COVID scare: Many fall back on Indian medicine to boost immunity

Sale of products like honey, Chawayanprash, herbal teas, Amla based products and others, which are touted to improve immunity, has increased considerably. People have also started visiting Ayurveda and Siddha clinics in a bid to improve their immunity level.

Dr N Manavalan, Principal, Government Yoga and Naturopathy Medical College and Hospital, while conceding to the increased interest among people, said, “We are just guiding those who visit us by asking them to use basic Ayurveda ingredients that have been in use at every household for years. If they had followed a healthy lifestyle by incorporating the traditional ingredients in their food, their immunity is bound to be good and can pave way for an easy recovery. Even in China, the doctors are following traditional methods like acupuncture and herbal medicine and they have also suggested others to follow,” he said.

Further, asking people to adopt lifestyle changes that could keep them healthy, the principal urged the public to make ‘Pranayama’ a habit. He said it trains the lungs and improves the capacity of the respiratory system immensely. It can prevent the intensity of the virus attack to some extent.

Meanwhile, people who run ayurvedic shops in the city claimed that the sales of such natural products have increased. “People are buying chukku, adhimadhuram and similar products for throat and lung infections, which usually does not have many takers. In the past month, we have seen people falling back on Ayurvedic and Siddha medicines rather than Allopathy. We even ran out of stock for some products,” said Jeevanantham, who runs an ayurvedic medical shop at KK Nagar.

It may be noted that the Ministry of AYUSH released an advisory in January about the ayurvedic, homoeopathic and unani ways of managing the outbreak. While it also included WHO guidelines like handwashing and using masks, it listed a number of herbs and other formulas that could be adopted by the people.