Modern allopathic medicines treat 'diseases'. If you have hypertension, you get a medicine - and possibly some adjunct advice about diet or exercise. If you have diabetes, you get injections to bring your sugars down - and more adjunct advice about diet or exercise. The traditional 'non-traditional' fields of health care emphasize other aspects of individual well-being apart from the disease itself.
For example, herbalists may help someone with hypertension who has sleep difficulties or gastro-intestinal problems as a way to counter the body's response to those negative stimuli - which culminates in high blood pressure.
A recent study published in the allopathic journal CHEST, showed how these two modalities can be used together synergistic-ally.
The team conducted a prospective randomized controlled trial using a Guduchi preparation called tinocordin. The study involved 100 patients with sputum-positive pulmonary tuberculosis admitted to a tertiary care teaching hospital between January 1999 and April 2000. One group was randomized to receive antitubercular drugs, including rifampicin, isoniazid, ethambutol, and pyrazinamide. The other group received the same antitubercular treatment plus 500 mg tinocordin 3 times per day for the first 2 months of treatment.
The researchers followed patients at 15, 30, and 60 days, assessing them for clinical improvement, weight gain, radiologic improvement, hematologic parameters, sputum conversion, and adverse effects. Patient outcomes were deemed satisfactory after 2 months if they achieved sputum conversion, clinical improvement of greater than 80%, and radiologic improvement greater than 50%.
At 15, 30, and 60 days, clinical improvement was 23%, 48%, and 73%, respectively, in the study group, and 16%, 31%, and 57%, respectively, in the control group. The differences were statistically significant.
In the study group, mean radiologic improvement at 30 days was 26.1% and at 60 days was 55.5%; in the control group, it was 23.24% at 30 days and 46.96% at 60 days (P < .05 at 60 days).
Sputum conversion at 15, 30, and 60 days was achieved by 46%, 74%, and 90% of the study group, respectively; it was achieved by 22%, 58%, and 76% of the control group, respectively (P < .001).
At 2 months, 69.56% of patients in study group had a satisfactory response, compared with 30.61% of the control group. Adverse effects (11%) included constipation (2.17%), rash and itching (4.34%), and increased frequency of micturation (4.34%).
The novelty of this treatments bucks the 'more is better' paradigm of allopathic medicine which, while showing profound improvements in some interventions, is limited by its own monolithic modality. HIV treatment improved with the use of triple-therapy and combining two types of anti-malarial medicines reduced resistance. However, they were all arrows from the same quiver. Usage of different modalities, however, such as herbal therapy, along with conventional treatment potentially compounds the available ways to make people healthier.