Herbal medicine is effective medicine for poor and may ensure primary health care in remote people who dont access Hospital services. Uganda Hospitals mainlly in remote have no medicine and petients rely on phamancy expensive Drugs. we have been rocked in waves of harse corruption.
We think herbal medicne to help the poor in Uganda.
THE SELECTION OF THE HERBAL PLANTS .
- plants that can cure/relive simple common diseases
- Plants that can be used by family members as first aid pharmacy.
- Plants with no negative side effects.
- Plants that have proven their efficacy.
- Plants that can easily grow in the region.
From this list, some medical plants are common herbs; others are shrubs, trees or climbing vines. But as those plants are important for family health, they should be planted for family house. Trees, which grow bigger, can be planted on the borders of the compound or in a neighboring field.
A summarizing table for agricultural characteristics of these plants is given at the end of this book.
LANDSCAPE PLAN OF MEDICAL PLANTS FOR FAMILY GARDEN
Key
- wondering jaw
- biden pilsal
- castral oil
- enderema
- albezia coriaria
- allium sativum
- aloe ferox
- Artemisia absenthium
- Artemisia annua
- azadirechta indica
- callistemon speciosis
- carica papaya
- chenopedium ambrosioides
- crassocephalum vitellinum
- cympogon citratus
- erythrina abyssinica
- euphorbia hirta
- ficus natalensis
- hoslindia opposita
- moringa oleifera
- myrica kandtiana
- ocimum sauva
- rice
- beans
- black nightshade
- plectranthus cyaneus
- prunus Africana
- ricinuscommunis
- senna didymobotrya
- sida cuneifolia
- spathodea campanulata
- tetradenia riperia
- tinospora spp
- tropaeolum majus
- vernonia amygdalina
- warbugia ugandensis
- zanthoxylum gilletii
- zingiber officinale
- coco nuts
- palm tree
- dodo
- gavers
- euclaliptus
- obmuliba zitira
- omulingata
- masereka,olubonanga,ovacado,Fenesi,cassava,
SECTION 11
What should you know before using this book?
Recommendations for health life.
These are just some guidelines of living rules and good home practices. Much more could be included and could fill the whole book.
Having and using plants from a family medicinal garden is worthless if some basic living conditions and rules are not respected as indicated below:
1. Body hygiene.
One of the most important hygiene rules is to wash your hands with non toxic soap under running water (use carefe, port or kettle) before eating, before preparing food, after using toilet and after seeing or visiting a sick person.
Wash your self and help children to wash them selves thoroughly every evening with toxic soap and warm water incase of cold mountainous areas, keeping out of direct wind and dry your self with a clean cloth or towel.
To prevent dryness of the skin, rub oneself and especially the babies after bathing with some plant oil like shear butter oil or sosame oil.
Wash your hair at least once in a week with non toxic soap.
If some one in the family has head lice, if possible cutoff his or her hair, rub the hair off everyone in the family with a natural insecticide lotion made for example of neem oil and wash the blanket, bed clothes and clothing.
Brush your teeth at least every evening and even better still after every meal with a small eucalyptus, neem or other tool stick with or without dental powder (see ANMED book)
Keep your nails short and clean,
Wash and change your clothing frequently especially under clothes.
Toxic soaps are soaps that contain for example chemicals as mercury salts, known as skin bleaching soaps.
2. Heneral hygiene
Cook and serve food in clean ports and dishes.
After washing the dishes, put them on the dish rug and not on the floor to dry. Once dry, store them in a dust and animal free place.
Wash your food with clean water before cooking.
3. water
Drink only safe, clean, cool, boiled water and use clear water for bathing.
4. Food
Your food should be your medicine and your medicine your food.
And by eating one lemon a day you keep the doctor away.
4.1 Balanced diet
Eat balanced healthy diet.
Food and hygiene are of the most important points to stay healthy.
When the body is improperly feed, it is more susceptible and has less resistance to a lot of diseases. There are diseases caused by external elements such as bacterial, fungi and virus and diseases owing to toxin accumulation in the body as diabetes, obesity arthritis, high blood pressure and many others. For both types of diseases and, food is very important in strengthening and stimulating the body to fight against diseases and prevent body illness.
A balanced diet has variety of food.
Once a day, a meal should be composed of 2/3 of whole cereals and 1/3 of different vegetables, where at least one vegetable should contain a high percentage of proteins such as beans, groundnuts or any other leguminous vegetable. Meat and fish can be added, but is not necessary and should only be taken in small amounts. Some vegetable like carrots, cucumber, lettuce, radish, cabbage or fennel should be consumed raw to have all the benefits of vitamins and minerals.
Matooke [cooked unripe bananas] is not a cereal but can replace cereal in a meal. Eating as every day
With soup, gravy or sauce is again a poor and unbalanced diet.
The most important meal should be taken at noon and if not possible before 7 p.m. With food, the body receives a lot of calories. Calories will be directly transformed in e energy and energy is the opposite of what you need to have a quiet nights rest. Also, digestionis heave work for the body and during sleep all the body organs are functioning at a slower rate, hats why digestion can become a problem.
Atleastone fruit should be consumed during day time to have intake of vitamins and trace elements.
Tea, coffee or herbal tea should be taken without sugar, as sugar is a poison the body. Adding sugar to into drinks becomes a habit.
Pure water is a health drink and one litre of water should be taken during day time we may not forget;
That our body is made of more than 90% of water.
That water is needed for the elimination of toxins by urinating, to maintain our body temperature and many other functions.
Old Indian theories (yahuveda) recommend that to stay health, every one should start the day by drinking warm water on an empty stomach to warm up the body, stimulate the digestive systems and eliminate toxins.
4.2 toxins
One garden rule; avoid as much as possible food that contains toxins for the body. Toxins are; extraced sugars, purified salt, alcohol, drugs, stimulants, chemicals, meat and purified food.
All these foods substances should only be taken in small quantities and people can still live without them.
Sugar:
Purified extracted sugar, even if it came from sugarcane, maize or sugar beet acts as a drug in the body and very quickly the body starts depending on it. That is why in many cases a person starts using one tea spoon of sugar in a cup of tea and after some years he needs three tea spoons to satisfy the sugar pressure. Excess sugar conservation may lead to general body weakness, dental caries, obesity, magnesium deficiency and sugar crystals fix themselves as toxins in the body especially between the different joints.
Sugar is also a very good substrate for bacteria and fungi and people who take a lot of sugar are more susceptible to fungal and bacterial diseases.
Various scientific studies have related access of white sugar consumption with cancer of the colon, stomach cancer and cervical cancer.
A sugar contains a lot of calories and energy for the body, it can stop the 'feelings of hunger' and that is well known by poor school children who at lunch time take sugarcane instead of food and this can lead to malnutrition (beside all other pernicious influences) when sugarcane or other sweets are often replacing food.
There is no need for adding purified or unpurified sugar as the amount of sugar that the body needs, even during exercise can be found in fruits, vegetables and serials.
Don’t forget that soft drinks and sodas contain a lot of sugar as well as chemicals.
Salt
Excess use of salt may cause heart disease, kidney problems, high blood pressure and obesity salt retains water in the body. Water normally takes toxins along when leaving the body (elimination). As water is retained, toxins remain also in the body. Un cooked salt destroys the tongue papilla (which are responsible for your testes); the taste decreases and more salt will be needed to find the original salt flavor back.
Just like sugars, the salt crystals may fix themselves as toxins in the body especially between the different joints.
Raw vegetable due to high salty content can replace salt. But if you don’t eat a lot of raw vegetables, use and take clean lake salt, vegetable salt or lye instead of white purified salt.
Always cook your salt and never add salt when the meal is already in your dish to save your tongue papilla.
Alcohol
Alcohol immediately attaches the liver and its functions (the liver has more than three hundred functions).
Two types of alcohol exist: alcohol as a normal process of fermentation of fruits vegetables or honey and alcohol obtained by destination.
The first category of alcohol does not reach more than 16- degree alcohol and can be used as medical wine in small amounts as one glass a day.
Distilled alcohol is normally more than 40- degree alcohol and is too aggressive for the liver and should be avoided.
Alcohol has also physical, pschological and social side effects.
Drugs
Drugs act in the same way as strong alcohol whereby, not only does the body become dependent on them but also the whole nervous system gradually starts to decline.
Drugs are very toxic to for the body.
Chemicals
Chemicals are found in meat, vegetable and serials that have been cultivated in a non organic way, in food with preservatives or other chemical flavors and in western drugs.
Chemicals are unknown foods for the body and they are enclosed or stoked in fat layers of the body or in the liver. After some time these dysfunctions of organs, cancer or other “modern” diseases.
Spices
Most of the people refer to spices as flavors or give specific tastes to foods and have forgotten that spices were introduced in the first instance to facilitate digestion and avoid digestive problems. Spices artery medical plants with digestive or disinfectant properties. That is why it is important to include spices when you are preparing food.
Coriander, anise, basil, cayenne, black paper, cloves, nutmeg, cardarmom, parsley, cinnamon, garlic and others are well known spices. Local plants with digestive or disinfectant properties as warburgia ugandensi, moringa oleifera (moringa) or capsicum frutescent (the wild eye bird chili) can also be used as spices.
Meat
Meat contains a lot of pureness, which are other toxins for the body.
The main reason why people eat meat is that, meat contains proteins, a structural component for the body cells, tissues and organ formation.
But proteins can also be found in milk, eggs, beans, serials, algae and others.
Pressure, strokes, obesity, and others are linked to high animal and animal fat consumption.
In western countries, people are eating too meat and a lot of diseases could be prevented if people only eat meat once a week or by eating fish instead of meat.
Another reason why some vegetarians don’t want to eat meat is because you have to kill an animal that in the fauna world is your family.
Another reason is that 10kg of cereals are needed as food to obtain 1kg of meat, and with 10kg of cereals you can feed 8 times more people than with 1kg of meat.
Still another reason is that meat is equivalent to cadaver or dead substance.
Purified food and low fibre food.
Purified food is food with low or without fibre content for example white flour, white rice, decorticated millet and other decorticated cereals. Those are cereals that through processing have been separated from some husk or bran where most of the fibres are located.
Fibres regulate the absorption of fats and glucose into the blood stream and prevent colorectal cancer. Fibres are also needed to have normal digestion and a normal stool. People who eat a lot of low fiber food, as white rice, bread, macaroni or maize floor have frequent digestive and constipation problems.
Milk
Milk must be boiled before consuming to avoid brucellosis infection.
In the animal world milk is only produced and available to feed the very young animals. As a human belong to the mammals milk is food for babies and young children.
With age, milk become more indigestible because of decreasing quantity of enzymes needed to digest the milk. Therefore adults should reduce the milk consumption or turn milk into other milk products such as yoghurts.
Milk that has been digested properly contains a lot of glue, another toxin that is accumulated in the small bronchioles of the lungs. That is why respiration problems take much more time to heal with high milk consumption.
People believe that the body needs milk to have its daily ration of calcium. Different studies have found that an adult person absorbs only low amounts of calcium by drinking milk. Much more calcium is found in algae (100 to 1000 time more than in milk), almonds, soya beans, beans, cabbages, carrots and green vegetables.
Fat or oil
Cold pressed plant oil is better than warm pressed plant oil and better than animal fats.
We have saturated fats and unsaturated fats and only un saturated fats are healthy for the body.
Saturated fats are found in meat, milk products and some margarine and it’s why oil is better than animal fats.
The body needs oil to perform many functions, but needs only small amounts of oil.
As all oils have different medicinal properties we should change from time to time the oils we are using in our food for another type of oil.
All oils have different uses, some have to be taken raw and others can be used for cooking.
- genetically modified organisms or GMOs
Genes are hereditary units. Different genes make a chromosome. Every living thing has its own genes, but each family, in the plant as in the animal world has its specific number of chromosomes and every chromosome has its specific number of genes. That is why a dog can not mate the cat, and that the fish is a fish and not a cow.
Genetically modified crops are obtained by replacing one or more of the existent genes of the plant by other genes. Those genes can be from any origin, either from the animal, plants, bacteria or fungi.
We should not forget that genes are the identity card of the plant and by changing those we are changing the whole nature without knowing the effects this will have.
Not only should the growth of those crops be forbidden because of the unnatural practices but also eating the crops with GMO should be avoided.
6. Toilet
Use the latrine with the ventilation pipe and put a cover on the pit after using the toilet.
Human excrement can be a source of all kinds of diseases. That is why latrines have been promoted. When a latrine has a ventilation pipe you avoid the bad smell and some insects flying around; and particularly if you keep the pit covered after using the toilet.
7. Teduce insects, bacteria and fungi breeding places
Mosquitoes always breed in water or moist places. They can put their eggs on damp soil or damp vegetation, in moist tree holes or other wet places like plastic bags half buried in the soil or broken containers which can contain water. Mosquitoes are the vector of malaria.
Cleanliness and order in and around the home places is the first requirement.
Flies, bacteria and fungi will develop where food residues remains. That can be in improperly washed cooking pots, improperly stored food, overripe fruits and food residues on the floor in and around the home.
Keep animals out of the home. They infest your home by droppings while pets like cats and dogs host different parasites. Wash your hands after playing with your house animals.
Don’t put any waste near your house but organize your farm and compound.
Sweep every day in and around your home. Sort all rubbish and waste you collected by sweeping:
Paper, carton and wood should be stored in an old tin or any metallic container and should be burnt for example, once a week.
Orgasmic waste should be put on the compost heap that is not near the entrance of your home to avoid bad smells and negative influence of insects.
For glass, plastics, and metal, since at the moment in Uganda
8. Toxicity
A lot of fatal accidents have taken place with toxic products. Put those products out of reach of children and never put toxic products in a battle without labeling it.
Every toxic product is dangerous for the health. Toxicity can penetrate the body by drinking, sniffing, smelling and through the skin.
Cigarettes
Cigarettes are not only toxic for those who smoke, but also toxic for people who have inhale the smoke. It is proved that lung cancer comes as a result of cigarette smoking
Cooking stoves
Eye problems and lungs diseases can be a result of smock inhalation, when you cooking. In many cases chimney and energy saving stoves like the Lorena stove already provide a solution. It even reduces the consumption of fire wood.
The world healthy organization found that fire wood smoke inhalation with the forth killer in the world. As this is the fact one should, cook on a stove with a chimney.
Batteries
Batteries used for radio, touches and other electronics contain toxic elements and once dropped; they add toxic heavy metals to the soil. When you cultivate crops on that place, the crops will absorb these heave metals that will be absorbed by your body when you eat them. Through rain, those toxic heavy metals will reach the water table and contaminate your drinking water.
In Uganda
Plastics:
Don’t burn plastics; the gasses formed by burning them are very poisonous for living things. This gasses attack the ozone layer of our planet and that is one of the reasons why the planet is warming up. Snow is melting, sea level is rising, some countries are getting flooded, and rain patterns are disturbed.
Pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides:
All those chemicals used to intensify agriculture production are dangerous. There not only kill life but also disorganize the whole chain of living creatures. Food harvested from that type of agriculture contains those chemicals which act as toxins in the body; where it is stopped till they disorganize the whole body function.
Through rain, they reach the water level in the soil and poison your drinking water. Scientific researcher knows already that in 15 years, safe drinking water will be the biggest problem in the world.
Ink of news paper:
Ink of news papers are very toxic, so never use it to store or wrap for food.
9. Aluminium
When you cook in aluminum cooking pots, aluminum, molecules go into the food and aluminum is toxic for the body.
If you want to have experience, try to drink beer, or alcohol stored in aluminum ports or containers, and you will develop a serious headache.
For health reasons clay pots are much better than aluminum pots.
10. Positive way of thinking
Life is a succession of difficulties and at the same time a challenge to be resolved.
A person who tries to stay as an optimistic has more energy and the living atmosphere is much more pleasant.
Different alternative medicines promote positive thinking as the base to stay healthy.
11. Stress
The different causes of stress are: extreme physical danger, financial or health problems, overloaded work and many others. Stress is a part of the human condition and maintains alertness of life.
Too much stress puts the body under continuous tension and is the cause of different diseases, as heart problems, high blood pressure, sleeplessness, psychological diseases, etc.
Organize your life without stress.
12. Insomnia
To stay health and energetic people need to sleep. Some vital functions of the body can only be carried out when people are sleeping.
Studies have proved that people should sleep in a calm, silent and dark environment to have maximum benefit of their sleep.
Children need more sleep than adults and should have at least 9 hours of sleep if not they have less resistance against illnesses. This is one of the rural problems in Uganda
Always sleep on a mat, never on a cold floor and always, if possible, under a mosquito net. Mosquitoes are very active especially at night.
- Family planning.
The over population is the first origin of the world population just because every one is polluting, and as the world population is the biggest worry for the survival of the planet, we should start having a world vision and fewer children.
At house hold level too many children force parents to live with stress, financial worries, health worries, food worries, home space worries, plus fatigue and health problems for the mother.
14. Sexual behavior.
Human beings are different from animals and having has other significance and specific rules. For two reasons: first: to avoid sexual transmitted diseases as syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS and secondly: to respect your partner.
Avoid pregnancy in young girls and still breast feeding mothers.
15. Electronic radiation
Each electronic system delivers radiation that in the most cases has unknown influence on the body. The first radars were sending waves that turned into a wrong direction and that were one of the causes of forest diseases.
When the mobile phones came, bees were completely disorientated and did not find how to get back to their hives easily.
Children who play a lot with electronic games, as “game boys” are more prone to epilepsy attacks.
To avoid these radiations as much as possible, we must disconnect completely and put a cloth on the machines and equipment like radio, television, telephone and computer after using them.
16. Vaccination:
Vaccination have proved there efficiency to avoid epidemics and some illnesses.
But we have to know that many vaccines are propagated on cancer cells and those are injected into the human body. Naturopaths believe that this can be the cause of different allergies, asthma and other body reactions.
17. physical exercise
This must sound in a little strange for farmers and rural people who are doing a lot of physical work as working and agricultural practices. But it isn’t for those who are sitting in offices all days. There is a correlation between mind and body and when this balance is not there, people become ill.
18. Herbal medicine processing
19. Herbal medicine policy
20. other herbal medicine curative,treatment and processing
NAME OF THE PLANT
The only recognized way of nominating a plant is using the scientific name. This is always in Latin and is composed of 2 parts; the first part indicates the genus and the second part the species each spices can have different varieties that are important for horticulture. A plant belongs to a specific family; a number of similar plants belong to the same family.
Family of the plant is equivalent to clan in Africa
Genus of the plant is equivalent to family in Africa
Species of the plant is equivalent to members of the family in Africa .
Example: plants.
Family: fabaceae
genus: albezia
species: albezia coraria
albezia gummifera
albezia grandibracteata.
Vernacular name or common name ; is the name in the language indigenous to acountry .for Uganda
WHAT IS A HERBAL PLANT?
A medical plant is a plant with specific active ingredients or components.
Those active components are different in the different parts of the plant.
Those active components are different according to the age of the plant.
Those active components are different according to the time of the day.
Those active components are different according to the climate,soil,altitude,agricultural practices and others.
These active components are diferent when different method of: hervesting, drying transporting, storage,processing ,packaging and others have been practiced.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLANT.
The plant can be annual ( life period is 1 year), biennual(plant is living 2 years and usually is following the second year) and continue growing after flowering and having given seeds.
The plant has aerial parts,the part which is inthe soil.
The different parts of a plant are: roots, stem,leaf,flower, fruit and seed.
The root can be atuber,bulb,rhzome or common root.
The stem can be a stem or atrunk with branches.
The trunk has aback and under the back a second back.
The leaf starts as a young bud. A leaf can have different leaflets.
The basis of the flower starts by a acalyx. on the calyx are the sepals,petals,stem with pollen and stigma with an ovule that will give afruit and then seeds.
All those indicators are necessary to describe aplant.
Trees can be:
Deciduous; tree that looses his leaves at the end of the growing season
Persistent; tree that loses his leaves at the end of the growing season leaves remaining on the tree
Bisexual; male and female parts present in the same flower
Hermaphrodites; separate male and female flowers on the same plants
Dioeciously; trees has only male flower and other only female flower
Leaves can be:
Bi-lobed: they are deeply divided in 2
Bi- pinnate: when 1 leave has different leaflets
With glandular hairs: hairs terminated by very small glands, often sticky to the touch
Glabrous: hairless
oblong: leaf with more less parell sides
ovate: leaf is egg shaped with the brodest end towards the tip
pubescent:covered with short soft hairs on down
smooth: leaf with even and continous margin ,lacking teeth or lobes
Inflorescence: ther flowering part of the plant
bract: a small leaf like structure in the axils of which stars a flower or a branch of an inflorescence.
Cymes: an inflorescence in which the first flower to open is the terminal bud
panicle: an inflorescence with exels that continue to grow and do not end in a flower.
Receme: inflorescence in which flowers are borne on stalk, along an branhed axis, lower flowers openning first.
Spikes: inflorescence with flowers without stalk, along an branched axis and where lower flowers are openning first.
Axis: place betwwen the stem and the branchor leaf growing from it nodal swellings: joint,point,on astem at which aleaf will grow.
Petiolate: having a petiole or stoke.
Stalk: supporting stem.
Succulent: plant with fleshy and juice leaves and / or stems.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE PICKING PLANTS FOR HOME USE
· dont peak plants growing in polluted places like roadsides, borders, factories and places where farmer use pesticides and chemicals on land and animals.
· Pick only health and clean plants.
· Pick plants when the weather is dry and shiny, after rain.
· Most plants contain more acitive properties inthe late morning.
· You should be sure and be able to identify the right plant.
· You should know which part of the plant you need.
· Dont mix different plants inthe same bag when hervested.
· Dont destroy the plant when it is not necessary. If you need the root of an annual plant ,dont take away all the plants. Some parts should be left over to producee seeds. When the plant is a perennual plants, use apart of the roots or the secondary roots.
· The roots or rhizomes of an annual polant can be collected when the plant starts dying or loosing its leaves. For the perennaual plant it better when the plant hasalready had 2-3 seasons. After hervesting you should wash them well without brushing.
· Most flowers should be picked before there are completely open.
· Most leaves have the highest active properties just before the plants starts flowering.
· The best timr of collecting stems is just after the leaves appear till before flowering.
· The best time of collecting the bark is dependent on the age of the tree and is different for each tree. When a tree is decidious and loses its leaves, pick leaves when they are completely develpoed and when there is alot of sap.
· Most plants can be used fresh or dry. But there are exceptions and some come only used without danger dry or only be used fresh.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE DRYING HERBAL PLANTS.
· Dont dry the plant directly in the sun.
· Dry the plant in a well ventilated and dusty free place.
· The plants should never be spread directly onthe ground, but spread on a clean cloth or on shelves.
· You must lay them in thin layers and (turn ) look after them every day.
· Dont bring your medicaal plants in contact with printed paper or news paper; they contain dangerous chemicals.
· Leaves and flowers can be dried without cutting in pieces.
· Roots are washed,but not brushed,and cut in small pieces. The drying process of the most roots can be started on direct sun and finished in shadow.
· Once the plant is realy dry, and contains less than 10% of water it should crack in your hand; you should put them in glass or ceramic container. Plastsic containers can be used if there are no glasses or ceramic containers.
· Dont forget to label those containers with their name ,date and place of picking.
· These containers should be placed in a dark, cool and dry place.
· Dependent on the % of moisture, these dry plants can be kept for 6 to 12 months. Roots and bark can be kept longer then leaves or leaves or flowers.
USE OF THE PLANT.
· Without danger and free use: the plant has no side effects or contraindication
· with precaution:there are some conditions to use in this plant. Some parts of the plant may be toxic, or the dosages are very specific and must be exactly measure, or the duration that this plant can be used is limited, or can not be taken by pregnant woman. Those plants can be used without risk if the given warnings are respected.
· With danger: the plant is toxic and can only be used by real holders.the planr has side effects and is dangerous for the health if not properly used and prepared.
STANDARD MEASUREMENTS TO MAKE PREPARATIONS.
One handfull:is what youb can keep in one hand when you keep it down wards or ±20 millilitre
one cup: here we are speaking about those Ugandan plastic cups = ½ litres.
One glass = 200 to 250 ml.
One teaspoon = 5ml.
One dessertspoon = 10ml.
One tablespoon. = 15ml.
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