Rural dad

Plant knowledge key to childhood health in remote Amazon

...mothers who had knowledge of local plants well above the average were more likely to have children with better health, whereas mothers who had less than the average knowledge were more likely to have children with worse indicators of health and nutrition.

I've always been a plant person, and enjoyed learning the health benefits of our local flora. In college, there were always jokes that I was the "Level 3 herbalist" when a roommate dropped his bike into a thicket of poison oak, and I tracked down the mugwort to wipe down the bike and his hands. Now someone has quantified the effect on kids.

To a great extent, Tsimane survival and well being is dependent on their knowledge of local plants, in everything from managing their environment to getting food and preventing and curing disease, explained Reyes-García. "However, globalization threatens this knowledge to the extent that formal schooling and jobs in emerging markets devalue folk knowledge and provide access to products not made from local resources, but without providing adequate medical treatment substitutes,"

In our globalized world with disastrous health care policies, people who know the herbal treatments to common maladies will come out ahead financially and in terms of health. Now where's that homeopathy book???

Labels: lifestyle, medicine