HERBAL REMEDIES FROM ELEPHANTS TO
MODERN MAN
Holly Dublin, the Jane Goodall for Elephants, spent decades observing what elephants do every day as well as some rare activities. One day in 1980, a very pregnant elephant took off at a fast pace with two of her daughters. Holly had known the elephant daughters since their births. They traveled far out of their home territory and stopped at a small, unusual tree. The mother ate most of the leaves of the tree and headed home. The next day she gave birth. Holly had saved a few of the remaining leaves of the tree for identification. When she asked the ladies of a nearby village, they laughed and laughed. It turned out that the local women used this herb to induce labor. Sick chimpanzees have been observed to eat the leaves and bitter pith of some plants which they do not normally eat. Analyses of these plants show that about half of them contain alkaloids, drug-like substances, some of which are active against intestinal parasitic worms. One of these leaves, which the chimpanzees swallow whole, has velcro-like hairs which entangle a species of small intestinal worm and cause it to be expelled in large numbers, something that doesn’t otherwise happen.
About 10% of plants expend up to 50%
or so of their total energy budget creating alkaloids like nicotine, caffeine,
morphine, strychnine, cocaine, curare (of Amazonian poison darts) probably in
most if not all instances to limit insect or animal predation. Consistent with this is our family experience
of using nicotine from recycled cigar butts to get rid of tomato horn
worms. Careful testing of medicinal
herbs used by humans throughout the world has revealed many such active
substances. Examples include quinine
for malaria, atropine (an antispasmodic), colchicine for gout and digitalis,
for over 400 years very nearly indispensable in cardiology. Those in long usage by the medical
profession have been purified, meaning the active substances has been separated
from everything else in the raw product so that it can be weighed out in exact
doses. This helps to avoid toxic doses
and ineffective doses.
When I was a student in the 1940s,
digitalis was available only in crude forms, either powdered leaves made into
pills or liquid extracts of leaves. These were dispensed as so many “cat units”. A cat unit was the dose which killed 50% of
the cats to whom it was administered, obviously a rough estimate but the best
available. During my school years,
digitalis was purified by the Eli Lilly Company culminating many unsuccessful
attempts in the preceding centuries.
Digitalis had proved to be very fragile during such processing. So during my professional lifetime,
digitalis has become much safer to use.
Toxicity, which had been common, is now rare. In my opinion, only about half of the herbal remedies now
promoted as alternatives to drugs will be found to have active
ingredients. Don’t be too
surprised. In double blind experiments,
about 30% of people receiving dummy pills think they have benefitted. Ultimately, the most useful herbs will
evolve as has digitalis, purified so they can be prepared in exact doses.
St. John’s wort is an example of an
effective herbal remedy. It’s action in
treating mental depression compares favorably with Prozac and the like. The reason for not using it is not so much
its toxicity, but fear of inconsistent dosage from refill to refill. When depressed patients relapse, it may be
fatal and treatment is frequently needed for years. Remember the potency of crude preparations varies greatly from
batch to batch. The bottom line: take
your herbals as you would home remedies for minor, temporary problems. Tell your physician, if you are not asked,
what you are taking including those that do not require a doctor’s prescription. Even when effective like St. John’s wort,
and this is known to occur with St. John’s wort, drugs can interact with other
drugs either enhancing their destruction or toxicity. Unfortunately, most of these interactions are almost surely
unknown. There are just too many
combinations of herbs and drugs taken two or more at a time to have tested more
than a handful of them together. It is
noteworthy that several really useful prescription drugs have been removed from
the market solely because of dangerous effects in likely combinations. For more details of what is known about
individual alternative remedies, their interactions and the conditions for
which they might be used try <www.nccam.nih.gov>
and click on “health information”.
Getting back to zoopharmacognosy,
what animals know about herbal remedies:
I can think of two recreational drugs discovered by animals for animals,
catnip, which most of us know about, and loco weed, which horses quickly learn
to seek for its high.
John A. Frantz, M.D
Chairperson
- Board of Health, Monroe City Council
Spring,
2000
A
Change in Scientific Dogma
During my formal education it was
firmly believed that after brain development in childhood no new neurons would
ever be formed later in life. Functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and
PET scanning (positron emission tomography) show in real time which parts of
the brain are activated in accomplishing specific types of mental tasks. The hippocampus, a nucleus of cells at the
base of the brain, is the most active region when the brain is processing
geographic memories. You might say that
we store maps of our personal worlds in our hippocampi.
An imaginative researcher checked the
brains of New York City cab drivers compared with cabbies from complex eastern
cities such as Boston and Providence which grew like topsy from wandering
colonial cow paths. NYC is laid out on
a grid of streets and avenues. An
immigrant cab driver can learn this map almost instantly. The hippocampus of NYC cab drivers was no
larger than that of non-cab drivers, whereas those of cabbies from the complex,
even though smaller cities, were the
largest that had been examined at that time.
This led to proof that at least in the hippocampus, adult brains
actually grew new cells when needed. I
like the open mindedness of science (open minded does not mean holes in the
head).
Q
tips
Always lock the door when you clean your ears with Q tips. Some younger person might see you doing it and think that is the thing to do. Consider that you might be a role model. Besides, someone might open the door and hit your elbow.