The term immune-suppression is quite familiar among medical fraternity all over the world. Large group of steroids come under the above category of drugs.
But what is the real meaning of immune boosting?
The term immune boosting has been used widely, excessively, rampantly and luxuriantly these days by the traditional healing system experts to combat COVID19.
Several herbal recipes have been proposed to the central government and state health ministry in Tamil Nadu to adopt such immune boosting herbal recipes of traditional healing practice and further it is claimed that such recipes would also combat virus and would save people from multi-organ failures etc.
Thanks to the scientific sense of our Honourable Prime Minister of India and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, they did not adopt or recommend such recipes to combat the pandemic created by COVID 19, due to paucity of scientific evidence for all such recipes.
The question of how fair and honest are we, in asking the age old traditional healing practice and grandma’s kitchen healing recipes to prove their recipes through science or scientific credence? But can we accept blindly all such recipes to combat the global killer COVID 19 without any basis and scientific credence? Won’t the adoption of such methods to fight Corona make India look like a joker at the global stage?
People’s Republic of China has adopted TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) as well to address Corona needs more evidence like the evidence for the efficacy of several grandma’s healing recipe for corona. Further China can adopt such measures because China is not a democratic country and it is ruled by an elected dictator where only one political party that exist for people to choose.
The question that raises multiple questions is why the proponents of traditional healing system recommend their recipe to be given to patients along with allopathic drugs? Be it Siddha or Ayurveda which are claimed to have evolved 5000 years ago, how would have used its recipes in the past to treat patients as an adjuvant or paramedical support to allopathic drugs as allopathic system has emerged recently, in less than 100 years?
Along with, which are the allopathic drugs the Immune booting recipes of traditional healing should be given to both COVID 19 positive patients and to people (who are otherwise healthy) to protect from Corona?
Won’t good food, healthy life style and tranquil mind, proper hygiene measures, free from smoking, alcoholism etc., shall offer immunity better than the so called immune boosting recipes of traditional healing system?
In the case of Corona epidemic, what else can offer better protection and immune defence to people other than social distancing, quarantine, use of mask and hand wash?
When people rush from pillar to post due to fear and the Government is weighing several measures to achieve self-quarantine and social distancing to prevent the spread of the disease, can we also create a scenario where people fight and combat to bring their recipes also in the forefront to include them into the list of drugs/therapy to treat COVID 19?
Are we looking at different scientific and proven options to prevent the spread COVID 19 or should we look at the epidemic of COVID 19 as an excellent opportunity to sell our unverified, unscientific methods and make fortune out of innocence and gullibility of people?
The above confusion is purely due to lack of clear definition and differentiation of traditional healing practice from the main stream scientifically proven allopathic system. The traditional healing stream must be positioned and promoted for health and general wellbeing or otherwise called paramedical purpose. Today what we need is paramedical support in large quantity. Once the traditional healing practice is promoted for paramedical benefit and so are the recipes of traditional healing as health supplements, certainly we can make India healthy.
As long as the traditional healing practices are treated as medical science and its recipes as drugs, only competition to prove own supremacy and even COVID 19 epidemic as an opportunity to market the greatness than how collectively we can address the challenge and help people to follow self-quarantine and social distancing effectively and voluntarily alone shall happen.
Grandma’s recipes from kitchen may be best for home care but for COVID 19, credible science and international approval is necessary. India should not and cannot adopt or approve all such recipes and the temperament and sensibility shown by Modi, our Honourable Prime Minister and Chief Minister of the state of Tamil Nadu deserve standing ovation for not nodding the grandma’s recipes the tag that it never deserve for treating or preventing COVID 19 pandemic.
