Nor Hamizah, UUM Sintok, Kedah.
Feb. 9: “Honey is the safest antibiotic, amla or nellikai the most potent immunity-booster. Desi ghee, loaded with the goodness of essential fatty acids can actually keep your heart healthy and neem can topple any chemical antiseptic lotion when it comes to healing wounds,” — not suggestions from the paati next door, but from senior practitioners of modern medicine.
‘When in doubt, turn to Ayurveda’ — this is the mantra of senior surgeons and modern doctors, who seem to have become a bit cynical with all those years of practicing allopathy.
“Modern medicine has too many loopholes - for one, it does not consider that the prakriti, or constitution of each individual is different. It works on the principle ‘One size fits all’, while ayurveda classifies people as per their body type, and treats them accordingly,” says Dr Ravindra D. Bapat , senior gastric surgeon and vice chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi Mission University of Health Sciences in Mumbai. Dr Bapat has been trying to establish ayurveda as ‘evidence-based’ medicine so it can be accepted as mainstream medicine, and not just a ‘complementary’ system. While ayurvedic remedies have been used to treat people for centuries, providing us with innumerable clinical trials, why do we need to perform laboratory trials to brand them ‘evidence-based’, Dr Bapat reasons.
“Allopathy is gradually losing ground, even as the side effects of drugs are becoming more dangerous. There is too much dependence on expensive technology to diagnose diseases, and the sick people, as well as the microbes are developing resistance to antibiotics,” explains Dr Bapat.
“Precisely why a whopping 57 per cent of Britons, despite being given free healthcare by their government, are opting out of allopathy, and into alternative medicine,” quips Dr B.M. Hegde , veteran cardiologist.
Article has been published in Deccan Chronicle on Wednesday 10 February 2010.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The widely used herbal supplement Ginkgo biloba does not appear to slow the rate of cognitive decline in healthy older people or those with mild cognitive impairment, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
Their study involved 3,069 people age 72 or older from four U.S. communities who were tracked for an average of six years. Half of them took twice-daily doses of 120 milligrams of extract from the leaves of the ginkgo tree and half received a placebo.
Compared with study participants who received a placebo, the use of Ginkgo biloba did not slow cognitive decline in those with normal conditions or those with mild cognitive impairment, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The findings suggest that Ginkgo biloba -- one of the top-selling herbal supplements used with the aim of improving memory and preventing age-related cognitive decline -- had no effect on subtle changes associated with early symptoms of dementia or normal aging, the researchers said.
"The primary finding was no effect of the ginkgo extract over a relatively long period of time in older people in slowing down what we see as the normal changes of thinking function in aging," Dr. Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the study's leader, said in a telephone interview.
"If one thought that ginkgo might maintain cognition and prevent or delay decline in some thinking associated with aging, it did not do that," he said.
DeKosky and colleagues previously found that Ginkgo biloba was not effective in reducing the incidence of Alzheimer's dementia or dementia overall.
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Adam Ritson was one of rugby league's most promising young stars. Newspaper headlines "Million dollar man" proclaimed the youngster's success and potential brilliant future.Adam'sHis huge strength and size meant that Adam was a target for the high tackle - he was unstoppable any other way. But his career ended abruptly in 1996 after a high tackle during a match. Many months in hospital followed and Adam was left with no memory and there was no way he would ever go back to the game again.
When adam retired from rugby league, his faltering short term memory closed many doors to him and his future looked grim and with with no memory Adam had virtually no life at all.
But nobody reckoned with Adam's aunt. Olga Sawtell was incensed that Adam was making little progress. Her story of how she found Membac to help her nephew's memory is a story of courage, heartbreak, love exasperation and fear.
Western medicine had called it a day and it was over to Olga to overcome the odds.
Fate stepped in and she started her research just as Bacopa Monnieri was being introduced to neurologists at an international conference in Melbourne. Olga decided it was worth a try.
Olga then contacted the CDRI (the Indian government laboratory) and secured exclusive rights, and now the family manufacture and sell this patented herbal extract exclusively in Australia.
"It turned out to be the most important 'try' of my life. My memory improved out of sight. I can't play football any more and if I hadn't been able to improve my memory, I'd be getting a lot less out of life than I am now. It took time - good things don't happen overnight," said Adam.
