The West Just Discovered What The Vedas Always Knew: Your Intrinsic Capacity
The New York Times last month flagged a term that may become the most important metric in modern medicine: ‘ Intrinsic Capacity ’. The WHO formally defined it in 2015 as part of its Healthy Ageing initiative; intrinsic capacity is not your lab report, your diagnosis list, or your age. It is the sum total of what your body and mind can still do - how strongly you grip, how fast you walk, how clearly you see and hear, how sharply you think, how resilient you feel. As the NYT reported, scientists derive it from five subdomains: cognition, locomotion, sensory capacity, psychological well-being, and vitality. The US Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health [ARPA-H] is now funding research to use it as a surrogate endpoint for the first-ever FDA-approved drug to extend healthspan . In France, older adults are already tracking it with questionnaires that trigger early referral to a geriatric team when it dips. It is brilliant science. It is also not new. Our scriptures and Vedic texts measured it 2,000 years ago.
Intrinsic Capacity: The New Metric
For a century, medicine measured health by the absence of disease. If you did not have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, you were 'healthy.' WHO's intrinsic capacity flips this. It asks: even if you have no disease, are you losing capacity? John Beard at Columbia, who helped develop the concept, put it simply in the NYT: it is everything attributable to the individual 'from the skin in.'
This matters because two 70-year-olds with the same diseases can have vastly different capacities. One climbs stairs, remembers names, and lives independently. The other cannot. Disease count does not capture that. Intrinsic capacity does. Crucially, it is dynamic. Unlike lifespan, it can go up and down. The WHO in 2022 added "ageing-associated decline in intrinsic capacity" to ICD-11 for that very reason — to allow doctors to detect decline early, long before disability. This is the paradigm shift from lifespan to healthspan.
The Vedic Perspective
Vedic physiology never measured health by disease. It measured it by ' Samarthya ' — total functional capacity. A deep dive into these terms gives a concept: WHO says locomotion, and Ayurveda said 'Bala' (strength). Charaka Samhita, c. 100 BCE - 200 CE, defines “Bala” as musculoskeletal strength, measured by the ability to exert, lift, walk and grip. This is exactly what modern geriatrics measures as grip strength and gait speed.
When the WHO said 'sensory'. Vedas called it 'Indriya.' 'Indriya samprasada' — clarity of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch - was the second pillar of health. A person whose senses were failing was not considered swastha, even if labs were normal. WHO says cognition; then Ayurveda said Smriti-Buddhi-Medha, namely memory, intellect, discernment. When WHO called it psychological well-being, the Vedas called it sattva, resilience, cheerfulness, and the absence of fear and grief. Charaka devotes an entire section to Sattva Pariksha.
Finally, WHO says vitality, and Vedic science said Ojas and Utsaha — the reserve energy, immunity, enthusiasm and ability to withstand stressors.
Charaka's definition of a healthy person in Sutrasthana: “Samamamsa pramana, sama samhanana, sama indriya, prasanna atma-indriya-mana”— balanced tissues, compactness, clear senses, and a cheerful self.
That is WHO's five domains, verbatim. The Vedas went a step further than WHO admits today. Modern Science now knows current tests are useful only in older adults because younger people get perfect scores. Vedas solved this 2,000 years ago through 'Prakriti Pariksha' and 'Dinacharya' — daily self-tracking of sleep quality, appetite, bowel habit, mood on waking, effort tolerance and enthusiasm. This is precisely what the French trial is now piloting: daily, questionnaire-based tracking for early alerts. The oldest prayer for this is not from 2015. It is from the Rig Veda, c 1500-1200 BCE:
'Jivem sharadah shatam' — may we live a hundred autumns with intact senses, intact cognition, and intact capacity. Intrinsic Capacity is simply the 2026 metric for that 3,500-year-old aspiration. We called it 'Ayushya', not Ayur.
Why The East Must Give It Meaning
The danger is that we will turn Intrinsic Capacity into another score to be hacked by a pill. The American ARPA-H program asks: can GLP-1s improve capacity? The contrarian view comes from Japan, which has spent time studying longevity . Japan, the world's oldest nation, has no traditional word for retirement. It has 'Ikigai' — a reason to get up. In Japan, it has 'Moai' — a lifelong social network. Japan's longevity science focuses not on the vitality domain but on the psychological domain.
Capacity is not pharmacological. It is purposeful. This is where the Vedic and Indo-Japanese views converge. Shinto, codified in the Kojiki c 712 CE, and Vedic Dharma both say: a person is not capacity-from-skin-in. A person is capacity-in-context. Your Bala depletes without community, without ritual, without purpose. The French model refers a person with declining capacity to a geriatric nurse. In Japan, they refer him to a community centre. In India, we traditionally referred him to 'Satsang' and 'Seva.' If we medicalise intrinsic capacity, we will fail. If we ritualise it — early rising, seasonal food, daily movement, meditation, meaningful social role as prescribed in Dinacharya 2,000 years ago and still practised in Japan today — we will preserve it. The West has finally given us the right metric. The East must now give it the right meaning.
Authored by: Shashank Joshi
The writer is a consultant endocrinologist and author
Views are personal.
Intrinsic Capacity: The New Metric
For a century, medicine measured health by the absence of disease. If you did not have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, you were 'healthy.' WHO's intrinsic capacity flips this. It asks: even if you have no disease, are you losing capacity? John Beard at Columbia, who helped develop the concept, put it simply in the NYT: it is everything attributable to the individual 'from the skin in.'
This matters because two 70-year-olds with the same diseases can have vastly different capacities. One climbs stairs, remembers names, and lives independently. The other cannot. Disease count does not capture that. Intrinsic capacity does. Crucially, it is dynamic. Unlike lifespan, it can go up and down. The WHO in 2022 added "ageing-associated decline in intrinsic capacity" to ICD-11 for that very reason — to allow doctors to detect decline early, long before disability. This is the paradigm shift from lifespan to healthspan.
The Vedic Perspective
Vedic physiology never measured health by disease. It measured it by ' Samarthya ' — total functional capacity. A deep dive into these terms gives a concept: WHO says locomotion, and Ayurveda said 'Bala' (strength). Charaka Samhita, c. 100 BCE - 200 CE, defines “Bala” as musculoskeletal strength, measured by the ability to exert, lift, walk and grip. This is exactly what modern geriatrics measures as grip strength and gait speed.
When the WHO said 'sensory'. Vedas called it 'Indriya.' 'Indriya samprasada' — clarity of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch - was the second pillar of health. A person whose senses were failing was not considered swastha, even if labs were normal. WHO says cognition; then Ayurveda said Smriti-Buddhi-Medha, namely memory, intellect, discernment. When WHO called it psychological well-being, the Vedas called it sattva, resilience, cheerfulness, and the absence of fear and grief. Charaka devotes an entire section to Sattva Pariksha.
Finally, WHO says vitality, and Vedic science said Ojas and Utsaha — the reserve energy, immunity, enthusiasm and ability to withstand stressors.
Charaka's definition of a healthy person in Sutrasthana: “Samamamsa pramana, sama samhanana, sama indriya, prasanna atma-indriya-mana”— balanced tissues, compactness, clear senses, and a cheerful self.
That is WHO's five domains, verbatim. The Vedas went a step further than WHO admits today. Modern Science now knows current tests are useful only in older adults because younger people get perfect scores. Vedas solved this 2,000 years ago through 'Prakriti Pariksha' and 'Dinacharya' — daily self-tracking of sleep quality, appetite, bowel habit, mood on waking, effort tolerance and enthusiasm. This is precisely what the French trial is now piloting: daily, questionnaire-based tracking for early alerts. The oldest prayer for this is not from 2015. It is from the Rig Veda, c 1500-1200 BCE:
'Jivem sharadah shatam' — may we live a hundred autumns with intact senses, intact cognition, and intact capacity. Intrinsic Capacity is simply the 2026 metric for that 3,500-year-old aspiration. We called it 'Ayushya', not Ayur.
Why The East Must Give It Meaning
The danger is that we will turn Intrinsic Capacity into another score to be hacked by a pill. The American ARPA-H program asks: can GLP-1s improve capacity? The contrarian view comes from Japan, which has spent time studying longevity . Japan, the world's oldest nation, has no traditional word for retirement. It has 'Ikigai' — a reason to get up. In Japan, it has 'Moai' — a lifelong social network. Japan's longevity science focuses not on the vitality domain but on the psychological domain.
Capacity is not pharmacological. It is purposeful. This is where the Vedic and Indo-Japanese views converge. Shinto, codified in the Kojiki c 712 CE, and Vedic Dharma both say: a person is not capacity-from-skin-in. A person is capacity-in-context. Your Bala depletes without community, without ritual, without purpose. The French model refers a person with declining capacity to a geriatric nurse. In Japan, they refer him to a community centre. In India, we traditionally referred him to 'Satsang' and 'Seva.' If we medicalise intrinsic capacity, we will fail. If we ritualise it — early rising, seasonal food, daily movement, meditation, meaningful social role as prescribed in Dinacharya 2,000 years ago and still practised in Japan today — we will preserve it. The West has finally given us the right metric. The East must now give it the right meaning.
Authored by: Shashank Joshi
The writer is a consultant endocrinologist and author
Views are personal.
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