Be your own Alchemist — Week 1 : Siddha Medicine has a better answer to COVID19?
Plants have been the basis for medical treatments through most of human history and such traditional medicine is still widely practiced today in many parts of the world. One such is Siddha medicine (SiddhaVaidhya), one of the ancient practices from South India for healing and restoring the natural balance of the body through nature found ingredients.
What piqued my interest on this topic
As the world was barely scrambling to understand the Covid19 pandemic and its effects on human health both during and after infection, there was a ready-to-use formulation that was brought to light by Siddha practitioners in early 2020 and further endorsed by AYUSH, the ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy, India. It was called Kabasura kudineer(drink) or choornam(powder) which loosely means an infused decoction indicated for the management of fever(suram) due to the derangement caused by Respiratory track related infections(Kabam). Even prior to this pandemic, it was widely prescribed in Siddha for the management and prevention of swine flu and other respiratory disorders owing to its therapeutic and curative qualities. Many households in India have caught on to daily use of this home remedy without needing elaborate data evidence and clinical trials. There is a powerful lesson here as to how one’s belief system is the basis for adoption, adherence, persistence and practices when it comes to medicine.
The reported after effects of Covid infection…
While contacting the virus and going through the infection itself is traumatic for many, what is even more concerning is the poorly understood long-term effects of the infection, the aftermath. So far the virus appears to cause its damage to the brain and nervous system not as much through direct infection as through the indirect effects of inflammation. Pieces of the virus, not actual viruses multiplying, can trigger an inflammatory response in the brain. If you have an uncontrolled level of inflammation, that leads to toxicity and dysregulation.
Some of the reported symptoms of patients after released from hospital after testing negative needs to be studied further. It ranges from psychological effects like mental fogginess, cognitive impairment, Depression to physical like muscle weakness, exhaustion, headache to Physiological like sleep disorders and more. The individual experience varies too as one can expect.
It appears we need to be looking at a holistic treatment than something targeted just at the active infection although that should be the primary goal.
More on Kabasura Kudineer…
It is a mixture of a whopping 15 unique plant based ingredients each of them having unique characteristic features of its own. It is collectively proven to possess strong anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, antioxidant, hepato-protective, anti-pyretic, anti-asthmatic and immunomodulatory properties. Several studies have disclosed that kabasura kudineer due to its anti-inflammatory properties aids in reducing swelling in the air passages while antibacterial and antipyretic properties ease fever. The amount of information available in medicinal journals and research papers available each of those individual plants and their pharmacologic properties is very extensive and elaborate.
I tried a very rudimentary method below to understand the commonalities and uniqueness of 8 of those 15 herbs and their well-documented benefits in research papers. It is interesting to see the range of effects not just aiming to tackle the infection but to address the wide-range of associated symptoms including the after effects of respiratory inflammation. It would be further interesting to explore through research on how the ingredient brings its own therapeutic value to the table as well as learns to work together with the other ingredients without working against each other (drug- target interaction and drug-drug interaction studies). While all the signs are pointing in the right direction, scientists recommend further preclinical and clinical pharmacology studies are required to develop Kabasura Kudineer as a potential siddha drug against COVID 19.
Closing notes…
This is just one example of several potential therapies under study — both known and unknown. It is more compelling to believe that the answer to the comprehensive therapy to COVID19 addressing all the Physical, Physiological, Neurological and emotional impacts of the infection is more likely to come from a poly-active ingredient based formulation accompanied by a social & emotional support through integrated medicine as opposed to going after a monolithic drug as we have approached medicine in the past.
If only we choose to look closer, the miracle gifts of nature have answers to yesterday, today and what may come in the future! After all we call her Mother Nature for a reason….
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