Venugopal Damerla, PRIIME's founder, was fortunate to be born into a family of physicians in Southern India. During his early childhood, he wondered how his maternal grandfather's (a homeopath) close connection with his patients had anything to do with his almost magical ability to get rid of patients' coughs, colds, diarrhea or headaches with sugar coated pills. His grandfather would take time to carefully listen to patients' diets and life events prior to their illnesses' onset before prescribing or discussing dietary amendments. Thus, when Dr. Damerla began medical school in 1988, he carried with him a vision of practicing medicine wherein he would enjoy hearing patients' stories and try to help them by medicine, surgery or both. His grandfather's approach–discovering what sort of person was his patient, rather than finding out their disease–became a principle of Dr. Damerla's approach: always look for causes to the effects we see and feel.
Entering into clinical rotations, full of excitement, Dr. Damerla soon realized that he and his fellow students were not going to be trained to prevent diseases (causes) but were to await only until acute problems (effects) arose in the body. For example, they were trained to ask two simple questions: "What is your chief complaint?" and "What is the history of your present illness." This approach was excellent for life-saving treatment, however the person behind the disease was left forgotten. Moreover, treatment of chronic diseases, and use of preventative measures both suffered under this approach. Dr. Damerla recalls absolutely no classes on the pillars of healthy lifestyle–nutrition, sleep or emotional balance. He began to lose interest and felt as if health and disease were accidental, without clear causes and effects; that is, until his own life and health took a strange and profound turn.
As a child, Dr. Damerla had suffered a chronic and severe case of asthma. Weekly asthma attacks hampered his life well into his early adult life until he began a regular practice of chanting mantra meditation. After six months, he noticed his severe attacks of asthma went from occurring almost every week to once a month. In just two years of his meditation practice, he stopped having asthma attacks all together.
"It was then clear to me that awakening a spiritual awareness within myself through my chanting practice was itself a key aspect of my own health. Without it, I was in a diseased state. Some years later, we are now conducting clinical experiments to find out why, how, and when that is so. - Dr. Venugopal Damerla, Founder of PRIIME
Our mission is to uncover the missing links between our rich and multi-faceted lives and our health. Our non-profit organization strives to look at the governing factors of health and pivots on the long-standing whole-system (holistic) sciences of healing, particularly Ayurveda, and integrates its insights into our current Cartesian (mind-body seperation) health paradigm.
