Southern Folk Medicine

by Phyllis D. Light

  Fire people love children, their own and other people’s, and they like pets. Unfortunately, they are often too busy with their work and projects to give either children or pets the full attention that might be needed. Unless of course being a parent is their job and then, look out, they are supreme.

  These folks are intuitive by nature and occasionally appear psychic. Their innate intuition allows them to see patterns that others don’t and to extrapolate quickly and efficiently. This is a handy talent that provides creative input for their projects or work.

  One of the characteristics of fire is that it transforms. Vulcan, the god of the forge, transformed rock into metal. Fire folks can take an idea and totally transform it into something new and innovative. They don’t mind bucking convention either.

  Fire people seek a supportive partner, someone who understands and appreciates their talents and what they can accomplish. With the right supporting relationship or business partner, there’s no limit to what a fire person can do. Fire folk often have multiple marriages or love affairs looking for that right partner. In truth, fire burns the brightest with the right mix of air, fuel (earth), and moisture—and so does the fire constitution.

  Think of Will and Ariel Durant. Will was a philosopher, writer, and historian who over his career published hundreds of books and magazine articles, and with his wife, Ariel, wrote the classic The Story of Civilization in eleven volumes. Together they were an amazing team. Will was the fire and Ariel the supporting earth. They both lived well into their nineties, died within weeks of each other, but had no children. Other examples of such couples are Amelia Earhart and George Putnam; Marie and Pierre Curie; the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King; Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt; and Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

  Fire folk often create their personal identity around what they do or their profession. This can create self-esteem issues if they lose their job, their project is a failure, or their profession goes through great changes. Interestingly, fire people may have several different professions over their life span, each one creating a personal identification and self-esteem value. These are the folks who should never retire; it can bring too much loss of identity.

  Remember, we all have some fire.

  Excess Fire

  Excess fire is easy to identify: Anger, anger, and more anger. The anger is always just below the surface waiting to erupt. Stress, perceived personal slights, losing a job, trauma, feeling betrayed, or illness can be the culprit. Often, the anger stems from childhood bullying, especially in junior high school, or other childhood trauma that has been suppressed but smoldering for years until something triggers it. Self-esteem issues are dominant. It may also show in the personality as temper, impatience, and being overly critical. Any little thing will set off the eruption of unresolved anger that lies just below the surface. Excess fire will also show in controlling behavior, and rigidity and inflexibility when making decisions. When fire is in excess, the person must attempt to control the blaze or it becomes a forest fire, out of control.

  Folks will lose their normal spontaneity and creativity. Peripheral mental vision is lost, the blinders go on, and work becomes a stress and chore. Control issues emerge.

  There are almost always too many irons in the fire from taking on too many new projects or creative endeavors simultaneously. Somehow, the fire person feels that if they take on more projects, somehow, this will smooth things out, when actually the opposite is happening.

  People with excess fire tend to lash out at the ones they love the most when under stress. The ego dominates and fire pulls into protective mode. Unfortunately, in extreme situations, the anger fuels physical violence. It was a well-known fact that before air conditioning, the murder rate soared during the summer months in the South. The heat is irritating to every system in the body, especially the nerves, and anger is just as irritating on the nervous system.

  Other signs of excess fire are nervousness, hyperalertness, anxiety and/or irritability, heart palpitations, trouble sleeping, tremor, muscle weakness, digestive disturbances, sweating, weight loss even though eating, heat intolerance, and reproductive dysfunction. Other signs of excess fire can include anxiety, restlessness, fidgeting, chewing the fingernails, very fine, silky hair without body, tremor of fingers and tongue, rapid speech, increased blood pressure, thirst, and overall dryness.

  Excess fire may exhibit as thick blood, fever, inflammation, and rashes. High blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, and cardiovascular disease can also result from excessive fire that has thickened the blood. Excess fire can cause dehydration and loss of fluid, which is a contributing factor. In hyperthyroidism, the body will literally burn itself up. Infection is an obvious source of fire as the immune system fights against invaders. In excess fire, the face tends toward redness, as do the fingernails. The tongue may also be red and irritated-looking or have a red tip.

  When under stress, the fire initially flames, and folks tend to reach for the salty, fatty potato chips and nuts rather than the chocolate chip cookies to support the fire needed to complete their project or reach the finish line. Maintaining excess fire can take a severe toll on the body, mind, and spirit as the fire burns through vast amounts of nutrients, creates excessive free radicals, and damages mitochondria and the endocrine system. The damage to the endocrine system can result in hypothyroidism, type 2 diabetes, and adrenal exhaustion. This situation will move the person from excessive fire to deficient fire.

  Cooling, moist herbs and foods and plenty of fluids help bring excess fire back toward balance. These foods and herbs also tend to contain minerals that help regulate the Krebs cycle, nervous system, and endocrine system. Cooling foods include moist fruits and berries, which are chock-full of antioxidants: greens, Navy beans, green beans, seafood, fresh cheeses, yogurt, melons, cucumbers, Great Northern beans, lima beans, lentils, and green peppers.

  Cooling herbs include sumac, dill, yarrow, elder flower, lemon balm, lemon verbena, peppermint, boneset, chamomile, blessed thistle, Monarda, sage, corn silk, skullcap, bilberry, dandelion, bugleweed, plantain, catnip, slippery elm, spearmint, hydrangea, marshmallow, and yucca. It’s important to determine if cooling, moistening herbs are needed or if cooling, drying herbs are needed, and this will depend upon the given situation.

  It’s also a good idea to reduce fat intake when fire is in excess, especially animal fat from mammals. At the same time, an increase in omega-3 fatty acids from fish and sea vegetables can help cool the body and reduce inflammation. Animal fat is heating and only adds fuel to an already blazing fire.

  Deficient Fire

  A person with low fire lacks passion, cries easily, and feels very sorry for themselves. A deficient fire person will exhibit many traits in common with the water person, which is fire’s opposite. When fire is low, the personality has a true tendency toward bitterness, self-pity, and depression. During this time of low fire, folks cling to unhealthy relationships and feel that life has no meaning or that things will never change. They also tend to feel unsupported and alone.

  In deficient fire, people feel overwhelmed and overextended. When fire is low, energy is low and creativity is down. Self-preservation and survival are the goal, whether physical or emotional. The thought of changing the situation doesn’t cross the mind because folks are in survival mode. When the idea of changing the situation is mentioned as an option or remedy for the situation, the fire person will stare with incredulity that change is even suggested. Talk about thinking in a rut! Everything just seems hopeless. This is the time when fire needs the support of family and friends, stimulating herbs, spices and foods, mild, bitter diuretics, and a return to a fire-supporting diet with reduced grains.

  It would seem that the fire person would reach for good fats and proteins in this situation, but the opposite tends to happen. When energy is reduced, the fire person tends to gravitate toward simple carbohydrates, looking for quick energy. The person who never wanted dessert now has a desser
t at every meal, and snacks too. The person that was happy with fruit as a sweet now wants to eat cakes, pies, and cookies. The person who used honey for a sweetener and avoided processed sugar now grabs the sugar jar. Carbohydrates are a quick energy source that lifts energy for a short time, but then suddenly drops it like a hot potato. In no time at all, more carbohydrates are needed to get the energy up and going.

  The classic example of deficient fire disorder is hypothyroidism. Energy is low, fatigue is common, nutrient uptake is limited, circulation is sluggish, there is disturbed digestion, low functioning of all major organs, lymph is stagnant, and the body becomes cool and watery. There is reduced drive and passion for life, low motivation, and almost nonexistent creativity. All this is a perfect breeding ground for parasites, both physical and psychic. And the low fire person feels very victimized.

  Common signs of deficient fire may include fatigue, lethargy, cold intolerance, weight gain, digestive difficulties, edema, arthritis-type pain, nerve pain, diminished libido, infertility, menstrual problems, headache, low blood sugar, slow thinking, confusion, clumsiness, constipation, slow stomach emptying, rashes, poor immune functioning, recurrent infections, lymphatic congestion, loss of muscle strength, depression, low blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, anemia, and liver difficulties.

  Other signs of deficient fire might include a round, puffy face, a large, swollen tongue, large or swollen hands, lack of muscle tone, loose joints, muscle weakness, delayed reflexes, yellowish skin, scaling, dry skin, cool skin, dry nails, enlarged or overworked heart, low core temperature, skin tags, lack of sweating, dry, brittle nails, and slow speech.

  A deficiency of fire can present as cool blood, which is thin, weak, and watery, with low pressure. Anemia may be present. There is stagnation and swelling in the abdomen and low flow of body fluids, including bile and lymph. The face tends to be pale, as do the nails, and there may be dark circles under the eyes. The skin loses its luster and takes on a yellowish tint. Digestion is sluggish and assimilation of nutrients is poor. The bowels may be sluggish, and congestion may be present in the lungs and around the heart. Mucus tends to gather in any and all mucous membrane tissues but doesn’t move. Vital Energy is low, movement is an effort, and the heart beats with a strain. There is a tendency to hold fluid in the abdomen, breasts, buttocks, and upper thighs. Stimulation is desperately needed.

  Warming foods and herbs can help build a sustained fire. These include soups and stews, animal protein, onions, garlic, winter squashes, pumpkin, summer squashes, cooked greens, butter, olive oil, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yam, kidney beans, black beans, and seaweeds.

  Warming and/or stimulating herbs include cayenne, milk thistle, American ginseng, blessed thistle, red clover, black pepper, peppermint, cinnamon, cloves, angelica, kelp, licorice, pine, lobelia, sarsaparilla, horseradish, bay, and sassafras.

  Chapter Ten

  Water: Salty Blood

  My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.

  —Mitch Hedberg

  Over her working career, Mama worked outside the cotton fields in three different professions, each of them hard on the body. She worked as a cook, which wasn’t physically as hard as field work but in some ways was more stressful because she had to deal with the public and had to keep them satisfied and happy with her cooking. Mama was considered a good Southern cook and could plan the menu for and feed about fifty people a meat and three vegetables, cornbread, sweet tea, and dessert five days a week at the local café. To this day, diners and cafes are my favorite places to eat either in town or on the road, and I look for these small, family-run businesses wherever I travel. The food is generally decent and filling, and it brings me great comfort to be in the environment I know so well, a part of my upbringing, and a touch of home on the road. Wherever Mama worked, us kids always visited, and we became almost as familiar with the setting as she was.

  Mama worked as a cook during the off-times from the cotton fields, and then later, after the cotton-picking jobs were given to mechanical harvesters, she cooked full time. Papa Bright, like many tenant farmers, was forced by his landlords to rent mechanical cotton harvesters because it was cheaper than paying for human labor. Both my Mama and her sister Sadie went to work as cooks. Sadie eventually got a job in the textiles making blue jeans, but not Mama.

  Mama also cleaned houses for a living. It didn’t pay any better than cooking, but the hours were better. Most families didn’t want her to start until 8 a.m., and she worked until their kids came home from school, though occasionally she stayed and cooked supper for the family before coming home and doing the same for us. Huntsville, Alabama, had seen a great influx of highly educated people from other states coming to work for NASA or for the government in some capacity such as missile development in the defense industry. Many of these transplants moved to outlying small towns, trading the commute to work for cheap land. In a very short time, our area went from a farming community to a bedroom community, and life changed forever.

  With the influx of so many new people, all professions of the middle class grew; we suddenly had doctors, lawyers, dentists, and pharmacists. Not that we didn’t have doctors before; we had two. And the town had a couple of lawyers and a dentist. But now, with population growth, we had several of each. The town was certainly changing.

  All the newcomers had funny accents, called Yankee by most locals. The newcomers found they could hire help to clean their houses, raise their kids, and do their yard work and handiwork for very little of nothing. These transplants set themselves up to remake the town to be similar to the ones they had left behind, which occasionally caused rifts and troubles among them and the town’s local population. It certainly forced some progress on the town.

  One benefit of the outsiders moving to town was that our school system immediately improved. The children joining our schools found themselves two or three grades ahead of where we locals were at the same age. So a third-grade girl moving from Michigan found herself in the fifth grade here. Because of the dedicated efforts of the transplants, our town now has one of the best public school systems in the state.

  With the improved economy, Mama found a niche as a housekeeper and sometimes a nanny, a task that she excelled at doing the same way she had excelled at cotton picking. She once said to me, “When I leave a clean house at the end of the day, I know I’ve made a difference in those people’s lives.” And she believed this with her whole heart and soul. She felt sorry for those children who depended upon a stranger to make their beds, cook their food, and soothe their feverish brows while their own mamas were off playing bridge, at a club meeting, or shopping. Mama repeatedly told us how lucky we were that she was teaching us to take care of ourselves, that we were learning how to run our own homes when we got married. “Be independent,” she’d say, “take care of yourself.” We, however, looked at the nice clothes, nice houses, and new cars of the better-off families and wondered whether independence and housekeeping skills were an even trade-off. Today, I understand and appreciate how she taught us to take care of ourselves, especially when I look at the younger generations raised without the cooking, shopping, banking, cleaning, and life skills that we all need to navigate adulthood.

  Before the transplants came to town, there were only two classes of people: the haves and the have-nots. The haves were people who owned land or a business and had money, which often had been passed down through the family (affectionately called “old money”). The have-nots were everyone else. It was a system that had been in place for generations and there was resistance to change, even among the have-nots.

  Now suddenly there was a third category. The people that were well-educated and made good money working in the space or defense industry. These folks didn’t fit into the social scheme and didn’t care. Most of them came from regular working-class families in their home states but had aspired to something different by way of an education in the sciences. Education changed everything. Locals could now see the result
s of what a good education could bring regardless of your family’s money status or who your people were. A good education could pay off.

  Sometimes Mama brought home hand-me-down clothes given to her by one of the ladies of the houses she cleaned. These beautiful clothes were a huge change from either the hand-me-downs of cousins or the clothes Mama made for us, which used the same pattern and style over and over that was at least twenty years out of date. Store-bought clothes were reserved for special items such as coats and underwear and socks and shoes. Mama was an excellent seamstress, and one year she was hired to sew the high school cheerleading uniforms.

  One time, Mama brought home two big boxes of beautiful clothes. I had never seen such fine material or stylish clothes and even I, at a time when I really had no idea of the cost of bought things, knew that these clothes were expensive. The material just felt soft and lovely, not like the material of my homemade clothes that were a bit rough on the skin until washed at least a dozen times. The clothes all fit me like a glove and were my favorite colors. I went to school floating on a cloud. Two days later the clothes were gone. Disappeared from my closet and nowhere to be found. Mama had given them away. After the shock and disappointment wore off, I asked her through my tears why she had done that. “They gave you airs,” was all she said. Back to my old, worn hand-me-downs and out-of-date clothes.

  I understand that Mama was trying to protect me. Wearing nice store-bought clothes gave the appearance of money we didn’t have. Here I was, dressed really nice, and my siblings weren’t. It was an inequality that I’m not even sure she had the words to explain. She was also afraid that having nice store-bought things might set the yearning for more, a yearning that couldn’t be fulfilled by our family and that would just lead to unhappiness. From her point of view, I would grow up to sew in a factory, work in a plant, or maybe, if lucky, be a teacher or secretary. Those were all good professions for a young lady, and that was success. But I wanted something different. And me wanting something different set the stage for strife in our relationship for many years to come. Even after I became successful enough as an herbalist to buy a house, she asked, “Why don’t you get some steady work and quit all that herb stuff?”