The role of complementary and alternative medicines in general health and immunity

Abstract

The immune system is a host protection system that includes numerous biological structures and processes in an organism which protects from diseases. It has been showed that there is significant relationship between immune system function and infectious diseases both in animal models and in humans. The aim of this research is to investigate whether Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAMs) can be useful in boosting immune system to prevent and/or treat the infectious diseases in the early stage of infection. Accordingly, the previous research on this issue is investigated and the results re provided. This study also performs an analysis on the consumers’ reviews on turmeric to find the effectiveness of turmeric intake in improving general health status of patient through WebMD data. The results of this study demonstrated that the majority of consumers are highly satisfied with the use of turmeric in improving their health conditions. It is also found that the majority of patients have used turmeric as the alternative therapies and got positive results in their treatments. In general, the results of this research provided several recommendations on the use of CAMs for infectious diseases and revealed that immune system may be boosted by CAMs and accordingly help in prevention and/or treatment of infectious diseases. However, further evaluations for the use of CAMs through consumers’ experience analysis are needed to come to robust conclusions regarding the benefits of CAM as an alternative medicine for infectious disease such as COVID-19.