Research carried out by a post graduate student at the faculty of traditional medicine under Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences revealed that traditional medicines can reduce blood pressure for patients with hypertension.
The findings of the study, which was carried out for two months in Lhuentse, was presented at the two-day International conference on Medical and Health Sciences in Thimphu, recently.
Jigme Singye who is currently pursuing his post graduation in Traditional Medicine, along with his team conducted the study from December last year till January this year. For this study, the team examined blood pressure of 66 hypertensive patients, who were attending religious events in the Lhuentse.
The medicines used were Churu25, which consists of 25 ingredients, made out of indigenous traditional medicines, Kobjee13 prepared with 13 ingredients and Agar15, consisting of 15 ingredients of indigenous Bhutanese traditional medicines.
“We examined for six weeks and used scientific tools to measure systolic and diastolic blood pressure. And the reading showed that systolic pressure decreased by 18.4 per cent. And diastolic reading showed decrease by 9.4 per cent on an average,” said Jigme Singye.
Although these traditional medicines were in use for years, there has not been scientific study carried out to validate the efficacy of the medicines, due to which their efficacy had often been subject to debate among health professionals.
“Effectiveness of traditional medicines is well scripted by the Buddha in his text books. But today when people question us on evidence based scientific study; there has not been any such study. However effective the medicine maybe, it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves without study. So we carried out this study using scientific methods,” added Jigme.
While his study findings showed significant reduction in blood pressure, he said the level of the effectiveness needs to be explored further with larger sample size at various centres. Furthermore, he stressed that with growing awareness and belief about the safety of traditional medicines, the number of patient is also increasing, which calls for more studies on other traditional medicines to validate their efficiencies.
