What is tuberculosis?
Well tuberculosis is also called TB, and sometimes consumption. Yes consumption, because it seems to consume people with its symptoms of bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting.
TB is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It spreads through air droplets which are expelled when people with infectious TB cough, sneeze, speak, or sing. Close contacts are at highest risk of becoming infected.
My clinical experience
Most of the tuberculosis patients that come to me for consultation do so for one or more of the following 3 reasons:
- They are fearful of side effects of antibiotics and want a natural safe alternative in the form of homeopathy.
- They tried taking the antibiotic ATT but could not tolerate it because of severe rejection in the form of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and so on.
- They are taking the ATT properly but along with that they want the support of homeopathy to deal with the side effects.
Role of homeopathy
Well, the role of homeopathy in tuberculosis is essentially complementary. What that means is that homeopathic remedies are highly recommended in the treatment of TB but along with allopathic ATT or antibiotic treatment.
Homeopathic treatment
In a case of TB homeopathic treatment helps in the following ways:
- It makes the immune system robust against the causative bacteria thus making the allopathic ATT more effective.
- It protects the liver and kidney from damage due to strong allopathic medicines.
- It helps the patient to tolerate the antibiotic ATT and the patient can take the allopathic medicines without having rejection symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and so on.
- It increases the cure rate in MDR TB i.e. multi-drug resistant TB.
MDR TB & homeopathy
Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is increasing around the world leading to the re-emergence of tuberculosis. Recently, researchers in India have completed a study to test if homeopathy added to the standard allopathic treatment of tuberculosis improved outcomes for sufferers.
The results? Those who received homeopathy did much better than those who only had placebo added to their treatment regime. There was significant improvement in their chest x-rays, an increase in weight gain and hemoglobin levels and a reduction in ESR. The cure rate was 11.4% more in the homeopathy group compared to the placebo group.
Number of remedies
There are 336 homeopathic remedies which give great relief in TB if used judiciously along with the ongoing allopathic antibiotic ATT. However, the correct choice and the resulting relief is a matter of experience and right judgment on the part of the doctor.
The treatment is decided after thorough case taking of the patient.
Thus, in my opinion homeopathy is strongly recommended in all cases of tuberculosis.