Traditional cures are often better than expensive medication

Mar 12, 2015 Editorial

On a recent visit to Kathmandu, Nepal, people were very pleased and relieved to see that the excellent buffet breakfast at the Shaligram Hotel where they stayed included yoghurt, good old home-made dahi.
When one is travelling, in India or abroad, dahi at breakfast is not just a treat for my taste buds; it’s vital to the peace of mind. Or rather, to the peace of stomach.
For year and years, whenever one would travel, one would suffer from what is variously known as Delhi Belly, or the Kolkata Collywobbles, or the Bengaluru Bogtrot. Simply put, this is diarrhea. One’s stomach would start acting up. It would act up so much that it would deserve a nomination for a Filmfare Award plus an Oscar. Travels became a travail of desperately looking for loos in the most awkward places at the most awkward times to find temporary relief from the rumblings and grumblings of my mutinous intestinal tract.
The several specialist doctors consulted about the problem came up with different diagnoses. Colitis, said one. Irritable Bowel Syndrome, also known to its pals as IBS, said another. They prescribed different powerful, high-priced drugs. Nothing worked. The stomach continued to revolt, like a diehard Naxal militant. The word ‘surgery’ had not been mentioned, but it loomed ominously on the horizon.
And then, in a London supermarket, there was a probiotic product that helps to restore the good bacteria in one’s gut and get the digestive process back on track. One traveller bought some of the stuff, and it worked like magic. The chronic travel-tum problem was cured overnight. And what was this miracle medicine? Nothing but common dahi. To get which I didn’t have to go to a supermarket, in London or anywhere else.
But this is not about any gastric problems. It’s about how old-fashioned home remedies are often far more efficacious cures for common ailments than all the fancily packed and even more fancily priced pharmaceutical products put together.
Medical science has yet to find a cure for the common cold. But as all wise grandmothers know, an infusion made by steeping a few tulsi leaves in hot water is the best precautionary measure to take when you feel the sniffles coming.
Sore throat? Forget those addictive cough mixtures with their high alcohol content which make you feel dopey and whoozy. The best cure for a sore throat is gargling with hot salt water.
Bunny used to suffer from agonising cramps in her feet and legs at night which would wake her from sleep. A medic recommended huge doses of calcium combined with vitamin D first thing in the morning. Morning? No, no, said another medic. Morning was all wrong, the calcium-cum-Vit D blockbuster had to be taken at night, just before going to bed. Morning, night, nothing worked. The cramps kept coming. Then someone suggested she soak her feet for a few minutes daily in water in which two spoons of magnesium sulphate, also known as Epsom salts, had been dissolved. The cramps vanished as if a wizard had waved a wand to make them disappear. Chhoo mantar.
And if you suffer from insomnia, instead of sleeping pills try a glass of warm milk just before bedtime. Or, better still, cut out this column and read it when required. Sleep guaranteed in five minutes, or your money back.
There are other remedies that are so much cheaper than the expensive medications. Who can forget the concentrated sugar water when one suffered a fall? There is a perfectly good medical reason why this works.
We still drink a dose of lemon and salt when we have a cough; we make poultice for wounds and the older people applied fire to a nail stick to ward off tetanus.
Many people today are turning to “bush remedies” for everything. There are the aphrodisiacs which may or may not work but which people swear by. The talk is about herbs and surely, these were tired and proven until we became sophisticated.

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Traditional cures are often better than expensive medication

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