Last year, Mrs. Gowda hobbled into my clinic clutching a small cloth pouch dangling from a red thread around her neck. Her other hand gripped her knee in obvious pain. As I began my examination, she insisted I not touch the pouch.

“This is blessed by the temple priest in my village,” she explained. “It will cure my arthritis.”

I smiled, continuing my examination while eyeing the talisman. After decades of practice, I’ve learned that healing comes in many packages—some in herbal concoctions I prescribe, and others in little cloth pouches that smell faintly of turmeric and faith.

The universe doesn’t particularly care whether we call it medicine or miracle, as long as the body finds its way back to balance.

As I recommended a regimen of ayurvedic medicines and therapeutic oils, Mrs. Gowda nodded politely but patted her talisman. “I’ll use your medicines too, Doctor. Better to have two healers than one, no?”

That’s when it struck me: I wasn’t competing with her faith—I was complementing it. Perhaps the most potent medicine is the one brewed from equal parts science and belief.

Mr. Nair, a stern banker who once prided himself on rationality, developed chronic insomnia that defied conventional treatments. After six months of struggling, his mother-in-law convinced him to sleep with a Krishna idol under his pillow.

“Ridiculous,” he told me, rolling his eyes. “But what could I say to her?”

I prescribed a traditional blend of tagara, jatamansi, and warm sesame oil foot massages. Two weeks later, he returned, sheepishly avoiding my gaze.

“I’m sleeping through the night now,” he admitted. “But I don’t know if it’s your herbs or…” his voice dropped to a whisper, “Krishna.”

I laughed. “Perhaps they’re collaborating. Your mother-in-law would approve of this partnership.”

Sometimes I wonder if the gods and herbs have a secret WhatsApp group where they coordinate their healing efforts while we humans debate which deserves the credit.

What Mr. Nair experienced wasn’t just psychological comfort. The ritual of placing the idol each night likely triggered a parasympathetic response, reducing his stress hormones. His cortisol levels probably dropped before he even closed his eyes. The herbs supported this physiological shift, creating a perfect synergy between belief and biochemistry.

I’ve become fascinated by psychoneuroimmunology, which is essentially what my ancestors knew millennia ago: the mind and body are inseparable dance partners, and sometimes, faith is the music they move to.

When patients believe they will heal, their brain releases endorphins and dopamine. Their immune systems strengthen, and their inflammatory responses normalize. Faith—whether in my herbal formulations, in a deity, or in a neighbour’s remedy—creates measurable changes in the body.

I often joke with medical college friends that faith might be the placebo we can’t patent yet. But that doesn’t make its effects any less real.

How strange that we readily accept that fear can make us sick, yet hesitate to believe that faith can make us well.

Mrs. Bhandari, a traditional woman, once consulted me about her digestive issues. She arrived with a complex set of dietary restrictions: no onions (tamasic), no eating after sunset (disturbs doshas), and absolutely no food prepared during an eclipse (impure energy).

As I prepared her treatment plan, I had to navigate not just her physical symptoms, but an intricate map of cultural beliefs. Was avoiding onions reducing her FODMAP intake and accidentally helping her IBS? Possibly. Was eating earlier in the day improving her digestion by aligning with circadian rhythms? The research suggests yes.

“You know, Mrs. Bhandari,” I said while explaining her treatment, “your grandmother’s rules about when to eat might have more scientific backing than either of us realized.”

She beamed. “My grandmother would have liked you, Doctor. She always said Ayurveda was science before science had a name.”

The boundary between superstition and wisdom is often just the time it takes for science to catch up with tradition.

Once, during Pitru Paksha (when many Hindus avoid starting new ventures), I had a patient refuse to begin treatment until the fortnight ended. Fresh from medical college, my assistant rolled her eyes behind his back.

After he left, I asked her, “Do you know what happens when we force treatment on someone who believes it’s an inauspicious time to start?”

“What?” she asked.

“Their stress hormones spike, their compliance drops, and their belief in the treatment’s efficacy plummets. Medically speaking, waiting two weeks for a willing patient is often better than starting today with a reluctant one.”

She never rolled her eyes again. Sometimes, the most scientific approach is to respect what science has yet to explain fully.

Perhaps the most humbling aspect of being a doctor is realizing that you are sometimes the talisman yourself. Your white coat, confident diagnosis, and reassuring smile become objects of faith.

Rajan, a taxi driver with chronic back pain, once told me, “Doctor, when you touch my back, the pain reduces immediately. It’s like magic!”

There was no magic in my fingers—just standard palpation techniques—but his belief in my healing touch was so powerful that his brain likely released endorphins when I began the examination.

I remembered feeling both flattered and terrified. What a tremendous responsibility it is to be someone’s miracle worker! We doctors rarely admit how often we’re treating souls dressed up as bodies.

Of course, faith doesn’t consistently deliver. I remember young Aditya, a twelve-year-old with end-stage leukemia, whose parents brought him after conventional treatments had failed. They arrived with holy water from seven temples and desperate hope in their eyes.

I prescribed supportive herbs to ease his symptoms but explained gently that his condition required oncological care. They nodded but continued the temple visits alongside our treatments and his palliative care.

When Aditya passed away three months later, his mother wept in my clinic. “We had so much faith,” she whispered. “Why wasn’t it enough?”

These are the moments when I wish faith came with a money-back guarantee. All I could offer was, “Faith didn’t fail him—it comforted him. Sometimes healing comes in forms we don’t expect.”

In the economy of suffering, faith is often the currency that keeps us solvent.

Not all encounters with faith are somber. My Thursday clinic is mysteriously overcrowded because starting treatment is considered an auspicious day. Meanwhile, my Tuesday schedule has enough gaps to nap between patients because Mars apparently has it out for medical beginnings!!

One patient refused to take medicines prepared during a lunar eclipse because “the moon’s shadow would make the medicine too strong.” I wanted to point out that, by that logic, we should prepare all medicines during eclipses for extra potency and charge premium prices!

Mr. Desai insisted on taking his pills only while facing east. One day, he panicked because he’d been on a moving train and couldn’t tell which direction was east. Had he compromised his entire treatment?

“The medicines know their job regardless of which way your face is pointing,” I assured him, somehow maintaining a straight face.

He looked immensely relieved. “That’s why I trust you, Doctor. You understand these things.”

I didn’t have the heart to clarify what I meant. Sometimes, the placebo effect needs a little explanation.

After two decades of practice, I’ve seen healing woven from many threads: biochemistry and belief, cultural practices and clinical procedures, ancient wisdom and emerging research.

Last month, a medical tourist from Germany visited my clinic. After his consultation, he asked, “How do you reconcile being a doctor with all these… superstitions?”

I smiled. “I don’t see superstitions. I see different languages of healing. Science is one language. Faith is another. Cultural practices are yet another. My job is to be multilingual.”

He considered this, then nodded slowly. “I came for Ayurvedic treatment, but might be leaving with philosophy as well.”

“In India,” I laughed, “they often come packaged together. We’ve been mixing our medicines with meaning since before the first prescription was written.”

As Mrs. Gowda left my clinic that Tuesday, still clutching her talisman, she turned back and asked, “Doctor, do you believe this pouch will help me?”

I considered my answer carefully. “I believe that your belief in it might help you. And sometimes, that’s enough to tip the scales toward healing.”

She nodded, satisfied. “You’re a good doctor. You understand that medicine isn’t just what we swallow, but what we believe.”

Perhaps faith is simply medicine for the soul—what we reach for when scientific explanations end, but our need for meaning doesn’t.

Where do you draw the line between superstition and faith? Perhaps the line itself is the real illusion.