Ayurvedic medicines benefited 4 K patients within 3 days: Study

VARANASI Ayurvedic medicines started giving relief to around 4000 patients suffering from various common diseases within three days and to 8000 patients within 7 days, claims a study conducted by the faculty of Ayurveda, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University (IMS-BHU).

The faculty of Ayurveda conducted the study to assess impact of Ayurvedic medicines on 13,936 patients in eight government Ayurvedic college hospitals and certain dispensaries across the state between June 2022 and February 2023.

“The patients suffering from fever, cough, cold, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, jaundice and other common diseases were surveyed to assess impact of Ayurvedic medicines on them,” said Vaidya Sushil Kumar Dubey, professor, faculty of Ayurveda, BHU. Dubey along with former dean of the faculty prof Yamini Bhushan Tripathi had planned the study in April 2022.

Vaidyas (Ayurveda practitioners) gave medicines to the patients and recorded their impact on them when they visited hospitals for follow-up after a week. When Ayurvedic medicine started showing impact, duration of cure and other facts were recorded in the survey.

Ayurvedic medicines were found to have positive effect on 31.61% patients within 3 days and 58.35% within 7 days whereas around 14.65% of patients had no benefit in 3 days and about 1.02% had no benefit in 30 days. Also, 87.24% patients returned to the hospitals for follow-up, said the study.

Prof Dubey said it also came to light during the study that 76.82% respondents did not have proper perspiration. “Less or no sweating may cause liver and heart diseases. Our study found that 52 % patients had breathing problems in walking up to 100 to 300-metre,” he added. “This (study) is an effort to create a concrete data on effectiveness of Ayurvedic medicines,” Dubey said.

Prof Dubey said the printed proforma/Google form was used for the survey. “A report on findings of the study has been sent to the additional chief secretary, department of Ayush, Government of Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Vice chancellor, BHU, Prof Sudhir K Jain supported the concept, saying that research like this was the need of the hour to take Ayurveda to the global level.