[HN Gopher] Growing a Home Apothecary
___________________________________________________________________
Growing a Home Apothecary
Author : dnetesn
Score : 44 points
Date : 2022-11-10 10:53 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| teslabox wrote:
| In March 2020 I had a chronic cough - not an infection, just an
| itch that could only be scratched with a cough. "people are going
| to think I'm trying to kill them."
|
| An old herbal treatment for the lungs is inhaling the fumes of
| apple brandy from a charred oak keg. Ethanol is an antiseptic,
| while the apple and oak flavoring compounds help stimulate the
| lungs to repair themselves.
|
| Since I've started huffing on apple brandy, the itch in my lungs
| is much better than it used to be.
|
| The charred oak keg is important, because it facilitates the
| evaporation of the brandy into fumes. Someone shared that they
| use oak spirals in a glass container:
| https://www.facebook.com/EdgarCayceOnPsychicHealth/posts/pfb...
|
| My mom's husband tested positive for the virus recently. She
| developed a cough, but 'tested negative' (home tests are probably
| mostly worthless). After a month she was still coughing. I set
| her up with a barrel and sent her husband to the liquor store for
| apple brandy. Her cough was mostly cleared up in a week. Then she
| got sick again, but this cleared up quicker than her September
| case of "not-coronavirus".
|
| edit: treating lungs with inhaled alcohol is science-approved:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756511
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| It would be nice to mine Pubmed to search for tuples (plant,
| disease, administration mode, contraindications, side effects)
| hosh wrote:
| Being able to do stuff like this was the point of the semantic
| web. That was supposed to be Web 3.0.
|
| To be fair, according to a write up by a guy deep in the
| semantic web, there were several choices made that lead to the
| collapse of the first attempt.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| >> _semantic web_
|
| In principle this is a great topic. I got some interest in
| the semantic web technologies in early 2000'.
|
| My conclusions were that:
|
| - The approach was extremely rigid, basically all info (data
| and metadata) had to be classified mostly in a hierarchical
| way (first order logic) with only a few exceptions when most
| real life cases were unable to fit in this scheme.
|
| - Companies in Semantic Web just sold search. Classification
| was often done by hand or by "connectors" that had to be
| chosen or even tailored by hand.
|
| A few years later search technologies were much more powerful
| and AI enabled impressive results in classification.
|
| That said some projects like Cyc were impressive.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
| hosh wrote:
| I think the query language was capable of remapping data
| into a different schema, but it suffered from its own
| design.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Do those plants really cure those things listed in the article?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| It'd be nice to have some linked studies, wouldn't it?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| It would be nice but factoring in costs and profits I doubt
| that will happen unless some curious and incredibly wealthy
| philanthropist contributed to some research. About 15 years
| of experimenting on myself has bypassed my own personal need
| for studies and I am entirely off all prescription
| medications. It was not easy and I made a few mistakes along
| the way, but have very few regrets.
| luminouslow wrote:
| Yes, what do you think they make modern medicine out of? Most
| of the time a plant is the base for it.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I think 'yes' is too broad a claim.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| See my other comment. But where they don't I'm sure they make a
| fine placebo.
| hosh wrote:
| I think the better frame is not to see this as the plant acting
| upon the disease or symptoms, but rather, assisting the body's
| own natural capacity for regeneration and healing.
| Entinel wrote:
| I'm not willing to say all of these "cure" but most modern
| medicines take an active ingredient from a plant and synthesize
| it in larger quantities. Some of the one listed here are ones I
| do myself. Mint for nausea, chamomile, and lemon balm to sleep
| for example.
| tsol wrote:
| They don't cure the illness, they only help to treat it.
| Generally herbal medications are milder and need to be taken
| for a longer time. I find they can be fairly effective.
| Sometimes, though, what people say should work doesn't work and
| you need to go find something stronger at the pharmacy.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Kind of irresponsible not to list contraindications (e.g.
| chamomile shouldn't be used during pregnancy) as well as the lack
| of a disclaimer disavowing medical claims and advice.
| luminouslow wrote:
| In medieval Europa monasteries were required since Pope Gregor to
| grow a number of medicinal plants to ensure that the population
| has access to medicine. While i am not an opponent of modern
| medicine, it is kind of sad how little modern humans use the
| remedies nature provides.
|
| Search for monastery medicine for more info.
| bschwarz wrote:
| There is also the capitulare de villis[0] from around AD 800.
| The German Wikipedia entry has a well formatted list of all the
| plants and trees. Very interesting!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulare_de_villis
| luminouslow wrote:
| Wow I did not know that list was on wikipedia - thanks for
| sharing
| zasdffaa wrote:
| We probably haven't lost as much as you think - we either still
| use it or it was bunkum (for a given application).
|
| eg. Chamomile - still used for bad stomachs (is a costive),
| whether it works on herpes simplex seems really dubious.
| luminouslow wrote:
| Agreed! In a lot of areas that knowledge is still alive and
| well, not least in cooking. I think food can still have a lot
| of healing properties.
|
| Often modern medicine is based on these plants. And of course
| there are modern treatments that go way beyond what we were
| able to achieve with just plant-based medicine.
| jalk wrote:
| Is it naive to think that clinical trials have show that modern
| medicine is more effective? And the active molecules in those
| plants have been identified and can probably in many cases be
| synthesized more easily than extracted from the plants.
| mtrpcic wrote:
| While I think the assessment that modern medicine is more
| effective, and often stands on the shoulders of these types
| of historically used plants, not everyone has safe access to
| modern medicine (either because "modern" medical treatments
| aren't available where they're located, lack of finances to
| pay for it in egregiously overpriced areas, or general
| mistreatment by the medical community). Using alternatives,
| while not as refined or high quality, is better than nothing.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Except those alternatives will kill you dead if mishandled.
|
| This isn't a choice between "cough medicine" and "slightly
| less effective cough medicine", it's a choice between a
| controlled and inspected product and random plants that may
| or may not be the right genus, dose and concentration.
| Cass wrote:
| In areas so remote that modern medical treatments aren't
| available at all, people do often still grow their own
| medical plants.
|
| If lack of finances is an issue, growing your own herb
| garden certainly isn't the solution. These plants aren't
| going to replace a $500 shot of insulin. At best you could
| maybe replace the occasional aspirin, dramamine, or
| buscopan, all of which are available over the counter at
| price points much lower than what it would cost to even buy
| a bag of quality seeds, never mind soil, fertilizer, and
| the garden to plant it all in. (Or the time and labor to
| plant and tend it).
| hosh wrote:
| I don't think modern medicine has really taken a close look
| at synergistic effects of combinations of active ingredients.
| Our bodies are complex living systems, and it's naive to
| think that our crude approach to pharmaceuticals -- where we
| treat the body as a complicated, rather than complex system
| -- is working well.
|
| Furthermore, this kind of tech requires expertise that is not
| easily decentralized. As such, it tends centralize power and
| control of one's health in a civilization. The civilization
| needs to educate and produce a few to be able to serve the
| many, leaving aside the number of tech dependencies in order
| to produce facilities that produce this, let alone the
| research organizations to continue studying this stuff. It
| does not make for a resilient, anti-fragile civilization.
| tsol wrote:
| Yes and no. If I'm nauseous I can take a little ginger, but
| there isn't really an comparable over the counter anti-nausea
| med. There's dimenhydrinate for motion sickness, but that's
| different. Ondansetron is a prescription only anti-nausea med
| that's very effective, but obviously much harder to obtain.
| So modern medicine is more effective, only for the proper
| indication and when a 'modern' treatment is easily available.
| Sometimes just grabbing some ginger ale is the smart choice.
| GordonS wrote:
| I take ginger for sea sickness and motion sickness - it's
| efficacy is pretty incredible!
| boomskats wrote:
| Something worth remembering when criticising traditional herbal
| medicine for its lack of double blind clinical trials, is that
| clinical trials cost serious money.
|
| It's unfortunate, but with the way things work in the western
| world currently, it isn't in anyone's commercial interest to
| invest in proving the efficacy of any of these herbal remedies.
| They aren't patentable (because they're plants and because
| there's prior art), so even if you were to sponsor a trial that
| statistically proves a remedy as effective, there is nothing to
| stop your competition - established pharmaceutical manufacturers
| - from jumping on the bandwagon and eating your lunch. It just
| doesn't make commercial sense for anyone to invest time in them.
|
| I'm not here trying to insist that big pharma out to suppress
| natural medicines or whatever, or that it's some big conspiracy
| (or that it's not). I'm just pointing out that there's a logical,
| commercial reason that the we don't categorically know how
| effective these plants are. There are many examples of this with
| non-organic compounds also, that have shown therapeutic potential
| but are no longer studied for their benefits because too old to
| be protected by a patent.
| AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote:
| Thanks for this comment. I had never even considered that the
| myopia produced by market forces on academia was the cause of
| this. I have written off natural remedies my entire life,
| mostly because my mother was into them, and she administered a
| lot of them as I grew up with what seemed like limited
| effectiveness.
|
| That said, I'll definitely keep more of an open mind now.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _established pharmaceutical manufacturers - from jumping on the
| bandwagon and eating your lunch_
|
| Some pharma labs already do this. Most of the 50 supplements I
| take are made by the same labs that make prescription drugs. On
| the plus side, they are very good at consistent measurements.
| On the minus side, some of the supplements I take were actually
| drugs that failed approval. They still work for what I use them
| for, but not for what they were intended. I've come to
| understand they make just as much money from supplements as
| they do from prescription drugs given they do not have to pass
| the same scrutiny as prescription drugs. I use a red leaf
| extract that was meant to be a blood pressure drug but I can
| see why it failed as it is the most powerful diuretic I have
| ever used, meaning one can not sleep when using it.
|
| One of my favorite examples _that I do not use_ is Viagra. It
| was also meant to be a blood pressure drug but failed. It had a
| unique side effect which led to a marketing team coming up with
| the term "Erectile Dysfunction" which is now considered a
| medical term.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >It's unfortunate, but with the way things work in the western
| world currently, it isn't in anyone's commercial interest to
| invest in proving the efficacy of any of these herbal remedies.
|
| this is where i'd hope a prestigious medical school would step
| in to do the studies.
| i_like_apis wrote:
| "Apothecary" would suggest some exciting plants that have
| interesting effects. These are mostly boring plants with nice
| scents that you find in many "gardens".
| oblib wrote:
| I'll chime in for raw honey even though it's not a plant. About
| 12-15 years ago I started getting pain in my right shoulder. This
| went on for about 6 months. My wife and friends and my doctor
| told me it was "bursitis" and I'd need an operation to get rid of
| it. Back then going to the doctor was the leading cause of
| avoidable death so I wasn't keen on getting that operation (it's
| now the 3rd leading cause of avoidable death).
|
| I was whining about it one day to a friend of mine who was in his
| 70s and had been a pilot for the military and flew missions all
| over the world. He learned on lot doing that. He told me "Raw
| honey will cure that if you take a tablespoon every day for a few
| weeks" and explained it was actually an infection that the honey
| would kill.
|
| He was right. I bought some honey from a local bee keeper and it
| was exactly two weeks later that the pain was entirely gone.
| Right about that time a neighbor of mine stopped by and mentioned
| he was going to the hospital for an operation for the same thing
| in two weeks. I told him about the honey and he got some from the
| same bee keeper and it cured him too.
|
| Most doctors won't tell you raw honey will cure that. Most
| probably don't even know it will.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Same story but with propolis.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| An apothecary is a person -- or an establishment where such a
| person works -- not a garden. Odd use of the word.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Did it make sense? Were you still able to understand?
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| It's a bit weird, but makes sense as a rhetorical device. It's
| sort of like saying "Growing your own vegetable market".
|
| It's not literally true, but it expresses the idea that you are
| growing a wide variety of things that one would find at a
| vegatable market.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-12 23:01 UTC)