In addition to herbs and plants, some animals may be used. For example, native tribes in the Amazon have used secretions from Phyllomedusa bicolor, or the green monkey frog, to treat a variety of ailments.

Published November 30, , last updated on October 12, under Voices of DGHI. After a few months of classes here at the Duke Global Health Institute, I can semi-confidently tell you that the biggest target regions of global health projects are low and middle income countries.

Rural areas in these countries are of particular interest to us global health almost-professionals because these areas can be incredibly remote—painfully far from where advancements in medicine, cell phone service and modern technology have spread. In these isolated communities, human life has subsisted on the land with no outside help.

Beliefs and knowledge covering a variety of aspects of the human life have been passed down from generation to generation in these communities. Spirituality and the creation of the universe, what plants to use for tea when your child has a tummy ache, how to hunt and manage herds for food and manual treatments for body aches—all of these are examples of customs passed down from elders to children.

In many rural, low income communities, people possess masterful knowledge of such important topics. Some are herbalists, midwives or even family members. They are often the first point of contact for ill people and serve as spiritual counselors for their communities. When a community member visits a healer because of illness, treatment can range from a prescription of herbs to a spirit cleansing ceremony.

Because of this, traditional views of medicine are often inseparable from spirituality and connection with the divine, the universe or higher powers. Afflictions are often deemed a result of spiritual possession or an imbalance of body energies. Shamanic and traditional beliefs and practices still exist in the world today and are quite prevalent in low and middle income countries.

These beliefs and traditions are ingrained in communities and are an important aspect of their health-seeking behaviors, culture and collective psychology. If we as global health researchers want to do the most good in the areas which we work, we should not ignore these ideals of healing; rather, we should make efforts to understand and accept these practices.

In many areas with increasing access to biomedical care, community members continue to seek traditional healers in addition to western treatment, or sometimes even before visiting a clinic.

Nepal is a great example of this. Despite having some increased access to psychiatric and mental health care resources after the earthquakes, many Nepali continue to see traditional healers in combination with community mental health care workers. The spread of western medical ideals through global health practice, without a doubt, has helped the people of the world.

To maintain good health the Maya consumed a cold chocolate drink made from cacao seeds pretty much with every meal. Clearly they were onto something as cacao is packed full of antioxidant polyphenols which we now have evidence to suggest may have heart-healthy effects.

A team at Yale University gave people a daily dose of hot cocoa for six weeks and found it improved their circulation. There are even studies that have linked a daily hot cocoa with smoother, more elastic skin.

The Maya invented drinking chocolate. They made it with crushed cacao beans, water and chilli pepper — sugar and milk were introduced later, in colonial times, and at some stage it was heated up.

Along with smoothies, this is still one of the healthiest ways to consume cacao. Or choose a dark chocolate — the higher the cocoa solids, the more polyphenols and the less sugar so go for at least 85 percent for heart health. Ayurvedic recipes use lots of spices to aid digestion and support immunity.

Developed more than years ago in India, Ayurveda is based on the belief that three life forces or energies, known as doshas, control how the body works and influence the health conditions you are prone to developing.

They are vata air , pitta fire and water and kapha water and earth and you can take online quizzes to check your predominant dosha. Diet is a key part of Ayurveda for all three doshas as improper digestion is seen as the root cause of many disorders.

While natural, unprocessed, mostly plant foods are the foundation of Ayurvedic eating, the way meals are prepared and when they are consumed is also important.

Freshly cooked food is considered easier to digest than raw. That means salads and raw vegetables are eaten earlier in the day so there is time for the body to process them. And dinner should not be too heavy or eaten too late. Use lots of delicious spices to aid digestion and support your natural immunity — turmeric , cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, saffron and ginger are all considered healing.

Keep hydrated by drinking water at room temperature — if it's ice cold it's believed to slow blood flow and the action of digestive enzymes. Avoid over-eating because a third of your stomach should be left empty for the digestive processes. And after meals do some sort of gentle activity such as walking.

Traditional Māori healing is known for its use of plants and herbs, but there is far more to it than that says Auckland practitioner Donna Kerridge. It's a holistic system, treating the whole person rather than the symptoms of their condition.

Native plants such as kawakawa, kūmarahou, mānuka, harakeke and mamaku have always been a part of this and were used to provide relief from a wide range of symptoms.

Today their therapeutic potential is going mainstream. Kawakawa is an extremely important plant to Māori. Traditionally it was used for soothing all sorts of inflammation including treating cuts, burns, skin disorders and stomach pain.

Today you will find extracts of this native tree in eczema balms and moisturisers. Local skincare brands such as Evolu and Living Nature have also embraced the native shrub kūmarahou. This is known as 'gum digger's soap' since rubbing its flowers creates a natural lather.

Antimicrobial and non-drying, it was once used by Māori as a dermal wash for healing skin conditions. It was also taken internally to treat bronchial complaints and support liver function. In traditional Chinese medicine two opposing forces — yin and yang — must be maintained in harmony for good health.

Also, qi or chi, a vital energy, flows through the body along the meridian lines. The proper flow of qi can be encouraged with tai chi. Often described as meditation in motion, this form of exercise is gentle enough for people of all ages but there is research to show that it has powerful benefits for the body and mind.

Originally, the Cnidian School of healing in Ancient Greece viewed the body very much as we view it today: as a mechanistic entity that, when it breaks down, needed fixing. Hippocrates, — BC, did not agree with this approach.

He was more interested in the individual as a unified whole, and all the variables and causative factors that contributed towards a state of sickness or disease, especially the inner attitude of the patient.

Hippocrates was also very cognizant of the power of dreams in revealing diagnostic and therapeutic insights. A few centuries later, a famous Roman healer by the name of Galen ca.

He initiated the separation between seeing symptoms as the problem versus seeing them as a necessary defense of the body to initiate its own spontaneous healing. Galen did have some redeeming features in that he was quite respectful of the capacity of dreams to impart important information to the patient, and to the physician—to the point of carrying out surgical operations based on them Dossey, , pg.

After Galen, the trend swung back towards the more vitalistic orientation and the Christian healing traditions emerged. During this time, there were no remedies as such; there was just faith and the inspiration and presence of the Christ-like healer himself.

Here the emphasis was not so much on physical remedies but on the power of God or Christ, inspired by faith, to initiate the healing required. Anthony was the saint prayed to if afflicted with ergotism, a fungus-infected rye.

If ingested, it led to tremendous burning of the intestines which led the inflicted to dance with agony. This was interpreted by onlookers as being possessed by demons. If one had rheumatic fever with spasmodic movements called chorea, you prayed to St.

Vitus for relief. I remember as a medical student seeing young kids in the hospital wards in Cape Town, affected with this consequence of rheumatic heart disease, a terrible affliction that responds quite well to large doses of penicillin.

If one compares the approaches to epilepsy as practiced by the Greeks, one realizes how far medicine had turned away from a more comprehensive approach and descended into superstition and ignorance, a millennium later. Paracelsus — was an extraordinary, controversial figure who primarily followed a more holistic, integral approach to healing.

He was the first healer we know of who possessed an understanding of both the vitalistic and the mechanistic aspects of healing, and is considered by many, including the Prince of Wales, to be the father of modern medicine.

He experimented with different dosing of substances, ushering in the modern science of chemistry. He retained and developed further some of the ideas initiated by Hippocrates, including that of treating with similars—the idea that the substance which initiated a disease, in the correct dose, will assist in the cure.

But it has happened that like has cured like. While impressively advancing the cause of scientific medicine, he retained deep mystical leanings and was intrigued by the work by the alchemists of his day, whose mystical interests were to turn the base issues of humanity into a golden spiritual purity.

Paracelsus had a deep respect for the innate healing force of Nature, and like Hippocrates, believed that this inner healer was superior to any remedies applied from the outside. Until the s, we had inner and outer healing traditions entwined with each other. For some of the time, one of the traditions would hold sway, only to be overtaken as the other gained momentum.

Descartes, who lived during the first half of the seventeenth century, was the first to separate the internal process—the moods, the emotion, the mind—from the body in a process today called Cartesian dualism.

The body matter is characterized by spatial extension and motion, while the mind is characterized by thought. Newton, who flourished in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, took dualism and materialism even further. He demonstrated that the universe, according to his calculations, was entirely mechanistic, following strict, precise laws.

The implication was made that if the world and the universe existed independently and outside of human experience, then the body must behave in much the same way. Thus, if the body is a machine, interventions must be external and aimed at fixing what is broken. In their haste to replicate the precision in logic being demonstrated by physicists, doctors began to dissect the body into smaller and smaller parts in order to understand the whole.

The first dissection of the human body in was the beginning of our understanding of anatomy and the mystery of the complexity of the physical body, and the beginning of the dominance of modern or outer medicine. From this time forward emerged a tremendous amount of knowledge that gave rise to modern medicine as we know it today.

Era 1 Medicine in the s, says Dossey, is when medicine first began to become a science. Dossey has collected quotations from individuals who view reality from this fixed, external, mechanistic point of view:.

When I die, I shall rot and nothing of my consciousness will remain. Consciousness; our thoughts are nothing other than the byproduct of neuropeptides; they have no real relevance. The implication of such statements is that our inner subjective experiences are irrelevant; there is nothing more going on than neurotransmitters, generated by the brain, speaking to each other.

And so our inner experiences are completely disregarded as a real and crucial element of our healing, and we are completely divorced from the influences of our cultural traditions and the systems in which they are embedded. I believe this to be an entirely untenable approach to healing and one that has built into its existence its own demise.

Fortunately, there are new approaches to consciousness studies as written by Daniel Siegel and Alva Noe, who illustrate how the mind is quite distinct from the brain and how the brain is shaped by the mind, the body and the environment constantly interacting with each other in meaningful coexistence.

The brain, in this case, is seen as an appendage added to the mind to increase its computing power There you have the past, from the temples of Asclepius through ancient Rome, onto the Enlightenment, and down to our present day.

Science today predominantly focuses on external factors, as we have seen. As we enter a healing journey, we will see how the external and the internal are entwined, equal in importance, and unable to be separated, like the two snakes on the Caduceus staff. Bruce Hoffman, MSc, MBChB, FAARM, IFMCP is a Calgary-based Integrative and Functional medicine practitioner.

He is the medical director at the Hoffman Centre for Integrative Medicine and The Brain Centre of Alberta specializing in complex medical conditions. He was born in South Africa and obtained his medical degree from the University of Cape Town.

He is a certified Functional Medicine Practitioner IFM , is board certified with a fellowship in anti-aging hormones and regenerative medicine A4M , a certified Shoemaker Mold Treatment Protocol Practitioner CIRS and ILADS trained in the treatment of Lyme disease and co-infections.

He is the co-author of a recent paper published by Dr. Read more about Dr. Bruce Hoffman. Bruce Hoffman Appearances About the Clinic Financing Patient Portal Hoffman Centre Team Mentoring Contact Contact Us or Find the Clinic Referral Network 0.

Patina Mountain Preserve Wellness Center E. Dunlap Avenue Phoenix, AZ Community participants must notify staff prior to attendance by emailing culturalservices nativeconnections.

Jobs at NAC Health Housing Community Home About Contact News. Call for help today. Housing Services Housing is the foundation of Native American Connections and a principle method of supporting individuals in alcohol and drug recovery, family stabilization, and community wellness.

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Traditional healing practices include: Sweat Lodge Smudging and purification Talking Circle Songs and drumming Red Road teachings Native art and crafts Storytelling Cultural presentations Positive Indian Parenting Circle of Strength Gathering of Native Americans GONA. Talking Circle As in ancient circles of elders, people sit in a circle, listen deeply, and speak from the heart.

Sweat Lodge Ceremony As with our ancestors, the Sweat Lodge is a purification ceremony. Virginia Avenue, Phoenix, AZ Women Only Sweat Lodge Ceremony - every other Monday - arrive no later than pm Patina Mountain Preserve Wellness Center E.

Dunlap Avenue Phoenix, AZ Men Only Sweat Lodge Ceremony - every Tuesday - arrive no later than pm. Tips for Ceremony Hydration begins prior to ceremony please drink plenty of water throughout the day especially as the summer weather has begun.

It was also taken internally to treat bronchial complaints and support liver function. In traditional Chinese medicine two opposing forces — yin and yang — must be maintained in harmony for good health.

Also, qi or chi, a vital energy, flows through the body along the meridian lines. The proper flow of qi can be encouraged with tai chi. Often described as meditation in motion, this form of exercise is gentle enough for people of all ages but there is research to show that it has powerful benefits for the body and mind.

A study at Harvard Medical Centre found that patients with chronic heart failure experienced a better quality of life, sleep and mood when practising tai chi. This system of slow, easy movements also improves balance and flexibility, maintains muscle strength, lowers blood pressure, reduces inflammation and helps control depression, stress and anxiety.

You can't visit a park in China without noticing groups practising tai chi, and in New Zealand classes are held all around the country. Find one near you with the Taoist Tai Chi Society of New Zealand.

Many Native American tribes believed that illness could have both natural and supernatural causes so purification rituals were often used to bring in good spirits and clear away anxieties, dark thoughts and unwanted energies.

The most common shamanistic cleansing ritual is called 'smudging' and this is still popular today. Traditionally, it involved burning herbs and plant resins in a clay bowl and fanning the smoke around the home using a feather. One of the most common herbs used was white sage and you can now buy ready-made white sage smudge sticks check online.

Even though its supposed effects can't be proven, there may well be a psychological benefit to performing the ritual and clearing the way for more positive thinking. Body 'How Maori medicine helped my child's severe eczema' New Zealand Woman's Weekly. Body Sage advice: the healing power of herbs The Australian Women's Weekly.

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