Back To Basics

It is so important to look closely at what surrounds you. I like to do my own lawn service. It gives me exercise and I feel close to nature. I have found myself looking more closely at what I had identified as "weeds" in my lawn and this inspection drove me to go to YouTube to see what herbist would say about some of the weeds that I had systematically sprayed or pulled out of my yard. What I thought would be a short visit to the computer became a webinar-like session.

As a physician, I was taught that there is no antedote to the brown recluse spider bite and the victim must endure much pain and a necrotizing ulcerative site until the "damage" ran its course. Well there is a weed call the ribwort or plantain grass that releases the pain of insect bites and  heals ulcer lesions on lthe skin.This weed is very prevalent in Louisiana where brown recluse spiders are often a nuisance. It was the "ancient people" , "old wive's remedies" that treated what pharmaceutical companies can not so  young clinicians perpetuate the myth that there is no treatment.

I am now energized at the idea of recovering what my Grandmother practiced and what my Mother referred to as Mother wit. The old-fashioned remedies have been discarded and needs to be revisited.

I started brewing a lemon grass tea that has replaced coffee in my diet and my blood pressure is superb. My age peers, including my sisters, ask me what medicines that I take for hypertension and I say none. In fact, I do not take any prescribed pharmaceuticals. I believe that food is a medicine.  I do believe that we are what we eat.

I do not avocate becoming a fanatic, but I think that we need to stop and look at what nature has provided and some trying to make a "new and improved" version of everything. We need to get back to the basics. Maybe an astronaut needs to "eat" pills instead of food; I don't.