When I carried my son at the ripe age of forty-two, my obstetrician was livid. He thought it was irresponsible and dangerous. “You can drive a twenty-year old Cadillac from the East Coast to the West Coast,” he declared, “BUT you will get into trouble!”
The comparison of my still nicely functioning body with an old car was insulting – to say the least. But history proved me right, and we have a wonderful, healthy son.
That, however, is not what I want to talk about today.
I want to praise old cars (and other old things). As of this day, my car is about fourteen years old and still running fine. When that car was much younger (but already dented and unfashionable), one of my patients declared: “With a car like that, you can’t be a good doctor!” Meaning: a good doctor can afford a newer, better car.
But can she? Apart from that my car is not a measure of my value or of my medical skills - am I not more than just a doctor – but also a steward of our good old Earth, like we all are, or should be? The longer I drive my old car, the fewer resources have to be used up, the more is saved. That is true for many things. So many items we buy nowadays get obsolete fast – and we retained nothing of their value. When I was a student, I made one day a totally irresponsible purchase: I bought a used Yamaha piano. I signed a check for money I didn’t have and then scrambled to borrow from my friends. Somehow, I made it – the check didn’t bounce. And so many years later the piano is still wonderful – and more worth than ever. – When my son now buys electronics (a cell phone, a laptop, an iPod), he uses them for a few short years, and then their value plunges toward zero. So many things we replace because they are not the newest item anymore, but they still pretty good, in working order and all. My Yankee (of course, I am not a Yankee – but feel akin) nature wants to preserve, repair, recycle.
In case you think this has nothing to do with medicine: The herbs I cherish and the plants I eat can only grow if we preserve our old Earth.
I will buy a new car if this one stalls and there is a hybrid station wagon on the market. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Seasonal Indulgences
June 4, 2010
White asparagus, new potatoes, chopped parsley in melted butter and prosciutto - have you ever tasted the joy of this? I did last week - traveling in Europe. This is asparagus time, and it is eaten plentifully. Followed by strawberries.
In years gone, I have tried asparagus with sauce Béarnaise or sauce Hollandaise, with Wiener Schnitzel or salted herring. I had it as soup or stew. This year, I learned a new asparagus dish: Jam – made with sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), an herb that should only be harvested in May, with a flavor that is indescribably delicious – pure May indeed.
But my point is not the asparagus or the sweet woodruff; the point is that Europeans eat in season. They fantasize all year about asparagus with “young” potatoes – and when the white spears finally shoot out of the soil, there eat them often. Until mid-June (the exact date varies from north to south), when traditionally the last white asparagus is cut to let the plant develop strength for next year. After mid-June … nothing for a whole year.
Medicinally, asparagus flushes the kidney and moves the bowel (fiber!), taking with it toxins that have accumulated over the long winter. Parsley gives vitamin C, depleted after the cold season. And young potatoes round out the composition that delights the taste buds. In medieval times it was thought to be an aphrodisiac – but anything that was growing freshly after the long winter and had a phallic form might have served for the purpose, I guess.
Asparagus contains vitamins A, C, B1, B2, and E and is thought to help regeneration of cells, especially of nerves, vessels, skin and hair. White asparagus is kept white by growing them in deep soil, and they always need peeling of the tough skin (which might be the reason that green asparagus is preferred here – less work). Asparagus is rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, potassium and copper – all minerals sorely needed for bone strength.
Of course, it is possible to get white asparagus year-round. But Europeans still stick to the ancient clock: Over there, they have a time for everything, and May/June is dedicated to asparagus and strawberries.
We here think nothing of eating the good stuff whenever we feel like it. We don’t think about that the good stuff is made expensive by world-wide travel, and leaves a huge carbon print. Not to mention of the health consequences. Eating the same thing over and over again makes one prone to food allergies, for instance. And the old wisdom of the body is that what is in season is right for the body when it is in season. Not by chance but because we developed over millions of years together with the plants.
Here a small sample of what should be eaten when – and it is not only ancient lore but modern chrono-biology confirms the value of eating in season:
• January: red Beat
• February: celery, celeriac
• March: spinach, stinging nettle
• April: radish, rhubarb
• May: lettuce
• June: cucumber
• July: carrots, black currants, gooseberries, raspberries
• August: tomato, first apples, blueberries, raspberries.
• September: broccoli, cauliflower
• October: leeks
• November: cabbage
• December: rapunzel
(I will add to these!)
We delight in Christmas, and sometimes go over the top with Christmas decorations and gifts and events. Perhaps, if one had something to look forward year-round, would Christmas take its place among many seasonal delights? Read More
Synergy in Herbs
May 27, 2010
Synergy is the innate beauty in plant medicines: The whole works better than the individual parts would let one predict.
In real life, however, synergy is what drug makers are up against. One cannot patent a whole plant – because Nature made them for all of us, and not one single manufacturer is allowed to reap the profits. So, pharmaceutical firms try to take out either one constituent of a plant (the one they deem the “effective” part) or change one constituent chemically, so they can patent either as a new drug. That way, many good drugs have been developed – and still are.
On the other hand, we are losing something when we neglect the whole plant. Synergy is one of the main reasons why often herbs are so profoundly effective; the other is that plants are the keys into our ancient physiology – plants and people developed together. Plant molecules are not new, alien molecules our bodies can’t recognize; they are old molecules our bodies are familiar with – so that they can happily incorporate them into our old-fashioned metabolism.
If a plant is toxic to us, it is so because the plant developed for that purpose: to fend off predators, herbivores, that otherwise would munch on the plant. But whole plants are often less toxic than would be expected, because the plant provides counteracting “smoothing” ingredients that helps us assimilate the herb better.
If you harvest an herb, you get plants with different strengths – depending when and where the plant was grown and cut. That is an obstacle for modern medicine that needs things predictable and reproducible. For that purpose, herbs are sometimes “standardized”: Different strength extractions are combined with certain key compounds so that the result is uniform. For the longest time, St. John’s wort had been standardized to one of its “main” ingredients – until it became clear that it was not the “effective” one. It is hard to figure out a plant that might have three hundred to a thousand different compounds.
But, it is also hard to figure out single compounds. Research is still discovering new effects of Aspirin, on the market since 1899! If one single ubiquitous chemical is so hard to understand – just think how hard it will be to understand a single whole plant. Herbs are harder to use than cold water or fresh food; you might need an herbalist or a doctor trained in natural medicine to help.
That is what makes conventional medicine so nervous about herbs. For me, that makes them so remarkable and miraculous: They have worked for millenniums, they should work now, too – in our ancient bodies. People in all cultures have observed and described the effects since stone age times or longer: We can learn something from them. And then, we can do some modern research with them, to slowly expand our knowledge. Read More