Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.
The remembrance of these astounding folk discoveries... should sober our thoughts when we criticise too freely the old pharmacopoeias. It is easy to make fun of medieval recipes: it is more difficult and may be wiser to investigate them. Instead of assuming that the medieval pharmacist was a benighted foot we might wonder whether there was not sometimes a justification for his strange procedure. -- George Sartori, Harvard Professor and Author
DISCLAIMER: Green Papaya offers Home Remedies with specific annotations to health and well-being. Such remedy advices are offered as emergency first aid and are governed by the Good Samaritan Act. Under the common 'Good Samaritan laws' - "a citizen is obliged to provide first aid when necessary and is immune from prosecution if assistance given in good faith turns out to be harmful". Within our developing "wireless world" there comes a time when the only immediate assistance is that offered through the Internet. Green Papaya therefore feels that obligation and thereby offers this resource of Home Remedies as necessary.
Green Papaya's home remedies are meant for temporary relief and first aid measures; for the average person without any special needs or uncommon or compounding medical conditions. Green Papaya's advice, regardless of the situation, IS NOT a replacement for professional care and consultation. Please consultant with your family doctor or any emergency service immediately.
For otherwise healthy nonpregnant, non nursing adults who are not taking other medications affecting the kidney or urinary tract, cranberry juice is considered safe in any amount. No problems have been reported from drinking cranberry juice; however, some people may be allergic or sensitive to it.
Cranberry should be used in medicinal amounts only in consultation with your doctor. If UTI symptoms develop, let your doctor know. Antibiotic treatment is usually necessary.
Grows in Bogs
Cranberry is a small evergreen shrub, which grows in mountain forests and damp bogs from Alaska to Tennessee. Its pink or purple flowers bloom from late spring to late summer and produce bright red fruits in fall.
Few gardeners have the conditions necessary to grow this herb. It requires wet, boggy, acidic soil, amended with peat moss or leaf mold. Check with your local nursery to see if it can grow in your area.
Unique among healing herbs, cranberry’s claim to fame as a UTI-preventive comes not from herbal tradition but rather from 19th-century German chemists.
Urinary Tract Infection - During the 1840s, German researchers discovered that after eating cranberries, people pass urine that contains a bacteria-fighting chemical known as hippuric acid. Sixty years later, American researchers speculated that urine acidified by a steady diet of cranberries might prevent UTI-a common, recurrent, and often chronic women’s health problem, Women adopted cranberry juice enthusiastically, and several studies endorsed it. But by the late 1960s, naysayers claimed the tart berries did not significantly acidify urine and therefore could not prevent UTI.
But the latest research lends support to the herb once again. An experiment reported in the lournal of the American Medical Association shows 73 percent of sufferers of recurrent UTI report “significant improvement” after drinking a pint a day of commercial cranberry juice cocktail for three weeks. The researchers suggest that urinary acidity has nothing to do with the herb’s effectiveness. Instead, they wrote, the juice prevents UTI germs from adhering to the lining of the urinary tract, thus reducing the likelihood of infection.
Incontinence - Cranberry juice also helps deodorize urine.
A report in the Journal of PS!jcniatric Nursing suggests incorporating the juice into the diet of anyone troubled by urinary incontinence to reduce the embarrassing odor of this problem.
Rx for Cranberry
Cranberry juice cocktail is available at most supermarkets. Pure cranberry juice is highly acidic and too sour to drink, which iswhywater and sugar are added to the juice sold commercially. If you suffer from UTI, try drinking a couple glasses of the commercial cocktail every day and see if it helps prevent recurrence.
Genus and Species: Vaccinium Macrocarpon or Oxycoccus Quadripetaius
Also known as: No other common names
Parts used: Juice from the berries
Many women drink cranberry juice, believing it helps prevent urinary tract infection (UTI). Herbalists and some physicians encourage the practice, but other physicians say the herb doesn’t help. The scientific studies have gone both ways, but the latest research shows cranberry probably works.
Thanks to the Pilgrims
Cranberries were eaten for their tangy, refreshing taste long before anyone thought of them as a healing herb. The Pilgrims supposedly dined on cranberry dishes at the first Thanksgiving in 1621, but cranberry sauce did not become a national tradition until after the Civil War. General Ulysses S. Grant considered cranberry sauce an essential part of Thanksgiving, and he ordered it served to Union troops during the siege of Petersburg in 1864. Soldiers unfamiliar with the tart berries liked them, and the custom stuck.
The colonists were unaware of cranberries’ high vitamin C content, but cranberries became a favorite among New England sailors because those who ate the bright red berries did not develop scurvy.
America’s 19th-century Eclectic physicians did not consider cranberry particularly beneficial, but their text, King’s American Dispensatory, contained this curious prescription: “A split cranberry, held in position by a daub of starch paste, will quickly relieve the pain and inflammation attending boils on the tip of the nose.”
Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.
For otherwise healthy nonpregnant, non nursing adults who are not taking other medications affecting the kidney or urinary tract, cranberry juice is considered safe in any amount. No problems have been reported from drinking cranberry juice; however, some people may be allergic or sensitive to it.
Unique among healing herbs, cranberry’s claim to fame as a UTI-preventive comes not from herbal tradition but rather from 19th-century German chemists.