By Dr Bhaswati Bhattacharya
MPH MD (Family Medicine), PhD (Ayurveda-BHU)
While the West is clamoring for PPE and ventilators, and chanting for tests to arrive, they worship epidemiologists and discard the retrospective wisdom of conquered epidemics of the ancient past preserved in oldest clinical wisdom.
On Testing
Critics of ancient “nonsense” are focused on the only solutions as Testing and hydroxy-chloroquine. The uninformed public continues to desperately seek the swab.
But when people clamor for tests, they really seek to know whether they are contagious or about to get sick.
Current tests not only give a high rate of false results. They also only tell your antibody response up to a few days before testing. Even if tested today, if you touch infected items, get infected by an object or asymptomatic carrier, today’s negative test result has no value after today. Obsession with testing now will likely only give you a useless snapshot of a moment in the past.
Even the CDC’s own tests failed in March, and they refused to accept tests made in South Korea and accepted by the WHO. The USA was delayed in testing because market forces were more important than life forces. As of March 17, states are left to invent tests, requiring no FDA approval currently, as per the FDA website. The 20+ tests on the market are NOT all accurate.
Smart labs are developing tests for long-term antibodies to the virus that can protect you if you get reinfected. These are similar to blood tests after immunizations, such as IgM for hepatitis indicating we are safe from the disease, whether or not we had full-blown symptoms or hospitalization. These will only be useful 8-10 weeks after you have encountered the disease, sometime in late May or June 2020.
Data today show measures of infectivity, symptomatic cases, and deaths. Mitigation efforts and effects of social distancing dramatize late interventions of “flattening the curve” highlighting only that the curve rose in most nations because authorities had no wisdom of early intervention.
But the deaths from Covid do not lie. And the effects of zero outside contacts do not lie. Your symptoms about 12 days after your last outside contact do not lie about your personal prognosis. The statistics from severely-affected groups shows that the death rate predicts the true rate of infection. The death rate tells more than symptomatic patient rates, or testing rates, or positive tests.
Flattening the curve was necessary because ancient hygienic wisdom is not consistently practiced among even the most educated. The maximum infection vectors today are the exhausted frontline workers who lapse in their own guidelines.
Physical Distancing, Social Cohesion
Ancient wisdom tells us that preventing spread to another person is the best way to serve your loved ones. Avoiding physical proximity is the only scientific solution until we clean the environment.
As of April 6, 2020, India reported 118 deaths due to Covid and 4289 confirmed cases. One week later, on April 13, Indian reported 331 deaths due to Covid and 9240 confirmed cases, mostly among the most westernized, “modern” and wealthy areas, not the most densely-populated pockets. Among people who engage in ancient traditions, “even those who can’t pronounce virus,” there seem to be less symptoms, less positive cases, and people with mild symptoms using home rituals and family herbal decoction their grandmother made them. Frontline doctors of Indian origin around the USA are using nani’s (grandmother’s) recipes and are staying well.
Back to the Environment
Ayurveda reminds us to cleanse the land, cleanse the water, cleanse the air and become aware of time, especially during epidemics, known as janapada-uddhvansa in Sanskrit.
It teaches us to clean the inner environment by breathing deeply to slow time in the body. Daily pranayama and movement of the 14 main joints of the body is important for moving blood and oxygen to the quiet corners inside the body. Wash your hands when you rise, when you eat, when you come inside. Do quiet yoga and meditate daily. Breathe deeply several times a day. Use oil drops in your nostrils daily. Ensure your sense of smell is working by smelling your food regularly. Take a bath daily using herbal powders. Choose to change your daily habits. If you do not take this time to improve the inner environment of your body, then disease will easily take it over.
Daily dhoopana, smoke and fire, cleanses the outer environment. In the house, burn an oil candle daily, preferably with ghee or mustard oil. Burn pure incense. Create a dhoopana. burn guggul, adding some ajwain, turmeric, neem, coconut husks, camphor and a few drops of ghee. Save those skins and paper around the garlic and onion and add it to the evening dhoopana. Try to see the pharmacy in your backyard and in your kitchen. Find juniper, frankincense, pine. Once the flame gets started, put some leaves on top to get the smoke going. Don’t use all of these ingredients in each session. ! Try using 3-5 and burning a dhoopana twice daily, at sunrise and sunset. And turn off your smoke alarm before starting this process. Reorient your home automation to allow ancient wisdom to re-enter. Recall that Indian knowledge was perfected by the 1000 years of cyclic infections that plagued Europe and created its Dark Ages while India flourished.
Clean your house and the area around it. Clean your garden and help plants to grow there. Leave clean water and food for birds. Clean old things out from your house.
To prevent any respiratory illness at the spring change of season, Ayurveda teaches us to make sure our gut is clean. The gut is the headquarters for empowering the immune system. Adding raisins (draksha), coriander (dhanya) leaves, prunes, spinaches (saag), palak and dark green leafy vegetables to the diet helps the bowel push contents down and out. If you need a little extra help, try taking 1 tsp of triphala with hot water at night. If you need more help, contact an ayurvedic physician. You can take 1 tsp of dashmul powder with 1 tsp of psyllium husk with hot water at night. The main goal is to have large bowel movements daily and get the gut clean.
If you are in the 40% of America with irritable bowel syndrome, currently incurable by modern medicine, drink just 6 oz of coconut milk as medicine daily. It is nourishing and filling, but light to digest and is used to cool the inflamed belly. Most IBS patients benefit from musta and bilva. They take triphala every night. Use dashmul. Learn how by investing in an online visit with an authentic ayurvedic physician.
In the spring, when “Master Cleanse” is a popular fasting ritual for the body, the superfood amalaki, liver cleansers, herbomineral medicines, and multiherbal tablets are in use among athletes, nutrition enthusiasts, and holistic experts. In a country where fatty liver disease is abundant, a properly functioning liver is a great asset.
Ayurveda reminds us dhoopana cleanses the air, oil drops protect the nose, gargles cleanse with protective herbs, kashayas (decoctions) and formulations boost the digestive fire and promote better assimilation of all the herbs we invest in. The concept of Saucha, cleansing, is known to all who want Lakshmi to sit in our homes.
Dr. Bhattacharya is Clinical Asst Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, 2018-2022 Fulbright Specialist in Public Health and author of best-selling ‘Everyday Ayurveda‘ published by Penguin Random House.
