It was a nagging numbness in his left hand that changed everything for Faizal Kottikollon. The Dubai-based businessman had long been a yoga devotee with a penchant for headstands. And that, several concerned doctors eventually concluded, was the problem. Years of overzealous inversions had compressed his vertebrae, damaging his nerves so severely that risky, major surgery appeared to be the only solution. Kottikollon, then in his late 50s, resolved to find another answer. He found it, he hoped, in Ayurveda, a holistic medical system practiced widely in Kerala, the Indian state where he was born and raised. There, he was prescribed brimhana, or tissue regeneration, using a bolus therapy made from goat meat mixed with rice, milk, and spices. “Through the skin pores, this goat protein goes inside the body—inside the nerves—and leaves the RNA of the goat protein, which regenerates our dead nerves,” he explains. Ayurveda, he adds, holds that the..
