My health, wealth: Are ulcers eating you away?

Miriam Nyasha Kwari

Herbalist

Hello friends and welcome to this week’s, MY health, My Wealth. Thank you for your support and comments. It is encouraging to know that we enjoy going through these weekly newspaper article entries. 

Let me start by saying how I think we develop ulcers. 

I believe that when we become dehydrated, we are prone to ulcers of all types. Think about it in simple terms like this — the stomach creates hydrochloric acid to aid in the digestion of foods. 

This acid can stay in the stomach without causing much damage because the stomach has a special lining that God created to sustain it. When the stomach has finished churning the food, it is passed into the duodenum for further processing. 

In order to protect the duodenum and the rest of the digestive tract from being burnt by the acid, the pancreas creates and secretes bicarbonate solution into the duodenum. 

But this pancreas requires a lot of water for this purpose. So, imagine that if the pancreas does not have enough supply of water, the damaging acids will pass into the duodenum and cause ulcers. 

Natural healing therefore should occur with water intake. I decided to start here because, I have met many people in this herbal business who claim that they are  unable to drink water at all and yet they have also the problem of ulceration in the tummy, as they say, to contend with. 

I encourage you to change and let your food and water be your medicine too. Some aloe leaf gel in the water could be a perfect starting point.

Ulcers can occur in two places: Inside the body in the alimentary canal (digestive tract), duodenal ulcers, or gastric or peptic ulcers. They may be on the outside skin, as in diabetic ulcers due to improper circulation. They may be bed sores on the skin, due to pressure, can be mouth sores, also known as Canker sores. 

Some ulcers in the alimentary canal can be linked to an overgrowth of  bacteria known as pylori. To effectively look after yourself against ulcer, you need to work with the specific cause of the ulcer. For instance, most people experience pain from stress and anxiety, while others get pain from diabetes and many other different conditions.

Let me take you back into the classroom with a bit of vocabulary! There are these two words that are worth making note of  in our lesson today. They are, EMOLLIENT and DELMULCENT. These two words are used to describe herbs that have properties or flavonoids that soothe and soften tissue. 

Some examples of such herbs include aloe vera, slippery elm, marshmallow, plantain, okra “…derere (nyatando/rechipodzi kana riye reheji yehibiscus kana rimwe iri remusango raingodyiwa kubva pasi chigare), howa nhedzi, zvichienda zvakadero.” 

There are people who say they have been asked to not eat vegetables for they are ulcerated and for now, I will wait to comment and reserve that for another time. 

For those of us who are able to find these vegetables, there are recipes that can be used playfully that give amazing results when these herb-veggies are used as ingredients in our meals. They make up some of the herbs that offer pain relief.

People have consulted me for herbs for pain relief and my favourite list includes the ones mentioned above, dried up sometimes and made into powders which are later used in making delicious soups. For others, like “derere,” the recipes are many and abound. Included in my list for pain relief are my Irish moss and Spirulina. I use these two with Graviola to reduce the gastric secretions (acid) that aggravate the peptic and duodenal ulcers. 

If you use these herbs in smoothies and porridge, especially red sorghum, you will find that the pain is usually soothed, and in some cases, the ulcer actually disappears.  I like adding my calendula tea to the mix. But that the pain is reduced or cleared does not mean that the causative factors are gone. One still needs to get to the doctors so that the bottom-line cause of the ulcer is identified and treated. It is also advisable at this stage to use herbals such as liquorish powder proportionally mixed with raw banana powder. 

There are many other combinations that are user friendly for ulcers that I have found helpful. Aloe is the mother of herbs and combines well with the family of herbs for ulcers, internal and external. Do not forget to sip on your Graviola. Look after yourself and each other. Until next week, it is well for now. God bless.

Miriam Nyasha Kwari/0773378571/

[email protected]/0773378571