Your Backyard is the Original, Not Alternative Pharmacy By Michael A. Bengwayan

Your Backyard is the Original, Not Alternative Pharmacy

By Michael A. Bengwayan

The Siberian cold is here until February next year.  As a result, cough and colds will be common and likely to stay. But don’t run to the nearest drugstore.  The remedy may just be in your backdoor.

Many traditional cough syrups from medicinal plants are effective and have a long history of just being there in our homegardens. They are not alternative medicines, they are original medicines.

Take the case of lagundi (Vitex negundo). Our ancestors have used it for a thousand years. Now it is being marketed by money-crazed businesses as Ascof Forte  tablet and RM Stop cough syrup.

Using cuttings, stick them to the ground and in two months, you have leaves for cough syrup. Boil ten leaves in two cups of water for ten minutes, cool it, transfer in a clean container and take 5 tbsp of the juice twice a day against cough.

Ginger (Zingiber officinale), also being sold in different brand names, is another cure for cough and colds..Ginger rhizomes and leaves may be chopped and boiled for 15 minutes,  the extract allowed to cool, divided  into three parts, to be thrice in a day.

You can also use sampalok (tamarindicus indica), Yerba Buena  or spearmint (Mentha spicata) and Eucalyptus globules are also effective traditional medicines. Their leaves can be boiled either fresh or dry for ten to fifteen minutes. They can be taken in with dosages ranging from one to six tbsp, for each part drank three times a day.

Normally, the younger the user, the lesser dosage is required. Oregano, Yerba Buena and Eucalyptus leaves, however, have no specific dosages for small children.

Leaves of Mango (Mangifera indica), Alagaw (Premma odorata) and Balanoy  or Basil (Ocimum basilicum) leaves, boiled for ten minutes are proven good for children.

Our country is blessed with hundreds of medicinal plants and commercial production from these is being given importance even by Western health practitioners. Poor families must be encouraged and trained to plant and use these so that they will not fall prey to biopirates that produce medicine out from these for mere profit-sake.

Traditional cough syrups are easy to prepare and most are expectorants, thus having an edge over commercially produced  medicines from non-living sources, which are mostly depressants./30

Michael  A. Bengwayan is  a journalist and social entrepreneur, fighting environmental decay and poverty in the Cordillera region of the Philippines by creating local solutions to solve some of the world's environmental problems. He is introducing nitrogen fixing trees to enrich soil fertility, provide livestock forage, and enhance soil and water conservation. He discovered and is teaching people about making biofuel from petroleum nut for cooking (as a replacement for LPG), lighting, heating, and drying as well as running small gasoline engines. He is promoting rainwater harvesting for household and farm use, and he is training farmers, women, and youth on environmental enterprises and organic gardening. Michael holds postgraduate degrees in environmental science, rural development, and development studies and is a past Fellow of the Ford Foundation, European Union, Reinhard Mohn, and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) in the US, Ireland, Sweden and Belgium.

http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/michael-bengwayan