With many celebrities and royalties going for Ayurvedic therapy and treatment, there is an increasing awareness and interest in Ayurveda.

Ayurvedic medicine dates back to around 2500BC. The University of Taxilla in Northern India was the first university in the world to teach 66 subjects and have a medical school.

Charaka, the university 's professor of medicine, wrote the first medical text book describing hundreds of diseases and their treatment. Susruta,the professor of surgery, wrote the first text book of surgery in which he describes many operations we still perform today.

Captain Johnston Saint writes: "The materia medica of the ancient Hindus is a marvel from which both the Greeks and the Romans freely borrowed."

Today there are 100 Ayurvedic universities with their own teaching hospitals, offering a six year degree course, postgraduate MD and research. Ayurvedic medicine is available on the national health service in India, alongside modern medicine, and approximately 75 per cent of the population now use this treatment.

Ayurveda describes man as a combination of mind, body and spirit which interacts with the environment through common shared energies.

Your individual constitution is based on the three basic energies: the Tridosha - Vata (air or nervous energy), Pitta (fire or metabolic energy)and Kapha (water and earth which deal with growth, reproduction, fat and water control).

Knowing how these energies relate to your health is the key to understanding Ayurvedic medicine. Everything in this creation is categorised according to them.

How to select the right lifestyle, diet, herbs and teas to maintain a healthy balance of your energies forms the basis of Ayurvedic treatment. Ayurveda lays emphasis on the prevention of illness and the maintenance of healthy mind, body and spirit through variety of holistic approaches; in addition to specific treatments for illnesses.

These include: Yoga, massage, herbs, the Panchakarma detoxification process, herbal enemas and herbs to strengthen your immunity, and meditation to draw on your spiritual strength, control the mind and prevent stress and anxiety. Ayurvedic medicine works well along side conventional medicine, complementing the treatment. Herbal and mineral remedies form only part of the creation.