"My very long life has taught me one thing for certain. Our science looks like child's play when compared to the wonder that this world is," wrote Albert Einstein. When a patient sees a doctor, he gets a definite diagnosis and standard treatment with prognosis. All the above three could be as far away from the truth as is the North Pole from the south, although most of the time the doctor's guess matches the happenings. There are a lot of imponderables in this business of doctoring, which could uproot all our linear calculations and end up with catastrophic results. This phenomenon is called the "butterfly effect" of Edward Lorenz. The human body, like this universe, is a dynamic organism, being continuously driven by food and oxygen. All else in this universe also works in a dynamic milieu.



Nothing in the human body is linear and integer. A good example would be a neuron. What shape and size could one fit it in? It is certainly non-linear and non-integer. It could, however, be measured by the new non-linear mathematics of fractals. There is a definite fractal dimension for every neuron. The measurement methods, though, are not easy and are not in vogue at this point in time. This applies to every other cell and organ.



Another fact that needs reiteration is that the human body works as a whole and does not work in bits and pieces, through different organs. Every organ works in tandem with others and most of them are subservient to a dominant rhythm in the body, the latter being breathing-oxygen is the life giver of all. Unfortunately, we have been teaching and doing research in medicine, mainly on the organ based working of the human body. This has led to organ based specialization resulting in one organ specialist not understanding the intricacies of their interconnections. The beauty of the body's wisdom is the evolution of the autonomic nervous system, which is the prime mover in coordinating and motivating the different organs to work in tandem for the good of the organism-a teleological view.



This principle of the dominant rhythm subsurving the less dominant rhythms in the universe as a whole is called "mode-locking" by Edward Lorenz. He observed this happening in a collection of wall clocks kept on the same wall with a pendular large clock in the middle. Whereas all the clocks initially were showing different times on their faces, after a couple of weeks all clocks were showing identical times! He called this mode locking. He was the same man who discovered the methods to predict weather patterns. Having thus found out the method, he very soon realized that the predictions rarely came accurate. Then he propounded the hypothesis of the "Butterfly Effect." He wrote: " after I put all my data into my computer, if a butterfly were to move its wings and disturb the air in Beijing, there could be storms in NewYork after a month or so." That could not be assessed. Similarly all linear calculations of BP, cholesterol etc. can not predict the future of a given patient!



There need be a paradigm shift in our understanding human physiology using non-linear logic and holistic approach. This needs lot of courage and one may have to completely change one's understanding of the working of the human body. This new wisdom has received very little attention in research circles, although there have been attempts in physics and, to a lesser degree, in medicine as well, to incorporate this new wisdom. The main stream medicine still has to have the impact of this new thinking.



The simple and very obvious connection, through the autonomic nervous system, of this working is seen in children. The heart rhythm of a child varies with phases of respiration, sinus arrhythmia. The misconception that it is an arrhythmia persists even to this day. In fact, varying heart rate with phases of breathing is the healthy rhythm and the loss of it is a sign of disease. "If you keep a child's heart, you could remain healthy" is an old adage, but a recent very scientific truth. There have been attempts to study this in relation to "Yogic Breathing" in the past.



In a paper on page … of this journal the researchers, who have been working on this model for well over two decades, for the first time, tried to document this relationship between respiration and heart rhythm using the latest computer methods and non-linear mathematics. The results look extremely encouraging. One could easily study the working physiology of the heart and its diseases by this method with least discomfort to the patient. The study needs the patient to breathe into the machine for a period of fifteen minutes, while his heart and breathing rhythm are both simultaneously recorded and analyzed, using "wavelet analysis quotient". More than them all, the new three-dimensional computer picture of the cardiac physiology makes the diagnosis a child's play for even the junior doctor on the bedside.



As is the case, this study needs to be replicated elsewhere for it to be accepted universally. It might meet with initial cynicism and disbelief, as it originates from India. One has to remember that ancient Indian medicine of Ayurveda stressed the primacy of breathing in controlling other organ functions in great detail- praanaayaama.



If one would want to know why we should be changing from the time honoured linear thinking to this new paradigm, the following example would give them a jolt. We have been teaching students that blood pressure is the product of cardiac output and peripheral resistance. This is based on the OHM’S Law, which states that “in a straight tube flow pressure is a product of flow volume and flow resistance!” Where is that straight tube in the human vascular tree?



Whereas the heart pumps blood upwards from the left ventricle, the aorta sooner than later, takes an about turn and then branches off losing its "velocity-head" in the bargain. The arterial tree after repeated branching opens eventually into the large swimming pool of the capillary bed, for the blood to be collected by the venous system. Does not one realize that our linear mathematics would not work in a dynamic human body or, for that matter, in this dynamic universe?



If our mathematics were correct, the problem of hypertension would have vanished with the introduction of the alpha-beta blockers. They are supposed to reduce both the cardiac output and the peripheral resistance at one stroke! They came, they damaged, and they disappeared! The story repeats itself for most interventions based on linear relationships. Nothing in the human physiology is static and stable; everything is dynamic and changing from second to second.



The paper on page … needs to be given serious thought by all researchers to, either use those methods for future research or refute them for the good of humanity.