COVID Cures – Cumin to Cow

In our country, even during normal times due to lack of access to doctors and cost of healthcare, there is always a space for fakes, and magical remedies. While science-based medicines have made phenomenal improvements in the last 2 centuries, we still have diseases where either we don’t have a cure yet or we can only manage them with or without some side effects. This ambiguous void is filled with quacks. With COVID and social media, this has become amplified. Cost of COVID treatment, medicine shortages, slow rate of vaccination, and infections still on the higher side, we are inundated with magical cures and remedies every day. When we live under fear, that we could be a COVID patient tomorrow, we look for something to hold on to. If someone says, this Kashayam (concoction) can provide you immunity, rather than questioning it, our thought process is more of what harm could come by consuming it…since all the ingredients it has are familiar to us anyways. Cures go from Cumin to Coronil to Cow Urine. Across the potions, there are few common ingredients that are always there – cumin, pepper, tulsi, ginger, garlic. Then we get the vitamins and minerals. Steam inhalation. Last time I checked steam inhalation clears the nose block but doesn’t kill the virus. But WhatsApp doesn’t care about it. Few lemon drops in your nose? Anyone? Going by social media, lemon seems to cure anything from common cold to cancer. Oil pulling seems to pull the virus out of our system. Then we get into exotic category of Cow-Urine and Cow-Dung. More than exotic, Cow-urine and Cow-dung also fall under religious domain. Questioning their efficacy can get one on the wrong side of the law. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see cow-urine tetra packs in supermarket aisles in near future. Hey, if nothing works, there is always Coronil 😀

“Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine,

which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.”

– Deep thoughts by Jack Handy from SNL

PSBB (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) and Ramdev

In our country, I give 2 days to a week for an issue to be colored by caste and/or religion. Anti-<religion>, anti-<caste>. If it is Anti-Hindu, by equivalence it is also Anti-National.

In the case of PSBB, there is a desperate attempt to turn it in to an anti-brahmin and anti-Hindu narrative to distract the focus from the core issue. What has happened within PSBB is a child sexual harassment crime that has gone on for multiple years and points to a grave administrative failure. Good news in PSBB case is that there are good number of sane voices from the society to keep the focus on the core issue of child sexual abuse ignoring the extremes on both the sides.

In the case of Ramdev Vs Allopathy, issue has morphed into anti-Hindu, Christian Conversion, and foreign-hand narrative. Ramdev has vowed to convert 1000 allopathic doctors to ayurvedic (does this fall under the ambit of anti-conversion law?). Courts have jumped in the fracas too. I have heard of people mapping Allopathy to Western medicine. But this is the first time, Allopathy is getting a new mapping to Christian medicine. Soon we will have different colored pills and all we need is to take the RED pill to become a Christian, SAFFRON to become a Hindu, GREEN to become a Muslim. BLUE pill? You become a non-religious person 😃

Allopathy and AYUSH

There is always an unhealthy tension between various schools of medicine, Allopathy, Ayurveda, Siddha, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, and Unani. There has been an ongoing effort to build bridges between them but no success so far. Even at government level, we have IMA and AYUSH running independently. As a patient, all I am looking for is a cure and treatment. As a consumer, I need to know, what is the science and data behind the medicine, irrespective of which school of medicine it came from. As of today, there is more transparency in allopathy than others. FWIW, allopathic medicines go through peer reviews and approval process. Efficacy, and side effects are easy to access. This is not to say, other schools of medicine need to follow the same process as allopathy since there are differences on the approaches. But there is a need for agreed upon standardization for AYUSH. At a minimum, their medicines and treatment also need to go through trials, data collection, peer reviews, and approvals. Doesn’t have to be in the same scale of allopathy to start with. This can be done within India as a start. Patient is not going to say no to integrated medicine – combine the knowledge and wisdom from all schools of medicine – there are only benefits, and nothing to lose. We need to move away from Allopathy Vs Ayurveda Vs Siddha attitude to Inclusiveness approach keeping the patient in mind.

Home remedies not to be confused with above. Turmeric, ginger, garlic, cumin, pepper etc. are known immunity builders. I put them under traditional home remedies. Hot pepper Rasam, hot herbal tea or hot milk with pepper and turmeric are always soothing to the throat. No arguments there 😄