Article: SHIRODHARA IN AYURVEDA PRACTICE FOR MANAGEMENT OF INSOMNIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

Article Category: Review articles

DOI: 10.7897/2277-4343.17275

Pages: 183-187

Author: Sruthi K *, Ambili Krishna, Simi Ravindran

Abstract: Insomnia disorder affects a large proportion of population on a situational, recurrent or chronic basis and is among the most common complaints of medical practice. Shirodhara is considered as a highly effective treatment for this condition. The present review aimed to investigate the effect of shirodhara using different liquid medicaments on insomnia disorders and related clinical symptoms. We searched pubmed and google scholar for this critical review from 2010 to 2024. A total of 20 articles were included in the final review. Among the included studies five were single group pre-post-test studies, Three were triple group studies (one intervention, one medicine and one combined), Two were double group studies comparing one intervention with one medicine, Two studies evaluated different procedural variations such as shirodhara and shirovasthi or nasya and shirodhara, Five were double group studies with two different dhara liquids, One was triple group study with three dhara variations, one was a quasy experimental study with three groups and one study with lukewarm water to compare the two methods of shirodhara. The findings suggest that shirodhara significantly reduces the symptoms of insomnia disorders. In some studies, the effect of liquid medicaments were predominantly low and the effect mainly by the procedure of shirodhara. One study reported that single point drop method of shirodhara was shown beneficial than oscillatory method of shirodhara. To determine whether the effect of shirodhara irrespective of liquid medicaments used, further randomized controlled studies with larger sample sizes and objective assessments such as polysomnography (PSG) are required.

Keyword: Insomnia disorders, Shirodhara, Polysomnography