[5] Hegde was born on 18 August 1938 in Pangala near Udupi, Karnataka, India[6] He obtained MBBS from Stanley Medical College, Madras in 1960 and later M.D.

[12] He has proposed that 'quantum healing' can bring sick persons back to normal,[5][13] a concept widely regarded in the scientific community as pseudoscientific.

[14][15] In 2019, when Hegde was invited to deliver a lecture on "Sauce of Happiness" at the campus of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he was called a proponent of "pseudo-science and quackery" by a group of research scholars, who questioned his criticism of modern medicine and accused him of promoting unverified treatments for various ailments.

"[17] His TEDx talk on "Change is life" was flagged by TED as containing medical fallacies and sweeping generalizations.

[18] Hegde has also written articles and given talks in support of homeopathy, regarded globally as a pseudoscience.