Concept of Diabetes in Unani System of Medicine: An Overview

Diabetes is one of the top killer diseases of mankind. Although it affects all the sect of society, its impact is mainly on affluent society. The today’s description of diabetes has almost stabilized, which mainly revolves around the role of pancreas, insulin, and its peripheral resistance along with other causes, to a lesser extent; however, this description needs reconsideration. The accelerating burden of the disease reveals that even the recent remarkable advancement in medical sciences does not have a justifiable answer to tackle and cease its ever-increasing load; therefore, there is a need of time to rethink about the preventive strategies, line of treatment, management, and all aspects of diabetes. However, various complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy claiming attractive concepts and line of management are in vogue. Unani system of medicine (USM) is the oldest among CAM, which has an entirely different and promising concept to understand all aspects of diabetes and offer a range of drugs to counter this disease. Unani physicians and philosophers have an entirely different insight of this disease. Jalinus (Galen/131-201 AD) was familiar with both kinds of diabetes, and he described both forms in his two different writings. In this paper, the authors tried to put forth the understanding of diabetes through the history and concept of diabetes described in USM.