HIV/AIDS is one of the deadly diseases that the cure has not been found yet. It needs a favorable innovation to heal HIV/AIDS sufferers.
It, then, encouraged Annisa Fitriani, Yunita Dwi Setyawati, and Intan Hanifah M. to examine HIV/AIDS. The research, conducted by three Medical students of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, was gathering and reviewing journals regarding HIV/AIDS. “Ultimately, we agreed to utilize rind of red pitaya (dragon fruit) as medicinal herbs for HIV/AIDS sufferers,” stated Annisa Fitriani on Thursday (15/1) in Lobby of Medical Faculty of UMY.
Annisa continued that the rind of red pitaya is obviously much more beneficial than the flesh. She argued that there are a greater number of positive contents in the rind of red pitaya than in the flesh. “According to prior researches, this rind of red pitaya contains antioxidant effects, anti bacterial, anti virus, and anti microbial. The HIV/AIDS sufferers’ body immune system would rapidly decrease. Hence, medicine or vitamin is needed to raise their body immune system. One of the ways is through using the rind of red pitaya,” she explained.
For the food processing, Annisa and her fellows attempted to make it tea. For one reason, many Indonesians consume tea; moreover, the tea consumption is carried out in many Asian and Middle East countries. Based on researches, those countries are the highest tea consumers.
“It finally turns to be our focus to carry out medicinal herbs for HIV/AIDS sufferers through consuming the red pitaya rind produced becoming tea. In fact, from the process, researches dealing with benefits or contents of the red pitaya rind processed becoming tea have been conducted. Nevertheless, the research only explained the benefits and contents of tea made from red pitaya rind and did not have certain concern such as performing a therapy for illness,” she expounded.
Ultimately, Annisa and her fellows decided to employ a concept of herbal therapy for HIV/AIDS sufferers. Processing red pitaya rind to be tea certainly eases patients of HIV/AIDS sufferers to consume it. “When we provide this therapy for HIV/AIDS sufferrers, they would feel at ease since they would consider that they are not consuming drugs,” she conveyed.
There are a lot of merits of this herbal therapy system because maximum or minimum limitation does not exist in consuming the tea. The advantages tend to be general, but it could be utilized for patients of HIV/AIDS sufferers. Additionally, the therapy using tea of rind pataya does not contain caffeine. “There is no minimum or maximum, so that we do not blame healthy people consume it. The point is that any levels could consume the tea. If HIV/AIDS sufferers consume the tea, they had better consume after they know that they positively infected by HIV/AIDS. Thus, the use of the therapy should be as well and maximum as possible since the herbal therapy is only complementary therapy,” she uttered.
The complementary theraphy, Annisa continued, is a supporting therapy, which means that HIV/AIDS patients should consume medicine that has been determined by government, Anti Retro Viral (ARV). “For the use process is planned that we would carry out dose balancing. For instance, the dose of ARV for patient would be decreased and the tea would be increased, and vice versa. Then, we could notice which therapy has the best effect for patients. Furthermore, the herbal tea therapy could possibly minimize the effect of ARV, nausea and hair loss. However, there should be advanced research in the phase since we are only in the phase of library research,” she explained.
Annisa admitted that this research does not aim at reliving the HIV/AIDS disease because they realized that the cure of the disease does not exist yet. Nevertheless, they thought, when somebody suffers HIV/AIDS, they would have poor prognosis since the immune would drop off endlessly, and the prevention is through this tea therapy since it would prevent oppotinistic infection, Therefore, consuming red pitaya rind could at least reduce the opportunistic infection and could elevate the patients’ quality life.
“Hence, we conclude from this research that red pitaya rind could hamper activities of bacteria, virus, and germ in patients body which could once drop off their immune system. Even though we have not produce yet, but we summarize that it is in line with the benefits of rind pataya, dismissing infections because of HIV/AIDS disease,” she emphasized.
Annisa and her two fellows expected that there would be advanced and detailed researches regarding the herbal tea for HIV/AIDS patieents’ consumption, whether or not increasing the consumption of herbal tea could diminish side effects of ARV. “As doctors, we assist to enhance their quality of life through raising their immune. If the quality and expectancy of life elevate, they could obviously be more confident to perform valuable activities, would not shut themselves, could socialize, and the most essential is that they would not fell disgusting in themselves,” she elucidated.
The research, investigated by Annisa and her two fellows, could successfully achieve the third champion of IMSF (Islamic Medical Scientific Festival) in Unair which was held on 19-21 November 2014.
