BANGALORE: An Indian doctor said the best way to combat the devastating side effects of chemotherapy is to use herbal remedies to help patients cope with the effects of the drug.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dr. V. Ramakrishnan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, said the most effective way to fight the deadly side effects is to get to know the herbal medicines.
“It is not that we don’t know about the drugs, but we don, as a society, know enough about them,” Ramakritnan said.
“It’s about being open-minded about them, so we do the best we can to find the right herbs.”
Dr. Ramachandra Rao, an Indian chemist and chief scientific officer at the World Health Organization, said that the “common denominator” of cancer treatment is that it is a disease with multiple pathways of spread.
“We are talking about a complex disease, with many different factors that play a role in the disease,” Rao said.
“And there are various things that we have to take into account, like whether the patient is a healthy person, whether the tumor has spread, whether it’s in the peripheral nerves, whether there’s other things that could be a cause of the disease.”
Rao said that there are so many factors that contribute to cancer, and that we can’t ignore them.
“So we have no choice but to go after everything we can, which is why we need to look for herbs that can help,” Rao added.
Dr. Rao said he found the herb known as Ayurveda in the U.S. and Canada to be the best choice for treating cancer.
“The herbal medicine we use, which we use for everything from pain management to cancer treatment, has been proven to have many benefits,” Rao told the Journal.
Dr Ramachana Rao, chief scientist of the World Cancer Research Fund, said he is open to research.
He added that the research needs to focus on finding the best ways to treat cancer.
The article has been updated to include the World Bank data.