Articles by Hakeem Qaiser Khan
elcome! Here, Hakeem Qaiser Khan explains the timeless wisdom of Unani in simple words - from Nabz (pulse reading) and a balanced lifestyle to Ilaj bil Ghiza (healing through food) and Ilaj bil Tadbeer (Regimental Therapy), and much more
The Unani System of Healing: Nabz, Nutrition, Regimental Therapy, and the Science of Herbs
By Hakeem Qaiser Khan — Unani Practitioner, Nabz Shanas (Pulse Diagnosis Expert)
Introduction
I am Hakeem Qaiser Khan, a practitioner of Unani medicine with nearly fifteen years of experience in medicinal plant identification, herbal compounding, and clinical practice. Patients often ask me a simple question: what exactly is Unani medicine? This article is my answer — written with the scientific depth this great medical tradition deserves.
Unani medicine (Tibb-e-Unani) is a system of healing with roots extending more than two thousand years into the Greco-Arab medical tradition, further enriched by Persian and Indian scholars. Its theoretical foundation is humoral pathology: the human body is governed by an innate temperament (Mizaj), determined by the balance of the four humours — blood (Dam), phlegm (Balgham), yellow bile (Safra), and black bile (Sauda). Health (Sehat) is the equilibrium of this temperament; disease (Marz) is its derangement. The physician's art is to assess the temperament through systematic clinical observation, identify the nature of the imbalance, and restore equilibrium through diet, lifestyle modification, regimental procedures, and pharmacologically active plant medicines.
In this article I explain the four pillars of my clinical practice: Nabz (pulse analysis), Ilaj bil Ghiza (dietotherapy), Ilaj bil Tadbeer (regimental therapy, including cupping and massage), and the pharmaceutical science of herbs and herbal medicines.
1. Nabz — The Science of Pulse Analysis
Of all the clinical skills in Unani medicine, none is more defining than Nabz Shanas — the systematic reading of the arterial pulse. It is the reason many of my patients call me “the pulse reader,” and it is the discipline to which I have devoted my professional life.
When I palpate a patient's radial artery, I am not merely measuring heart rate. The classical canon — above all Ibn Sina's Al-Qanun fi'l Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) — codifies ten parameters of the pulse that the trained hand can discriminate: its magnitude, its force (quwwat), its frequency, its rhythm and regularity, its fullness versus emptiness, its thermal quality (warmth or coolness), the tension and compressibility of the arterial wall, its consistency, its shape, and its persistence under the fingers. Each parameter is a clinical datum. Together, they constitute a haemodynamic profile of the patient.
A pulse may be bounding or thready, quick or slow, regular or irregular, deep or superficial. In Unani pathophysiology, these characteristics reflect the functional state of the vital organs — principally the heart (Qalb), liver (Jigar), and brain (Dimagh) — and the qualitative state of the humours. Crucially, pulse examination is never performed in isolation: the Unani clinician correlates it with the Mizaj assessment, examination of the tongue, eyes, skin, and nails, and a detailed clinical history.
I am a traditional practitioner, but I hold modern biomedical science in high regard — and it is significant that contemporary cardiovascular research investigates the pulse with instrumentation in ways that parallel classical pulse lore. Pulse wave analysis studies the morphology of the arterial pressure waveform as it propagates through the vascular tree. Heart rate variability (HRV) quantifies beat-to-beat interval variation as an index of autonomic nervous system balance. Researchers have published correlations between traditional pulse qualities and measurable vascular properties such as arterial stiffness, augmentation index, and wave reflection. The pulse reader's fingers were the original haemodynamic instrument — a non-invasive diagnostic technology a millennium before the sphygmograph.
In my consultations, every case begins with Nabz and Mizaj assessment. Before any botanical medicine is considered or any dietary protocol advised, I read the pulse — because Unani therapeutics is fundamentally individualized. Two patients presenting with the same symptom may possess entirely different temperaments and therefore require different management. The pulse indicates which.
2. Ilaj bil Ghiza — Dietotherapy: Healing Through Nutrition
Ilaj bil Ghiza — “treatment through diet” — is the most fundamental and least invasive branch of Unani therapeutics. Its axiom is uncompromising: diet is the primary therapeutic instrument, and a chronically inappropriate diet is itself a pathogenic factor.
Unani dietetics classifies every foodstuff by its temperament and its physiological action — foods are described as heating (muskhin) or cooling (mubarrid), moistening (murattib) or desiccating (mujaffif), attenuant, detergent, deobstruent, and so forth. The clinician matches the diet to the patient's Mizaj and to the humoral derangement under management. This is, in essence, an early framework of personalized nutrition, constructed from centuries of systematic clinical observation.
In my practice, dietary protocols are individualized according to the patient's temperament, digestive capacity (quwwat-e-hazima), the season, and the circadian pattern of their daily routine. Classical Unani dietetics is remarkably granular: it addresses food combinations, the sequence of ingestion, portion sizes calibrated to digestive power, and the therapeutic application of specific traditional food-medicines — barley (Jau), honey (Shahad), pomegranate (Anar), quince (Safarjal), among many others — each documented in the classical materia medica for its defined properties.
Contemporary nutritional science now speaks of personalized and precision nutrition — the recognition that no single dietary template suits all individuals, and that nutritional requirements vary with genotype, phenotype, microbiome composition, and metabolic state. The terminologies differ; the clinical observation — that nutrition must be individualized, and that food is a determinant of health — is identical.
3. Lifestyle Management — The Six Essentials of Health
Unani medicine defines health not as the mere absence of pathology but as a positive state actively maintained. The classical physicians systematized the determinants of daily life into six essentials — Asbab-e-Sitta Zarooriya — the six necessary causes of health: (1) Atmospheric air and environment (Hawa) — air quality, the living environment, and the physiological influence of climate and season. (2) Food and drink (Makool wa Mashroob). (3) Physical movement and rest (Harkat wa Sukoon). (4) Sleep and wakefulness (Naum wa Yaqza) — the duration, timing, and architecture of sleep. (5) Retention and evacuation (Ehtibas wa Istifragh). (6) Psychic and emotional states (A'raz-e-Nafsaniya) — stress, emotional equilibrium, and mental tranquility as determinants of somatic health.
Formulated a thousand years ago, this taxonomy maps precisely onto the domains of modern lifestyle medicine: environmental health, nutritional science, exercise physiology, sleep medicine and circadian biology, gastroenterological regularity, and psychoneuroimmunology. When patients present with the characteristic disorders of contemporary life — chronic fatigue, sleep dysregulation, functional digestive complaints, the somatic burden of chronic stress — my clinical protocol almost invariably begins with these six essentials, before any botanical prescription is contemplated. In Unani medicine, lifestyle modification is not adjunctive to treatment. It is treatment.
4. Ilaj bil Tadbeer — Regimental Therapy: Cupping, Massage, and Physical Medicine
Ilaj bil Tadbeer — “treatment through regimen” — is the Unani discipline of physical and procedural therapeutics: the use of manual and instrumental techniques to restore humoral and temperamental equilibrium.
The most widely recognized Tadbeer modality is Hijama — cupping therapy. In dry cupping (Hijama Bila Shart), cups are applied to the cutaneous surface under negative pressure. In wet cupping (Hijama Bish Shart), the classical procedure combines controlled superficial scarification with suction. The traditional rationale describes cupping as facilitating the evacuation of morbid humoral material and stimulating the body's intrinsic regulatory mechanisms. I hold certification in both wet and dry cupping, and it constitutes a cornerstone of my clinical practice. Cupping has been the subject of modern clinical investigation — including randomized controlled trials, particularly in the domain of musculoskeletal pain — and researchers continue to study its physiological correlates, discussing mechanisms involving local haemodynamics, inflammatory mediators, and neuromodulatory responses.
Dalk is the Unani system of therapeutic massage — a clinical modality, not merely a relaxation technique. The classical texts classify massage taxonomically: by quality (firm versus gentle), by duration (prolonged versus brief), and by timing relative to exercise and to the circadian cycle — each variant traditionally indicated for distinct therapeutic objectives. In my practice, Dalk is frequently combined with medicated herbal oils selected according to the patient's temperament.
Ilaj bil Tadbeer further encompasses Riyazat (therapeutic exercise, prescribed by modality and intensity), Hammam (the therapeutic bath, employed for its thermotherapeutic and hydrotherapeutic effects), and additional regimental measures. Collectively, they constitute a complete system of physical medicine.
5. The Speciality and Science of Herbs and Herbal Medicines
Botanical medicine is the soul of my work. Fifteen years of medicinal plant identification, collection, and compounding have convinced me of one principle: herbal medicine is simultaneously an art and a science, and safe, effective practice demands mastery of both.
The foundational science of the herbalist is pharmacognosy in its most classical form — the correct botanical identification of the medicinal species. The right species, harvested at the correct phenological stage, with the correct plant part employed (root, leaf, seed, or flower), properly dried and stored: the classical Unani pharmacopoeias specify all of this with exacting precision. Adulteration and species substitution are the oldest hazards of the herbal trade, and expert authentication remains the oldest safeguard.
Modern phytochemistry has elucidated why traditional materia medica commands scientific respect: medicinal plants biosynthesize pharmacologically potent secondary metabolites. Alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, glycosides, saponins, and essential oils — these are the chemical classes to which thousands of plant-derived therapeutic agents belong, and a substantial proportion of modern pharmaceuticals originated as plant compounds first employed in traditional systems.
The distinctive speciality of Unani pharmacy is its compound formulations — polyherbal medicines manufactured according to classical formulae. Arqiyat are herbal distillates, produced by the steam distillation of medicinal plants, capturing their volatile constituents. Majoon are traditional electuaries — powdered herbs compounded into a preserved semi-solid base. The tradition further includes compressed tablets, encapsulated powders, and medicinal powder compounds (Safoof), each manufactured by methods refined over centuries. These formulations embody the pharmaceutical sophistication of the system: combining botanicals so that their properties modulate, balance, and potentiate one another.
I state this to my patients without qualification: the most elegant classical formulation is only as good as its raw materials and its manufacturing discipline. That is why every product at Hakeem Herbal Centre is selected by the traditional criteria of identity, purity, and quality, never by price alone. In herbal medicine, quality is not a marketing claim. It is a clinical variable.
Closing
Nabz, nutrition, lifestyle, regimental therapy, and herbal pharmacology — these are not five separate subjects. They are five fingers of a single hand. The pulse reveals the temperament; diet and lifestyle preserve it; regimental procedures restore it; and botanical medicines support it. That is the Unani system of healing, as I practice it every day in Abu Dhabi, UAE — and soon in Barcelona, Spain.
If you wish to understand your own temperament and what it signifies for your health, I invite you to a consultation — in person or via WhatsApp. It begins, as everything in my practice begins, with the pulse.
— Hakeem Qaiser Khan