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Is Ayurvedic Panchakarma treatment halal if one is not able to get a cure from elsewhere?

Panchakarma ("Pancha" means five and "karma" means treatment) is done to detoxify the body according to Ayurveda. The five procedures are claimed to eliminate the vitiated Doshas from the body. They are Vamana (Emesis), Virechana (Purgation), Niroohavasti (Decoction enema), Nasya (Instillation of medicine through nostrils), and Anuvasanavasti (Oil enema). Nirooha, Anuvasana and Uttaravasthi form the basic types of Vasti. The term Panchasodhana includes Vamana, Virechana, Nasya, Nirooha, and Rakthamoksha (Blood letting).
Panchakarma, Wikipedia

The Prophet (sh) told some peoples to drink camel's urine for treatment.

I am asking this because I have been informed that Ayurvedic treatment is a religious treatment from Hinduism, their vagoban gave this, in their geeta, they believe this.

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I did not find a fatwa directly addressing Ayurvedic treatments, let alone the specific case of Panchakarma. It's going to be a difficult subject to address, since:

  1. it encompasses a whole family of different treatments, and the ruling may be different from treatment to treatment;

  2. depending on the treatment, there's varying medical evidence for its efficacy, if any at all, and scholars may be unwilling to produce a fatwa until this evidence is available;

  3. depending on the treatment, there may or may not be Islam-appropriate alternatives; and

  4. depending on the treatment, the level of necessity may vary for each individual.

For each individual treatment for each patient, we need to ask: Is this an actual medical treatment and does this patient need it, or is it a Hindu form of pseudoscience which won't actually do anything?

Muslims should ordinarily leave what makes you in doubt for what does not make you in doubt (Jami` at-Tirmidhi). And there seems to be good reason to have doubt, given the Hindu origins of Ayurveda (see ayurveda tag at Hinduism.SE). It's also possibly a form of superstition, given that it's considered a form of alternative medicine (instead of medicine).

That being said, some forms of Ayurveda treatment have some scientific merit:

All five studies concluded that [Withania somnifera] intervention resulted in greater score improvements (significantly in most cases) than placebo in outcomes on anxiety or stress scales.
Pratte et al., J. Altern. Complement. Med., 2014. (PubMed)

(However, the effects are strongly limited (MedlinePlus.gov).) Therefore, it plausible that in some cases, there may be actual medical reasons to consider this treatment necessary.

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  • What is Ayurvedic? @Rebecca J. Stones
    – Pie
    Oct 1, 2019 at 12:58

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