Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The Ishtara Cen­tre has sat un­ob­tru­sive­ly on the En­deav­our Main Road, on the out­er edge of Lange Park for the last 22 years, its ex­te­ri­or giv­ing lit­tle sug­ges­tion of what goes on in­side. Ishtara was and con­tin­ues to be the cen­tre of Dr Har­ry Ram­nar­ine's prac­tice in home­o­path­ic/al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine, which be­gan long be­fore the term be­came main­stream.

Ram­nar­ine was trained as a con­ven­tion­al med­ical doc­tor at UWI, Mona. He be­gan to prac­tice home­o­path­ic med­i­cine from the ear­ly 1980s be­cause of his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the na­ture of the so­lu­tions con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine pro­vid­ed.

He felt the whole per­son, rather than spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, ought to be the fo­cus of the med­ical in­ter­ven­tion, and be­gan to in­ves­ti­gate al­ter­na­tives.

He went to Ger­many (along with many oth­ers from across the world) and did short work­ing-train­ing ses­sions with some of the ear­ly pi­o­neers of the field like Dr Rein­hold Voll.

To­day, says Ram­nar­ine, what he prac­tices can no longer be termed home­o­path­ic or natur­o­path­ic med­i­cine, since he has branched out in­to many ar­eas of treat­ment in­clud­ing pho­ton­ic and son­ic (light and sound) ther­a­py, crys­tal ther­a­py, med­i­ta­tive ther­a­py, and more es­o­teric ther­a­pies, like the har­ness­ing of elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields to in­flu­ence be­hav­iour and health.

These prac­tices now fall un­der the catchall term, "com­ple­men­tary and al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine" (CAM). A brief his­to­ry was pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Med­i­cine in De­cem­ber 2006.

There are five CAM hos­pi­tals in the UK, in­clud­ing one in Lon­don, giv­en the ti­tle "Roy­al" by George VI, and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of the UK con­tin­ues to sup­port CAM.

But Ram­nar­ine is not just a prac­ti­tion­er who keeps abreast of his field. He is al­so an ob­ses­sive re­searcher try­ing to push the bound­aries of his field.

He has been search­ing for and de­vis­ing a va­ri­ety of treat­ment modes over the last two decades, and con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­per­i­ment­ing with new treat­ments. He con­ducts ex­per­i­ments on his own, re­ly­ing on ob­ser­va­tions or con­sul­ta­tions with pa­tients, and their evolv­ing needs.

His ex­per­i­ments and con­clu­sions are not sub­ject to peer re­view but Ram­nar­ine says he has in­vit­ed lo­cal med­ical col­leagues to look at his work, to no ef­fect.

The tra­di­tion­al ap­proach to home­o­path­ic med­i­cine has been to use the essences of plants and di­lut­ing mix­tures. The the­o­ry goes that as the con­cen­tra­tion of the com­pound de­creased, its en­er­gy po­ten­tial en­er­gy in­creased–to wit, small­er amounts, more en­er­gy. But Ram­nar­ine has gone be­yond that. Three of his sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances and in­no­va­tions, he says, in­clude a process to detox­i­fy cel­lu­lar phones, a turmer­ic-based com­pound called a "healthron", and a new medi­um for trans­mit­ting cu­ra­tive en­er­gy by gen­er­at­ing quan­tum en­er­gy fields with which to "charge" med­i­c­i­nal com­pounds.

This sort of prac­tice has not found favour with the med­ical es­tab­lish­ment here or abroad, and has been wide­ly ridiculed. Ram­nar­ine has not de­sert­ed his train­ing, and his prac­tice has evolved not min­imis­ing the in­put of tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine, but aug­ment­ing it. Yet his treat­ments and prac­tice have been scoffed at by the lo­cal med­ical es­tab­lish­ment.

Prof Paul Teelucks­ingh, pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at UWI, Mt Hope, re­spond­ed, when asked for a com­ment on home­o­path­ic med­i­cine that: "Home­opa­thy is a large­ly de­bunked prin­ci­ple not val­i­dat­ed to any mea­sure. The ben­e­fits al­leged­ly de­rived from it are no dif­fer­ent from that one might ex­pect from giv­ing "dum­my" (place­bo) pills. The ill­ness­es that de­rive ben­e­fits from home­opa­thy are sim­i­lar to the ones that re­spond to oth­er mind games like yo­ga. Thus you can't treat tu­ber­cu­lo­sis with home­opa­thy but you might suc­cess­ful­ly achieve suc­cess if you try it for mi­graine or hay fever or ir­ri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome."

This is a good pr�cis of the con­ven­tion­al view, but it has not stopped the growth of the prac­tice glob­al­ly, or the num­bers of em­i­nent­ly sen­si­ble and con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple who avail them­selves of it with ap­par­ent­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sults.

The British gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly re­leased sev­er­al let­ters writ­ten by Prince Charles of Eng­land to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters en­cour­ag­ing them (among oth­er things) to in­clude "al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine" in­to the main­stream health in­sti­tu­tions where it "could make a re­al dif­fer­ence."

Charles faced a great deal of ridicule and in­vec­tive for his sup­port of the prac­tice, but has re­mained un­wa­ver­ing in his en­dorse­ment. Ram­nar­ine has come to a sim­i­lar con­clu­sion. He has ac­cept­ed the fact that most of his col­leagues have dis­missed what he does. How­ev­er, pa­tients have not.

The wait­ing list for a con­sul­ta­tion at Ishtara is about three months, and one of Ram­nar­ine's sons, al­so trained as a med­ical doc­tor, has re­turned from prac­tice in the UK to join the prac­tice, which shows no sign of wan­ing in its third decade.

Of his re­search on cell-phone ra­di­a­tion, Ram­nar­ine says he has de­vel­oped a quan­tum field which neu­tralis­es the harm­ful ra­di­a­tion ef­fects of cell phones. This he is un­will­ing to dis­cuss too much, since he is in the process of patent­ing it in the US, though he does of­fer the ser­vice at his Ishtara cen­tre.

His oth­er dis­cov­er­ies, says Ram­nar­ine, are the re­fine­ment of years of pri­vate re­search, once his fo­cus turned to what he called "the in­for­ma­tion­al field" of hu­man be­ings. "Every­thing that ex­ists has three states," he said, "the ma­te­r­i­al, the en­er­getic, and the in­for­ma­tion­al." The hu­man body is ma­te­r­i­al, but it pro­duces en­er­gy (elec­tri­cal), and it al­so has an in­for­ma­tion­al field.

A con­ve­nient way to think of this is hard­ware and soft­ware. The in­for­ma­tion­al field can be com­pared to com­put­er soft­ware; us­ing elec­tri­cal en­er­gy, it us­es the hard­ware of the com­put­er to run pro­grammes com­posed of code to pro­duce cer­tain re­sults (doc­u­ments, im­ages, in­struc­tions to car en­gines or cell phones).

The ba­sis of soft­ware pro­grammes is a se­ries of ones and ze­roes, arranged in se­quences, which con­sti­tute com­put­er code. By ma­nip­u­lat­ing num­bers in par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tions, Ram­nar­ine says, he has been able to gen­er­ate quan­tum in­for­ma­tion­al fields which af­fect the prop­er­ties of base so­lu­tions, charg­ing them with par­tic­u­lar qual­i­ties.

These qual­i­ties run from the tan­gi­ble to the emo­tion­al–he has com­pounds which af­fect the blood and car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, and ones that af­fect self-con­fi­dence.

A sec­ond com­po­nent of his dis­cov­er­ies was his think­ing on the root cause of ill­ness. Re­cent med­ical at­ten­tion has been fo­cused on in­flam­ma­tion as the root cause of many con­di­tions. The Wall Street Jour­nal, of Ju­ly 16, 2012, pub­lished an ar­ti­cle by Lau­ra Lan­dro sum­maris­ing the lead­ing US au­thor­i­ties on the is­sue, like the Amer­i­can Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, and Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health, and var­i­ous US med­ical schools.

But the re­al­i­sa­tion had oc­curred to Ram­nar­ine some years be­fore, and pushed him to fo­cus on a gen­er­al class of health pre­serv­ing and restor­ing com­pounds.

He found that turmer­ic (an an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry sta­ple of Ayurvedic med­i­cine which has gone main­stream), of all the sub­stances he test­ed was the most ef­fec­tive broad-based rem­e­dy which af­fect­ed all body's sys­tems–im­mune, car­dio­vas­cu­lar, lymph and so on.

Us­ing turmer­ic ex­tract as a base, he has cre­at­ed a se­ries of com­pounds called "healthrons" which as­sist with a num­ber of ail­ments, again from con­ven­tion­al ail­ments like heart and liv­er dis­ease, to trau­ma.

It's un­for­tu­nate that CAM must re­main on the fringes of lo­cal med­ical prac­tice, but Ram­nar­ine is hope­ful and de­ter­mined. His best case sce­nario is to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where the pa­tient is treat­ed to a point where he needs to see the doc­tor less and less, and has time to get on with the in­creas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness of liv­ing.