, such disease is not called Sukha sadhya. Of course, the chatushpad described in the previous verses 27 - 29 is also taken into account.

As said previously, there are two types of disease: Roga sadhya (curable) and Asadhya (incurable). These are divided into other types. Sadhya can be Sukha sadhya (easily curable) and Krichra sadhya (difficult to cure). The Asadhya (incurable) diseases are again divided into yapya (curable with treatment) and Anupakrama (totally irreversible).

When the disease is easily curable, all medicines are accepted by the patient without resistance. The patient takes no exception to any curative methods and accepts them with joy. If a person is recommended to be massaged with oil and immediately objects, that means the illness is incurable. The next part of the sutra is about the patient who is convinced he will do all he can for the treatment to happen, the person who intends to win, who wants to control and get rid of his disease. If the patient has such a conviction, the disease is curable. If such conviction is lacking, that means the person loves the causes of the disease and is just bullshitting when he says he wants to cure it.

There are four points to the requirement of success - if the dushya (damaged) doshas and dhatus are not supported by the circumstances, the environment, the season of the year and the person's nature, then the illness is easily curable and the success is unequivocal. There are also cases where the person is unaware of the illness - it is not chronic, it is new, but it causes no pain, but it is just in one dosha (one of the five vayus or pittas or kaphas).

When an astrologer looks at a horoscope, there are two basic factors to investigate. In Vedic astrology there are the grahas ("houses", "planets"), and there are 12, but these are not the astronomical planets, although they sometimes have the same names. When the person is born, the plantes are located in each house, and that is taken into account when creating the horoscope, and according to that the houses are drawn in the horoscope. Each moment of a person's life has such a set of planets in houses, and that is compared with the person's horoscope, which is the work of the astrologer. Ayurveda takes that in to consideration also. The astrologers looks for the sun in the person's horoscope and compares it with where the sun is in the current life situation. That is also taken into consideration when investigating the curability of a disease. 

The sutra also mentions marmas. These are sensitive intersection points in the body that must be maintained whole and not interfered with. If the disease has interfered with such a point, then that situation is difficult to reverse. When massage is taught, we learn how to work with these points so that they can be well cared for. The marmas and nadis are part of the shukshma sharir, the subtle body. They maintain the proportionality of the body.

Easily cured diseases are easily identifiable by whichever dosha in the prakrti is continuing to go out of balance, and if equilibrium is restored, they will resolve quickly. For many people diseases begin in the digestive tract and using trifla properly can balance them - this is a mix of haritaki, bibhitaki and amalaki and if the ingredients are of good quality then this works. Unfortunately, some producers do not maintain the quality and sell inferior kinds of ingredients.