HEALING ONESELF

In the US, a woman has been arrested, thrown in jail, gagged from speaking, and put in solitary confinement - for healing her son. Laurie Jessop used a number of holistic treatments including black salve to cure son Chad of a tumour. Not surprising these days to hear such a story, and then again the Pharisees wanted to arrest Christ for much the same. I guess he was not making the doctors in Jerusalem rich.

This week I had a cold and have been using garlic, so I hope I am not the next victim of the Gestapo. Soon I may be using nettles - which have long been used by mankind. There is a great article about this plant in the current issue of Caduceus [#73] by herbalist Zoe Hawes (pp. 23-24). She notes that it is a 'greedy' plant, taking lots of nutrients from the earth, and thus full of calcium, vitamins B,C & K, minerals and trace elements. The iron content is 4.2mg per 100g. Dandruff is reputed to be cured by an infusion of nettle seeds in water.

Lately there was much buzz about nettles as a fibre, and one UK paper reported on it as if it was the next big thing. However, when I went to the Soho shop mentioned in the article, there were no nettle outfits. The whole thing was sloppy reporting and overhype, but it is very possible to use nettle fibre for clothing, and no, it does not sting when you wear it.

I would like to encourage nettle fiber research, however, so that along with hemp, flax, ramie and jute, it may replace cotton and plastics for clothing and then be recycled as paper. The more natural fibres we use the easier it will be to reduce methane emissions, as clothes made from natural fibres can be recycled into paper, thus reducing logging. What keeps this from happening is the fact that we use a lot of synthetic materials in clothing, so they are not easy to recycle. They are sent to landfills where they decompose and release methane gas.

If we are to heal ourselves and the planet, we need to address this.