AH1N1? Ayurvedic Panchagavya: four drops in the nose, twice a day

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Een heel goedkoop middel en thuis te bereiden!

Toegegeven voor de ingredienten moet je wat moeite doen: botersmout (zie
recept bij PS), kwark, urine en mest van koe

Die laatste twee kun je misschien aan een lokale boer vragen, zelf halen
kan gevaarlijker zijn dan AH1N1 ;)

Groet / Cees

PS. Ghi (of ghee) is geklaarde boter. De Tibetanen drinken het in hun
thee, maar ghi is ook - iets minder exotisch - een braadboter van hoge
kwaliteit. 'Klaren' is het verwijderen van eiwitten en zouten uit de
boter, omdat die bij verhitting bruin en bitter worden.
Klaren gaat als volgt: verse boter wordt langzaam verhit, het schuim (dat
de eiwitten bevat) wordt er afgeschept en de boter wordt zo voorzichtig
afgegoten, dat het bezinksel van caseine en zouten achterblijft. In
Nederland maakte men vroeger volgens hetzelfde principe zogeheten
botersmout.
Ghi is zuiver en zacht van smaak, spat niet en kan gebruikt worden voor
bakken, braden en frituren. Het versterkt de smaak van kruiden en
specerijen en is lang houdbaar. Professionele koks maken dankbaar gebruik
van deze eigenschappen. In India wordt ghi al eeuwen geroemd door
Ayurvedische artsen. U kunt zelf boter klaren, maar ghi is ook - in
biologische kwaliteit - kant en klaar te koop in de natuurvoedingswinkel.
http://www.biologica.nl/

http://www.livemint.com/2009/08/12235204/What8217s-bigger-than-swine.html

What’s bigger than swine flu? The panic
Posted: Thu, Aug 13 2009. 12:30 AM IST
The panic has already forced changes in both personal lifestyles and
corporate agendas
Samanth Subramanian
New Delhi: Now into its second week and having claimed its 17th victim,
swine flu is proving far less infectious than that other malady: the
hysteria over swine flu, which seems to have afflicted the country at
large.
Mumbai mood: Disposable masks were spotted across the city--(clockwise
from top) in local trains, at drug stores and outside schools. Abhijit
Bhatlekar / Mint
Mumbai mood: Disposable masks were spotted across the city--(clockwise
from top) in local trains, at drug stores and outside schools. Abhijit
Bhatlekar / Mint
Even as the media has tracked each successive death, as masks have broken
out like rashes in cities, and as people have started avoiding enclosed
spaces, medical observers suggest the hype may be outrunning the ailment.
In Mumbai, following Pune’s lead, schools and colleges were ordered closed
for a week, and movie theatres for three days; promptly, the share prices
of PVR Ltd and Adlabs Films Ltd fell 6.4% and 0.2%, respectively. The
Union government has bought an additional 30 million doses of Tamiflu, the
antiviral drug; its tightly controlled earlier stock of 10 million doses
has nearly been expended.
“They’ve had more than 400 deaths in the US, but do you see this kind of
thing? No, they’re going about it practically, methodically,” says V.
Ramasubramanian, a senior consultant in infectious diseases at Apollo
Hospitals in Chennai. “We have to face the fact that it may last another
four months or another four years. We have to face the fact that it may
kill—but it will kill less than 0.5% of the infected population.”
Click here to view slideshow
The panic has already forced changes in both personal lifestyles and
corporate agendas. From Pune, Nisha Sinh, a 29-year-old stylist, moved
with her husband and 18-month-old baby Veer to Mumbai, to remain there
till “things blow over”.
“With his lowered immunity, we didn’t want to leave him exposed,” Sinh
says of her son. “Veer needed some vaccinations, but I called the doctor
to see if we could postpone the shots. I didn’t want him to pick up
anything at the clinic either.” In her apartment complex, Sinh adds,
“birthday parties have been cancelled or postponed. There is a child in
our building who has asthma, and her parents haven’t sent her down in the
last month in the fear that she may pick up something”.
Perhaps inevitably, in reaction to the panic and to a lack of coherent
guidelines, alternative remedies have begun to appear attractive. At least
1,300 people have visited the Go-Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra in Nagpur over
the last four days, for instance, after it wheeled out its stock Ayurvedic
supplement to “boost the immune system”: Panchagavya, made of ghee, curd,
milk, cow urine and cow dung.
“The last time we saw this kind of response to Panchagavya was when there
was the fear of chikungunya a few years ago,” says Suresh Dawale,
secretary of the kendra, which has as its mission the establishment of
“eco-friendly cow-centred economics”. In its liquid form, Panchagavya
should be taken as four drops in the nose, twice a day, he says. “The
virus enters through the nose, after all, so Panchagavya guards against
that.”
Circulating text messages, meanwhile, recommend homeopathic drugs called
Gelsemium 200 and Influenzinum 200, or drops of “Nilgiri Oil” applied to
handkerchiefs and face masks. “The homeopathic remedies can boost the
immune system and be preventive,” says J.V. Raman, a homeopathy
practitioner in New Delhi. “But if the actual ailment does arise, these
would be cures, too.” Raman admits that he has not seen the drugs at work
for swine flu, simply because “I haven’t come across any cases of swine
flu”.
This recourse to alternative medicine does not yet worry Ramasubramanian.
“Right now, there is a shortage of screening kits and a shortage of
medicine, so people will resort to these things, and you can’t blame
them,” he says. “Even if they go to a regular clinic, the government won’t
be able to handle them. Anyway, 99.5% of people will get better, so they
don’t need to go to a clinic at all.”
Personal wariness and government regulations, particularly in Mumbai, have
cramped companies’ plans over the next few days. Kaminey, the much-awaited
film scheduled to release on 1,200 screens across the world on Friday,
will now be deprived of its 100-odd screens on opening day in Mumbai,
which Siddharth Roy Kapur, chief executive of UTV Motion Pictures Plc.,
admits is “a substantial amount for us”.
Another possible victim is Big Bazaar’s Maha Bachat sale, a five-day orgy
of buying that began on 12 August and is expected to generate 25% of its
monthly sales. “We have a national presence of 116 stores, so there could
be a dent if certain cities don’t fire,” says Rajan Malhotra, president of
strategy and convergence for Big Bazaar. “But in those cases, we would
look at other options, such as postponing the sale or extending the
duration. We are keeping all our options open.”
In Bangalore, technology firms have promoted one low-tech, but effective
measure among their employees: gallons of hand sanitizer. Wipro Ltd has
advised against unnecessary travel; Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s
employees in high-risk locations such as Mexico City have been asked to
work from home; Infosys Technologies Ltd has urged workers not to come to
work if they show symptoms.
“We have reduced all inbound and outbound travel to our Pune development
centre and limited it to essential business travel,” one Infosys
spokesperson said. Cisco Systems Inc., which employs 5,000 people in
India, has issued no travel restrictions thus far. “It hasn’t reached a
panic stage, but we are monitoring it,” says Varghese Thomas, head of
public relations at Cisco.
But the show, thinks Shreesh Misra, will go on. “I believe people will
still continue to come to malls,” says Misra, head (malls) at Pantaloon
Retail (India) Ltd. “They are taking necessary precautions, some come in
wearing masks, but they are still coming in. So in that sense, we expect
footfalls to be the same, if not incremental over the long weekend.”
Optimism, unlike Tamiflu, is not yet in short supply.
Radhieka Pandeya in New Delhi, Khushboo Narayan and Gouri Shah in Mumbai,
Poornima Mohandas in Bangalore, and Bloomberg contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2007 HT Media All Rights Reserved

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