The Health Blog

If you are not in a happy mood when you wake up, think of something joyful. Open your windows, breathe deeply for about five minutes and the lingering tiredness will soon leave you. This exercise will put a different, happier face on things, even though you got out of bed on the wrong side. Moreover, if you do something for the body at the same time, you are well on the way to acquiring a positive mood. According to your nature, this may be washing yourself down with hot or warm water or taking a shower. Additionally, it would be useful to do some exercises, resulting in a pleasant feeling of warmth and a good start to the day. You will enjoy breakfast more than usual if you clean your teeth properly beforehand and gargle to cleanse and refresh your throat thoroughly.

Take pleasure in your food and make sure that it is both tasty and natural. Do not be a slave to time with one eye always on the clock. Eat peacefully and slowly, chewing your food well. In this way you will extract all the nourishment possible and your internal organs will benefit from the work your teeth and salivary glands have done for them. Those who enjoy and value what nature’s garden so generously gives us should remember to be grateful and not take the well-laden table for granted. There are so many things in which we can rejoice that there is really no time left for discontent.

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I learned about the danger of television to our health some years ago when staying with friends in the United States, where I noticed that their children sat in front of the screen for hours at a time. The parents usually had great difficulty in persuading them to come to the table to eat or to go to bed. The consequences of this unnatural enthrallment were not in the least welcome; in fact, they were disturbing and difficult to combat and overcome. The children were in an overwrought state, with a poor appetite; their scholastic achievements had dropped; they were absent-minded, lacked concentration and were much more subject to infectious diseases. Indeed, even at such a young age their health had already been undermined.

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The beekeeper, a simple, unin-fluential man, has decided not to sue for compensation; he could not risk losing the case and facing bankruptcy as a result.

Today, totally untouched places in nature are few and far between, and their number continues to, decrease, so that we wonder where it will all end. I remember talking to a zoologist I met in Guayaquil, Equador, as he was preparing to travel to the Galapagos Islands to study the iguanas, large lizards, living there. He poured out a tale of woe about the devastation being inflicted and how, soon, he would hardly know where to go anymore to study certain animals in their natural habitat. Wanton destruction and killing and the advance of civilisation were changing the environment so drastically that these animals were being robbed of their habitat and chance of survival. Something or someone has to pay when short-sighted, one-sided measures are taken and the biological balance of nature is disturbed.

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However, the hardening process has a detrimental influence on the quality of the product since metallic compounds can remain in the fats, even if only in homoeopathic dilution. Furthermore, the unsaturated fatty acids are transformed in the process into high-melting stearic acids, which do not have the same health value. If you want to remain healthy, avoid the hardened fats, even though they may be easy to use and store.

Why, then, do the unsaturated fatty acids have the above-mentioned advantages, whereas the hardened fats have lost them? The answer is quite a simple one. They are not saturated and therefore able to become saturated. That is, the unsaturated fatty acids are still able to combine with other elements. Figuratively speaking, they are still single, unmarried, and therefore ready and willing to enter a relationship. They will combine with the minerals, proteins and oxygen in the body and in this way encourage normal cell metabolism and oxidation. If these functions are interfered with over a period of years, even decades, the cells degenerate and disease will inevitably manifest itself. Cell growth may become abnormal and malignant, cancerous. The phospholipoids may degenerate and this can lead to thrombosis. Where there is a lack of polyunsaturated fatty acids and in their place an excess of saturated ones, the cholesterol in the blood will combine with the fats and deposit itself on the walls of the blood vessels, giving rise to hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis), high blood pressure and the danger of apoplexy or a stroke.

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Celery juice is distinctly alkaline and eliminative. It is therefore recommended for all disturbances caused by the accumulation of wastes and toxins, for example rheumatic and arthritic ailments. Celery juice regulates the water balance and puts new life into elderly people.

Tomato juice is recommended as a protection against premature aging, as well as the symptoms of overtiredness and unpleasant body odour. It is refreshing and cleanses the body.

Unlike the other juices, which are good for health but also delicious taken before meals to stimulate the appetite, potato juice is strictly remedial, and is particularly indicated for the treatment of stomach ulcers.

Vegetable juices enhanced by lacto-fermentation have a stimulating and balancing effect on our vital intestinal flora.

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Herbs seldom suffer from fungus diseases if the soil is properly drained and adequately limed (or dolomited) and sufficient organic compost is put into the ground, in which live the “helpers” as well as the predators. Many types of microorganisms found in natural compost kill off the mildew and fungus-producing spores living in poor soil. Lime or dolomite is necessary in the soil not only as a direct plant food (I say that with the backing of an agronomist in high places), but also to kill off many of the disease-producing elements. I have grown sage plants under controlled conditions, one section with dolomite in the container and one without. During the very wet summer that ensued, the dolomited plants sailed through unscathed, while the others dropped their yellowed leaves and eventually succumbed completely to root-rot.

If you do suspect a plant of having a fungous or root disease, one effective ground spray is the following: Obtain if you can the leaves of Equisetum arvense, Horsetail, or Mare’s Tail, from your nursery, or the dried leaves through your natureopathic physician. Boil 1 part equisetum to 50 parts of water for 15 to 20 minutes. Do not make the solution any stronger, as the herb is a very potent one. Water this around the base of the affected plants (not on the foliage) on soil which has been soaked well the previous day. Equisetum has a very high silica content.

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As yet, treatment from a natureopath is not recognized as treatment by a “qualified” medical practitioner; and this has reduced the ranks (and the incomes) of many men and women dedicated to healing. It has also reduced the numbers of their patients, as many who would like to have the benefit of this type of medicine cannot afford to pay the costs. Surely, these are two branches of the same science and should be recognized as such; one using artificial means and one natural means.

Theoretically (and logically) those using artificial methods should be tagged as “witch doctors” if that title is to be placed anywhere. Please don’t think I have any grudge against medical practitioners. I believe only that they have been misled by the man-made “wonder drugs” of the last half-century, and by their patients’ demand that the symptoms of illness should be cured as quickly as possible. Suppressing the symptoms only aggravates the body’s inability to expel any disease-caused poisons. A runny nose is not pleasant, but it is the body’s way of freeing swollen tissues from the waste matter accumulated in them.

Perhaps we ourselves are to blame. No one likes to be sick, and if illness strikes we would all like a magical potion to make us instantly well again. Tackle it from the other angle: use the goodness of herbs and natural foods to build up resistance and vital health, and disease will have trouble gaining a foothold. If it does lay you low, try rest, patience and Nature’s remedies, and the cause of the illness should soon disappear.

On the lighter side, herbs can be fun. If you like to practise oneupmanship, do it with a drop of this and a sprig of that in your food when friends and relatives come for a meal. Keep them guessing, and surprise them with your skill.

So all I can add now is the phrase with which I ended my Introduction to these pages about the fascinating world of over twenty centuries of herbal lore:

Bon appetit, good health, and happiness!

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Ruta graveolens RUTACEAE

Rue is a herb that today means to many of us only a plant carried by Hamlets Ophelia, and therefore signifying sorrow and dire misfortune. Early herb writers revelled in the knowledge we have now lost of its amazingly strong powers, in particular those affecting eyesight and counteracting poisons. Present-day crime has veered away from poison as a means of settling a score or removing a political enemy; but in the Greek and Roman Empires, a knowledge of antidotes often meant life itself. Rue had an almost magical reputation for warding off or counteracting evil, and even long before this it was known to the Druids and the ancient Saxons as a holy herb and strewn in homes and public places. Later, Christian churches used it too, the twigs for sprinkling Holy Water being taken from the bush. Dioscorides noted that a weasel, when going out snake-hunting for food, often ate rue first, and from this observation came later experiments using it as a poison antidote. It was the principal ingredient in mithridate, the legendary antidote for all poisons ever concocted, and was the plant given by Mercury to Ulysses to overcome the poisons (both physical and mental) of Circe. Dioscorides also noted another peculiarity of rue: it can raise a nasty inflammation when handled by some people with sensitive skins. So if you wish to grow it, treat it with suitable care.

Rue was much in demand amongst the artisans, craftsmen, sculptors and painters of the Renaissance period as a strengthener of eyesight. A weak tea was brewed from the leaves and taken inwardly, and the eyes were bathed each day with a similar solution. The herb is a very powerful one, so be careful if you wish to follow in the steps of Leonardo and Michelangelo, who both used it, claiming it gave them not only strengthened and improved vision but inner sight and creativity as well.

The seeds germinate slowly, and when finally through the soil they appear to be crawling about all over the seed box with downy little feelers. Sow them in the spring, and trans¬plant when the seedlings are big enough to handle. You should not need gloves at this early stage of their growth.

A border of rue can be very effective, as its greyish-blue foliage makes delicate counterpoint with the true greens more common in the flower garden. For a striking ribbon of colour around formal beds, plant rue all along the edge, santolina (a grey feathery-soft plant with brilliant yellow flower-cushions in spring) inside it, then balance these two with another planting of blue rosemary behind. As a border for a large rose-garden, this tri-coloured hedge can be quite spectacular.

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2 oz. fresh horehound

1 1/2 cups water

1 3/4 lb. brown sugar

1/4 cup corn syrup

Cook the horehound slowly in water for 15 minutes, if possible in a stainless steel or heavy saucepan with the lid on. Then let stand for one hour. Remove the horehound (tip it on the compost heap), then add the sugar and syrup to the liquid and boil to “hard-crack” stage (300 degrees F. on a candy thermometer). Pour into a greased shallow pan, and mark into squares.

The botanical name comes from the Hebrew marrob, a bitter juice, and the herb is certainly not a pleasant-tasting one in its raw state. It is a native of Europe, North Africa and Central Asia, and has naturalized in many parts of the world including Britain and North America, where in some states it is a declared noxious weed! How true is that definition of a weed “a plant whose uses to man have not yet been appreciated”!

The plant is ungainly and perhaps even untidy, the white downy stems and woolly leaves trailing along in all directions. In summer white whorls of flowers appear at the leaf axils, but these, too, are neither attractive nor showy. If ever an ugly duckling had a hidden swanlike soul it is horehound. It grows best in poor soil; my own horehound plants have the rockiest, most difficult corner in the garden.

Check with your Department of Agriculture before starting off a paddock of horehound to cure the world’s ills. In your area it may be a declared weed.

Bill Wannan, in his entertaining book Folk Medicine, tells of horehound’s role in the early Australian goldrush days. In the 1890s at Kalgoorlie, Chinese (clever, as always) who had come to work as cheap labour on the goldfields went away somewhat richer because of their knowledge of vitamin-rich horehound. The dried leaves were sold at steadily inflating prices to miners to brew a tonic tea. Old-timers swore by its efficacy. Horehound poultices were often used as a remedy for the “Barcoo rot”, a skin disease caused by over-exposure to the dry heat of the inland together with vitamin deficiencies in the diet. The herb’s reputation grew as one boundary rider passed on the good word to the next. Barcoo rot is seldom encountered now that more is known about diet, but horehound’s praises are still sung on many outback stations by those old enough to remember.

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Sow the tiny seed of catnip in the autumn, give the plant room to grow, with sunlight and light soil, and keep a watchful eye out for caterpillars or grasshoppers.

There is also a garden variety of catmint (Nepeta mussini) with quite a different form of growth. It is a small rockery or edging plant, with grey-green foliage and lavender-coloured spikes of flowers. It grows in a dense little clump and can be very decorative in a pathway or warm sunny corner near a wall.

This plant has some of the medicinal value, but not all, of the other variety, and Nepeta cataria is the more valuable. Try planting this garden variety over your spring bulbs, then when the daffodils and hyacinths are flowering they will have a soft supporting carpet of green and mauve. When they die down, the catmint will still be there instead of just a bare space.

Nepeta mussini must also be cut back after flowering. The plant will grow somewhat straggly and wilted, and then the new growth will commence again from the centre. As soon as this is under way, cut off all the last season’s old spent stems. You will probably find quite a few snails and slugs are thus deprived of a favourite haunt.

Try a vase of Nepeta cataria when it is in flower on your dining-room table. The delicate perfume will fill the room.

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