Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Passionflower
For Tension and Insomnia
Family; Passifloraceae; (includes Granadilla, Sweet Calabash, Jamaican Honeysuckle)
Genus and Species; Passiflora Incarnata
Also known as; Maypop, Apricot Vine, Water Lemon
Parts used: Leaves
In the mid-1560s high in the Peruvian Andes, 20 years after Francisco Pizarro had brutally suppressed the Incas’ last rebellion and forced their conversion to Christianity, Dr. Nicholas Monardes of Seville suffered a guilty conscience for the carnage his countrymen had wrought. He searched the highlands for some sign of divine approval of the Spanish conquest and found it in a vine with a large, beautiful blossom with parts that seemed to evoke the Passion of the Crucifixion.
To Dr. Monardes, the plant’s three styles represented the three nails of the Cross. Its ovary looked like a hammer. Its corona evoked the crown of thorns. And its 10 petals suggested the 10 true apostles (the original 12 minus Judas, the betrayer, and Peter. who denied Christ). Monardes christened the vine passionflower.
Some misinformed herbalists recommend passionflower tea as an aphrodisiac, mistaking the Passion of the Cross for another kind of passion This herb has no sex-stimulant effect. Quite the contrary. It’s a potential mild tranquilizer and sedative and may be good for treating anxiety, stress, insomnia, and possibly for prevention of heart attack.
Gulf Coast Cure
The Incas brewed a tonic tea from passionflower The herb’s pleasant taste and its Christian symbolism quickly turned its leaves into a popular item in Europe, where it was used as a tranquilizer and mild sedative.
When colonists settled the American Gulf Coast, they found the Indians there using passionflower tea to soothe their nerves. The Indians also used its crushed leaves in poultices on cuts and bruises. Southerners adopted passionflower as both an ornamental and medicinal vine. But it remained a folk remedy until 1839, when two Gulf Coast Eclectic physicians touted it in the New Orleans Medical Journal as a nonnarcotic sedative and digestive aid.
The 19th-century Eclectics adopted passionflower as “an important remedy” for insomnia, restlessness, menstrual discomforts, diarrhea, epilepsy, and whooping cough. They also prescribed passionflower leaf juice externally for burns, scalds, wounds, and toothache.
Contemporary herbalists recommend passionflower primarily as a tranquilizer and sedative. In Weiner’s Herhal, Michael Weiner, Ph.D., writes it “may be our best tranquilizer.” Herbalists also consider it a digestive aid and pain reliever.
Passionflower was recognized as a tranquilizer/sedative in the National Formulary from 1916 to 1936. In 1978, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned it from sleep aids for lack of proven effectiveness.