8. “Ayurveda – Really Old Indian Medicine”

Ayurveda, or Ayurvedic medicine, is a form of health care originally established in ancient India. Today, this system of health care is used by millions in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India, and indirectly through its influence on Chinese, Unani, and Tibetan Medicine. Ayurveda is a holistic form of medicine, meaning that it involves treatment of the body as a whole rather than its parts, and calls for healthy living as well as physical, mental, social, and spiritual harmony. I thought that such an all-encompassing form of medicine, one that borders on being a way of life, would be a fascinating subject of study for this assignment.

% inter-rater reliability			100
			frequency	% of msgs
Information			19	0.95
Tangible assistance			6	0.3
Esteem support			0	0
Network support			3	0.15
Emotional support			0	0
Humor			1	0.05

As a note, I was sick last week and therefore did not get a chance to work with a partner on this assignment, so inter-rater reliability will be at 100% for this observation.

I observed alt.health.ayurveda on Google groups, and as you can see, received some interesting results. During my appraisal of these messages, I realized that this group was mainly a forum of exchange of information on how to maintain a lifestyle that uses ayurvedic medicine. Everything from meditation, medicine, dieting, and sexual activity was addressed in these posts (one proponent of Ayurveda recommended that people have sex everyday). 95% of the messages were thus coded as information (advice, referral, teaching, situation appraisal), a rather high number in comparison with Braithwaite’s results of 31.3% information when observing a disability social support group. This high percentage is feasible because the Ayurveda group serves more as a hub of information for a unique, holistic medicinal practice. The Ayurveda group’s span of influence on all factors of livelihood makes it more of an influence on general well-being rather than a support system during times of distress when one is disabled. Other groups that specialize in supporting those who have experienced trauma or suffer a terminal illness will find more emotional support in within their groups. This is the major reason that I found zero messages for esteem (compliment, validation, relief of blame) and emotional support (relationship, empathy, encouragement, etc.) – the Ayurveda group was too general and not necessarily oriented towards tragic occurrences in the lives of those who practiced it.

An interesting aspect of my observation was that tangible assistance (loans, help with performing direct/indirect tasks, etc.) was found in 30% of the messages, which is vastly larger than Braithewaite’s findings of 2.7%. Network support (access, presence, companions) for this ancient medicinal practice was also at 15%, more than half of Braithewaite’s findings of 7.1% for the disability group. My Google group featured a convention people could attend in London on Ayurveda, a description of a distance-learning based program Ayurveda practitioners could take advantage of, and several ads for Ayurveda medicine and other products. These messages are important in providing services and networking for a specialized and esoteric form of medicine. Groups for things like disabilities or obesity are not necessarily as esoteric in any region of the world, since disabled and overweight individuals are to be found in all countries. The perpetuation of Ayurveda outside Asia would require more of an effort and dissemination of information in a region where the practice is less known. Humor was used in one message, which makes sense since this group is heavily based on sending people real information on treatment rather than emotional support.

Walther’s factors of interaction management and access play an important role in this online group. Users can edit their posts to their liking until they deem it credible and helpful to others who may read it. Access is also important because the availability of such a group 24/7 allows people in any country with a computer, i.e. London, Sri Lanka, the US, to read and post information about the medicine at a comfortable hour. (It also allows COMM245 students to do their homework at 4am in New York!)

Major differences exist between my findings for messages from the Ayurvedic group on Google and Braithewaite’s findings for messages from a disability social support group. These disparities can be explained, however, from an examination of the true nature of each kind of group – one is mostly information based, while the other provides more emotional support through times of distress.

Links to posts, messages were recorded from Oct. 22 and older. Messages not pertaining to Ayurveda or not in English were not included:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.health.ayurveda/topics?start=0&sa=N
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.health.ayurveda/topics?start=10&sa=N
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.health.ayurveda/topics?start=20&sa=N