Southern Folk Medicine

by Phyllis D. Light

  But most influential on the cost of healthcare is the lack of emphasis on preventive health practices that could forestall a chronic illness until later in life or indefinitely. Traditional therapies support preventive practices that extend healthy, active living into the elder years. Once again, it boils down to education, education, education.

  12. Traditional therapies should be nontoxic and noninvasive, except in acute or emergency situations. Traditional remedies and therapies support the body through nutritive action; the building of a healthy internal terrain; a specific action upon an organ or body system; and by supporting individual constitutions or by helping achieve emotional or spiritual health.

  Strong, toxic remedies are confined to the venue of conventional medicine where side effects can be monitored. Strong, potentially toxic herbs should only be used by experienced herbalists in extreme situations, and used only in low doses, by the drop, as appropriate to the condition.

  13. There is a specific plant to remedy each illness. Folk healers understand the gift of the plants and the healing benefits inherent in their properties. Cherokee medicine men, African-American root healers, Appalachian herbalists, Bush healers, and other folk healers share the common belief that there is a plant for every illness. Tommie Bass believed that “God made the world with all the plants and the fishes in the sea. He did all this before he made anybody to take care of the world.…We were made from the earth and we’ve got to go back to the earth to get something to make our bodies tick. We are part of the earth.”

  One Native American tale teaches how humans got medicine. To make a long story short, humans had become overbearing and aggressive and were destroying the Earth. The animals got together and determined that to save the Earth, humans must die. After trying several ways to kill humans but not having much success, the tiniest, littlest creatures upon the Earth, the ones you can’t see and which are invisible, volunteered to invade humans and kill them from the inside. After many days of sickness, a great cry came upon the land from the humans. The cry was so loud the animals couldn’t escape the sound. Finally, the Green People (plants) could take no more and agreed to help humans so that they might grow and take their place in the council. The Green People stepped forward and vowed that for every illness created by the invisible beings, a plant would offer the remedy.

  14. It will take awhile to get better. We need to convalesce. Generally, folks don’t contract chronic illnesses overnight and therefore won’t get better overnight. Years of living or working in stressful situations or having a stressful family life, years of being around chemical fumes or noxious odors, of drinking polluted water and eating factory-farmed fruits and commercial vegetables and meats, and breathing polluted air, take a toll on the body. To fully heal, a person must step away from the very situation and factors that caused the illness and find a situation or place that offers rest and healing.

  How Humans Received Medicine, as told by David Winston

  The Cherokee legend of how people got medicine also confirms the belief that we are part of the Earth and can’t separate ourselves from it. In the short version, man had overrun the Earth, polluting air and waters and destroying the land, rendering it incapable of producing healthy food or life. Mankind was selfishly killing the plants and animals for personal gain, disregarding the welfare of all who lived upon the Earth. The animals held council to determine what might be done to resolve the problem, to stop the damage to the Earth before it was rendered unfit for all life. After many days of meeting, the bears decided they would take care of the problem by killing mankind.

  Because bears walk upon two legs and make use of their paws like hands, it was decided they would fashion a bow and arrow to kill mankind. One old bear volunteered his life for the making of the bow, offering his guts for the string. Another bear offered to deliver the fatal blow. When the time came to kill mankind, the bear found his paws did not function the same as hands, and he could not pull the bowstrings. In disgrace, he reported to the council and offered to cut off his paws to better pull the bow. But the leader of the council opposed the action, saying that to maim oneself to better kill would make the bear no better than mankind.

  In despair, the animals held another council to discuss how best to rid the land of mankind.

  After many days of meeting, the smallest animals came forward. These animals were so tiny they couldn’t be seen. “We’ll take care of the humans,” they said. These tiny animals invaded mankind through their food and water, through the air and sky. This caused mankind great pain and affliction. A great cry went up upon the land. It was the cry of mankind suffering and dying. This cry went on for many days until finally the plants could stand it no longer. Out of pity for mankind, the plants, the Green People, came forward. “We take pity on you,” they said. “For each affliction, we will provide a remedy. From this day forward, for each disease, a plant will step forward to provide a cure.”

  Often we don’t recognize the early signs of dysfunction in the body and so live with nagging aches and pains, digestive difficulties, and feeling not quite ourselves for many years before a definitive diagnosis is reached. A physician once remarked to me that it takes about five years from the time the first symptoms appear until markers show in blood work for many chronic disorders. That’s five years or longer of living with discomfort, uncertainty, and pain. That’s five years the body has worked really, really hard to maintain homeostatic functioning. And that’s five years that folks may be told that their symptoms “are all in their head” because blood tests aren’t conclusive.

  Convalescence is a word that doesn’t often make it into our health vocabulary. It is the action of recovery after illness, including the time it takes to manifest the recovery. Convalescence is a gradual process; unhealthy behaviors need to be replaced by healthy behaviors and the damage to the internal organs repaired. Multiple modalities, such as herbs, nutrition, bodywork, and prayer, may be needed to aid the repair of the body and recovery of health.

  15. Lifestyle has a major impact on health. There is no doubt that lifestyle impacts health. Medical journals routinely publish studies on just this topic. Poor eating habits, poor-quality food, lack of exercise, smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, poverty, and poor hygiene all affect our quality of health. And let’s not forget the effects of stress and emotional trauma.

  The folks I’ve met who have truly recovered from a chronic illness are the ones who were willing to make major changes in their lives. Making these types of major changes is hard to do, especially with a family. Our beliefs, attitudes, and egos become bound up in the very behaviors that are often the most damaging to our health and, sometimes, our family culture. This makes it extremely difficult to give up those behaviors because, on some level, we believe that we are who we are because of them, or that our family won’t accept us if we change our behaviors. I once had a smoker tell me that he would never give up smoking because he wouldn’t be the same person if he did, and he liked who he was. A wife once told me that she couldn’t change the way she cooked, from unhealthy to healthy, because her husband and kids would be mad, even though those food choices were contributing to their obesity.

  Lifestyle is actually the part of living over which we have some control. For example, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a report in 2014 that discussed the lifestyle behaviors that lead to an increased risk of cancer—smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, overweight/obesity, and lack of exercise. These are lifestyle behaviors based on choices made. We can choose to change those behaviors—we have choice.

  16. The cause of illness, not just the symptoms, should be found and treated. Folk healers and herbalists are good detectives seeking to find the cause of illness. By seeking the source, by peeling back the layers of illness, recovery can begin.

  Native American healers and later Southern folk herbalists, like Granny Light, Tommie Bass, and John Lee, an African-American healer from North Carolina, classified illnesses into
two categories: natural and supernatural. Natural illnesses were further divided into physical and psychological disorders. Physical illnesses include invasion by microbes, trauma, exposure to toxins, poor nutrition, and chronic infections. Psychological illnesses include the effects of stress, nervous breakdown, worry, depression, emotional conflict related to personal relationships, and mental disturbances. Today, supernatural or spiritual illnesses might include addiction, evil acts and behaviors, or any behavior that takes you away from your ethical center. In the old days, this might also include possession by spirits, hexes, and other magical acts.

  Understanding the source of illness expands remedy options and brings peace of mind to the sick. People want to know, “Why am I sick? Have I done something to cause this? Where did this come from? Why is this happening to me?” Sometimes a cause or source of affliction can be traced, such as a car accident years earlier, or an illness, such as a virus, which never seemed to go away. But sometimes, there are no answers to these questions. Sometimes we just have to say, “I don’t know what caused it, but let’s see if we can find out.” And then the important question, “When did your illness begin and what was happening in your life prior to that time?”

  Natural health techniques and conventional medicine are not mutually exclusive; they can be used together in an integrative fashion for the benefit of those in need. Finding ground where we can all work together in mutual respect will be vitally important for the health of this country in the future.

  17. Trauma, emotional distress, and stress are major causes of disease. Clinical research and case studies too numerous to mention clearly make the connection between stress and our health. Chronic stress engages both psychological and physiological processes resulting in lowered immune functioning, fatigue, and lack of vitality and drive. The longer the stress continues, the less we are engaged in the joy of living. Every activity becomes a chore and fatigue the constant companion. Chronic stress, emotional distress, and trauma increase risk factors for all chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and autoimmune disorders.

  Stress and trauma can increase or decrease the appetite. It can cause digestive difficulties such as heartburn and constipation or diarrhea, and affect blood sugar levels. Chronic stress can cause a racing heartbeat, heart palpitations, and contribute to high blood pressure. It can cause poor sleep quality, mood changes, depression, and muscular aches and pains, especially in the lower back. Chronic stress can affect fertility and a woman’s monthly cycle. And chronic stress impacts the activity of the immune system.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating form of chronic stress that occurs whenever someone has experienced the sudden death of a loved one, war, rape, or robbery, or has been part of a natural disaster, to name a few examples. Women are more than twice as likely as men to experience PTSD, and children can experience it also. In addition to the previously mentioned symptoms, people with PTSD may also experience nightmares, flashbacks, and unwanted memories of the event.

  18. Chronic illnesses may involve complex patterns and multi-organ systems, and cannot be adequately assessed by standard medical tests. As discussed earlier, by the time blood work shows the effects of fibromyalgia, the average sufferer may have been symptomatic for about five years. Pain and suffering, a feeling of wrongness in the body, and a desire for help are too often diagnosed as “nerves” or “all in the head” or “stress.” And too often the physician prescribes an antidepressant or antianxiety drug which doesn’t fix the problem and may even create different ones. It is within this five years that improved nutrition, herbs, and lifestyle changes can impact the illness or even totally head it off at the pass.

  Folk healers look and listen to the individual and make assessments based upon patterns of dysfunction in the body. These patterns can be discerned by completing an assessment based upon signs found in the nails, tongue, face, hair, and pulse, understanding the client’s symptoms, listening to their life story, and asking targeted questions.

  In Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine, certain constitutions may have certain health tendencies. Knowing a person’s constitution can provide a direction for the assessment process. By understanding which disorders a particular constitution might be prone to, a person can make targeted lifestyle changes, improve their diet, and utilize appropriate herbs. This will be discussed in greater detail under the individual constitutions and their elements.

  19. An individual with a chronic disorder may not exhibit the same symptoms as another individual with the same disorder. Chronic disorders have a way of being individually symptomatic. For example, one person with hypothyroidism may gain weight while another may not. One person with allergies may experience rashes while another may have a runny nose. One person with fibromyalgia may experience chronic muscle aches and pains while another may feel fatigue and depression.

  Men have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease than women. Early studies of heart disease focused on unhealthy social behaviors in which men participated but women didn’t. During these studies, male symptoms of heart disease were fully documented, especially that of heart attack, and it was assumed that women exhibited the same symptoms during an attack. However, more recent studies (2003) show that men and women may have totally different symptoms during a heart attack and that about 50 percent of women don’t experience chest pain during an attack.

  Women are often ignored in medical research. When we think about the fact that women are more likely than men to have a chronic disease, this becomes mind-boggling. The very population most prone to chronic disease is the least studied for chronic disease. Women are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than men. Nonsmoking women are more likely to have lung cancer than men. Women are more likely to have depression than men. But in the majority of clinical studies, women make up less than one-third of the subjects. Fortunately, traditional folk systems focus on the individual and look for patterns of dysfunction rather than medical diagnosis, as we’ll discuss in the next tenet.

  20. Each person is unique and individual; therefore, protocols should be individualized. Traditional remedies and healing protocols are not one-size-fits-all. Since we are all unique individuals with our own constitutions, our healing programs should be just as unique. A remedy that might work brilliantly for one person might only work so-so for another, or not at all. A remedy or healing plan should be designed for the individual, not for the masses.

  We all have different bodies, different personalities, and different ways of handling life. We have different stressors and different situations at home. Recognizing that the body is more than a physical entity, but also an emotional, mental, and spiritual one, we must take into account how different personalities handle life, stress, and ill-health. We must also take into account that each gender is a unique cocktail of hormones and that affects mind, body, and spirit.

  We all have individual constitutions, and our disorders will manifest as individually as ourselves. A foundation of folk medicine is the acknowledgment that remedies must be individualized to be most effective. A one-size-fits-all approach to medicine is the purview of conventional medicine and backbone of the pharmaceutical industry, but is not always the best approach.

  21. Individuals must take an active role in maintaining their own health. Individual responsibility and accountability are paramount for good health and longevity. We must be responsible for ourselves, learn all we can about preventative health, and take steps to implement self-care measures that support and nourish our minds, bodies, and spirits. In doing so, we also become examples for our families, neighbors, and communities.

  Sometimes how we need to take care of ourselves, what we need to do to be healthy, is opposed by our family culture. Whenever we eat differently, sleep differently, stop smoking, stop drinking sodas or alcohol, or release any behavior that is not supporting our health and happiness, family members may feel threatened. They may fee
l that our new behavior is distancing us from them or that we feel that we are “better” than they are. All we can do is ask for the support of our family and friends when making lifestyle changes. Often by explaining our process to them and asking for their support, they will come on board. They may not understand our decisions, but love can overcome their trepidations.

  22. Our culture influences our health. The South is one of the few areas in the country with a cultural identity still intact, though this influence is not always reflected in a positive health manner. Currently, the South has the highest rate in the United States of both obesity and type 2 diabetes, and cultural influences play a huge role in these statistics. Eating fast food is considered all-American, patriotic, and pretty cool. It is less expensive and less time-consuming than cooking at home. This makes for poor nutrition choices.

  Regardless of the area of the country in which we live, cultural differences must be taken into account in healthcare management. Cultural attitudes and norms are handed down within microcultures from one generation to the next. When we assume that everyone must conform to the norms of the dominant culture or that everyone has conformed, this only guarantees that many subgroups and minority classes fall through the cracks.

  In addition to the dominant Caucasian culture, other large cultural groups in this country include African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. There are also large groups of continental Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Middle-Easterners. Within these groups, diet and lifestyle vary due to cultural or religious customs passed down through the generations, and each group may have different attitudes toward food, exercise, weight, stress, and other lifestyle factors. Cultural factors provide the guiding principles by which we engage in society, and therefore in our health. Practitioners must work within those cultural constraints in order to engage the individual and prompt health changes.