Herbal remedies vs antibiotics: Do you think herbal remedies are better than antibiotics

There are many reasons to justify that herbal remedies are always better than antibiotics “wonder drugs”. I agree that antibiotics calm down the symptoms of a certain disease immediately and at a much faster rate than herbal remedies, but in the long term, herbal remedies remain beneficial not just because of a large numbers of side effects associated with antibiotics but because of several other things which I will discuss with you today but first of all I will give you three cases from my personal life about the benefits of herbal medicine where the doctor did not prescribe any type of antibiotic to the patient for treating the disease followed by my personal views on this subject:

Chikungunya treatment with herbal medicine

One of my colleagues was having fever of 103 F, with severe joint pain, severe weakness, pulse 110 per minute, cough and cold. It was last year 2010 when chikungunya viral fever was at vogue in some parts of India. As my colleague believes in Ayurveda, he insisted that the family give him Ayurvedic medicines only. The family told him that natural medicine takes time to cure the disease but he disagreed and said I would like to get treated with natural medicine only. His regular family physician was called and he gave him tribhuvan kirti rasa 250 mg 3 times a day, maha sudarshan Ghanvati 500 mg 3 times a day, and Sitopaladi churna 500 mg 3 to 4 times a day. This Ayurvedic treatment for chikungunya was continued for eight days. Fever subsided on day two. Weakness continued for 15 days. Moderate joint pain was there for 8 to 10 days. Highlights of treatment are – No allopathic antibiotic for infection, no analgesics for pain, no antipyretics for fever, only pure Ayurvedic herbal treatment.

Ayurvedic treatment of pyrexia of unknown origin

My friend’s son who is 10 years old was diagnosed with pyrexia of unknown origin. He was suffering from joint pains and used to sweat profusely. He used to get high grade fever once a week. He was fed on antibiotics and pain killers and that was done on a regular basis. My friend’s wife did not believe in natural treatment but my friend was keen and hence he convinced her to try it out. The doctor told them to soak fresh inner bark of Kadu neem (it is white in color) in warm water overnight. Next morning fill and store in a glass bottle and administer 30 ml 2 times a day. Along with it, he advised them to prepare Ashwagandha Kshir Pak and administer on empty stomach and advised to continue for 15 days. They did it for 7 days and the child has not complained of any symptoms after that and now the family is religiously following Ayurveda Medicine.

Leech therapy - Herbal remedy for wounds and boils

One of my relatives had boil over her left knee joint lasting since two days. On examination, findings were approximately 2 to 2.5 inch inflamed circular, elevated area over the patella on lateral side with pain and tenderness plus redness and warmth with softness in central region. Flexion was painful. On seeing this, after little counseling, to minimize pain and inflammation, the herbal medicine doctor decided to apply leech therapy. Two leeches were applied and within 20 minutes, she found some relief in pain and tenderness. On second day, her symptoms were 40 to 50% better. Now, she was willing to undergo the same procedure, this time we applied a single leech and again she felt relief in other symptoms also within a few hours. Next day on examination, it was found that swelling, tenderness, and redness were almost negligible and pain was very less. After two days we saw that boil, which was fully subsided without using any anti-inflammatories, analgesics, antibiotics, or any local allopathic application.

So above were the three cases where herbal remedies or natural medicine helped cure the disease completely and where no antibiotic was prescribed. Besides these things, according to me there is definite need of stopping the indiscriminate use of antibiotics by all doctors as I read one article saying, “at this current speed of development of resistance to antibiotics, by the year 2020 we would not be having any antibiotic medicines to help our infected patients” and I think this is the most important reason why herbal remedies are better than antibiotics because herbs don’t cause any drug resistance problems like antibiotics. For example if you have a viral infection and you are prescribed acetaminophen 500 mg for 5 days and you complete your course. What will happen is that the signs and symptoms will go away from day 2 but after a few weeks, you will again experience the same type of problems because antibiotics hide or in other words restrain your disease symptoms for a time being and that’s why they take very less time to perform this action whereas herbal remedies cure the disease from their roots which takes time just because herbal remedies follow a natural process where our body does not experience sudden chemical reactions or drastic changes. This is the reason why I always prefer herbal remedies over antibiotics. Least but not last, our natural medicinal resources are vanishing on a very frequent basis and if we want to survive, we have to save them and have faith in them.