Lindera benzoin

 Lindera benzoin,

for the aromatic gum, identified apropos in the fasting season, this leafless tree, bending, deeply from the hip. The bark grey dappled with light lenticels, so to breathe, as we transition Imbolc and the feast of the purification at Candlemas.

A bald eagle greets with a shriek, perched on another leafless tree, perhaps a trend? The yellow ovate leafs of autumn, fallen, littered to the ground. A deer hind shows the white center, and drops and nimbles up the rhododendron thicket, thinking herself so clever.

“The trees of the Sun Most High are full of sap; the cedars of white mountains, which he hath planted;” Praise Sun 104:16 These the remembered days, golden low winter light. Buds closed on thin flexible branches. Unable to keep still, pulsating swollen ready to burst. Strong scent of pine and frankincense, delightful with cinnamon and camphor as per its familiar aspect, Lauraceae family with first cousin sassafras nearby asserting the recent snowed lightning shooting spice.

Vital force moves upward from the ground, meeting sky. I wanted to tell you all these things. Our hobbled bodies for an instant passionate and certain.

We do well to imitate the leafless benzoin, muted with warmth. To drink a cup of tea, and taste the soon to be yellow flowers of spring.

Melting ice will you remember to save me a few brilliant red drupes?

Herbal Energetics Opening

      The one principle that guides me is that for every health problem there is an herbal solution remedy.

winter witch hazel flowers

The path of herbalism begins at the beginning, where you are, as best you can, directly face to face, with yourself as a unique person in a specific place. You as a person are the person you are as a unfolding pattern. Therefore your fundamental identity is process, becoming. It is imperative you understand your pattern, strengths and weaknesses and then work to address them. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw-EsbogfNU

     We understand this as the primal pattern prototype developing according to its innate tendency. Just as Quercus alba, a white oak tree is somehow determined by the acorn from which it grew, to be exactly, unaltered what it is according to its prototype. So an oak acorn planted does not put out maple leaves. The oak is forever limited by its oakness. The oakness of an oak is both its strength and weakness, both its salvation and nemesis. So you too are a living being, whose origins is through your parents and immediate ancestors. In a sense, you are your parents. You can of course react against this, yet even this reaction against who you are, is somehow contained in who you are.

      If you travel to study with plants you will notice that the white oak, with its distinctive paired lobed alternate leaves, will take on different aspects of that prototype depending on where it is located. We understand the unique environment within the bioregion where the white oak grows is significant. Yet somehow the white oak will remain true to its pattern regardless of the environment within which it grows. There is some flexibility within the pattern yet the pattern itself is ruthlessly rigid. There is dialog within the pattern but no arguing with the pattern.

In other words the white oak within its pattern of white oakness doesn’t suddenly begin to grow Acer or maple leaves. In herbalism this unfolding pattern is sometimes called the constitution. The unique responses to the environmental challenges, the coping mechanisms, childhood illness, and subsequent recovery from illness are called the pattern tendencies for that specific individual. These pattern tendencies of both renewal/recovery and sickness in some ways might be the medical history of childhood and adolescence. This analogy of white oak to human person has obvious limitations. An oak tree for all its grandeur is obviously enormously stuck in place. If we define intelligence as skill in survival, expertise in living strategies, the white oak, Quercus alba although enormously stuck, limited to place, also has enormous inherent intelligence. The Bedford oak is 500 years old. The Bedford oak continues to live about 50 miles north of Long Island, NY. It began as an acorn sometime around 1500AD. Another white oak Mingus oak, from West Virgina was dated to be 650 years old in 1938. Several white oak groves in North Carolina Pisgah forest have multiple 300 year old trees. 

     Before we can have herbal cures and remedies, on the most basic level there must be effective nourishment from food, air and water. The person first has to have these needs met with dependability and regularity. You can’t decide to take a breath, then a few hours later decide to take another breath. Choice and volitional control although hallmarks of human will are in short supply and over rated concepts within the functioning of the body. If you break the meta rules of human health whether through ignorance or accident, you suffer the consequence. Obviously if a person is deprived of air, and there is a constriction in the airway then herbal remedies are pointless.

cold and dry

There is a dynamic hierarchy of needs and because a person can only exist within a cultural social community, meeting those needs for optimal health is not only physical interaction but also a social interaction. Within supplying food, air and water there must be in-flow, absorption of nutrients and out-flow, elimination of waste from these things. So these basic concepts: the constitutional pattern, constitutional tendencies, nourishing the body and establishing in-flow and out-flow, understanding specific organ systems, are the essence of understanding the human body within an herbal framework. So the artful interplay and development of herbal remedies between a person’s inherent nature, their tendencies and patterns of illness and the overt presentation of the person in relation to energetics of warm/cool, moist/dry, tonic/relax, tightening/loosening, excess/deficiency, stimulation/suppression, and the corresponding body systems and tissue states is the fundamental stuff of herbalism.

sassafras autumn

     Plants, herbs, hands and fingers working together with what is available to maximize health is the foundation of learning the practice of the herbalism art. Herbalism is an art and not a science. Every unique situation of disease has an herbal cure. The work done with herbs is process in the der Geist, the imagination of the hearth. The herbs and plants of your personal materia medica growing in field, forest and garden are held in the gathered leaves, roots, oils and tinctures we brew in the hearth. For this reason, we don’t begin herbalism with the study of plants. We begin with the study of a plant. We begin with a single plant. Begin with the study of your place. Your place with you in it. Remember when you were a child, or exploring the place around you in a childlike way, walking through a forest. Something catches your eye. You are walking up a steep hill, it’s muddy, you reach out and grab a branch. As you grip the stalk, in the fleshiness of the lobed leaves there is a scent, a spicy, sweetness, sassafras albidum. It may be years later, you are drawn to dig the roots. Maybe in the mean time someone told you more about it.

There is frequently recognition instantly on a certain level regarding plants. Something happens within the relationship of plant, person and place. The plant, person and place are already established, the connection is a mystery. If you are an herb gatherer it is a kind of arrogance to view yourself as creating this connection, as a service for someone. Likewise if you are sick and taking herbs, it’s laziness to think your responsibility is limited to gulp down and swallow. The connection is already present. Whether you are the herbalist or the person seeking to get well, the process is similar. So hone the direct face to face connection of person, plant and place.

cool and dry

      At the beginning working with a specific plant, whenever possible meet and greet the plant where the plant lives. Work with a few plants at a time local to the place. Where you found the sassafras you’ll see other plants a short distance away, maybe mugwort or boneset. You are going to be drawn to certain plants. Again it’s an art form, a mystery, not a science. Look within that small circle. Gather and process the plant, not only with your hands but within the imagination with attention to detail. Be alert around the plants. The plant as an herb is a self contained other with a capacity to heal, produce change in a positive outcome. How that is is beyond our understanding. The endless speculation on the other leads us away from what we can and do know about the other. It is something we can use. Some things we can know and some things we can’t know. It is something we can use to bring harmony. In herbalism it is the plants that bring a kind of memory of the balanced state.

     If you have been around sick people it’s a serious situation. Especially long drawn out debilitating illness. We can word play with diagnosis yet the fundamental issue is withdrawal of energy and redistribution of the energy into a negative energy loop.

wet moving

Things tend to develop in a certain way and keep on developing in that way. There is both inertia in health and inertia in sickness. Whether we recognize or don’t recognize, we are connected. We are members of a team. That team is embedded on a cultural playing field. Whether you recognize or don’t recognize, you are a member of a team. It is like you are a member of a basketball team, the scheduled games can not be postponed. If a member of the basketball team is injured and forced to play with injury, then your team suffers. Then there is the emotional feeling tone of injury. Being laid up. Forced to play games at less than potential, sitting on the bench and watching others play. Or the redundancy of forced idleness. The systemic situation of certain team players disavowed from the playing field. They are capable of playing but the rules don’t allow their participation. So they are disavowed cancelled basketball players unable to take the field. This systemic redundancy leads to resentment, passive aggressive behaviour. Someone sneaks in and damages the back board, another time steals the hoop. This passive aggressive attitude becomes habit, people self sabotage their own health. People become attached in some way to misery and begin to live contagiously miserable lives. The cult of sick infirm people becomes an economic driving engine of the economy. 

great lobelia warm and dry

     When you work with the plant, see it in your mind's eye, recall the smell, taste, color, texture of the leaves, and context of the plant. See the leaves, flowers and if you gathered the roots, see them too. When i say context of the plant, i mean where it lives, the ecosystem, desert, forest, mountain, riparian, wet/dry, sun/shade, flat or hilly, season, the surrounding plants growing around it. Was it tall, or close to the ground? A creeping vine, shrub with woody stem, a tree towering above our heads? Was it still, moving with the breeze? If you are taking a tisane or tincture that someone gathered or made for you, try to have a picture of the plant, and visualize it in your imagination. What is the taste? Sweet, sour, hot, cool, bitter, acrid, salty? What is the smell, fragrance, aroma, earthy, musky, aromatic, floral, what does it resemble in smell? What does it smell like? What does it remind you of? Is it familiar? This will help you to unify the tissue states of the body and the action of the plant on that tissue state. These insights take a long while to develop. So don’t beat yourself up for not knowing what you haven’t had time to learn. Milk thistle, yellow root, mahonia, hydrastis, chicory root all work on liver in a slightly different way. Lacking a dedicated system of learning within herbalism is a problem and one that won’t be solved within our lifetime. The plants are here, we are here, that is enough.

mountain mint warm and dry

     Plants are forms of life with their own sovereignty and nature. We encounter the plant and in our body it’s doing something, creating movement of the body systems. The idea is not necessarily what it should be doing, but what is it actually doing in terms of direct experience. Is it warming? Cooling? Causing sweat? Does it cause us to notice a specific bodily sensation? Saliva in the mouth? A tightening of the throat? Rumbling in the stomach? A desire to rest, or a desire to get up and move about? To close our eyes, or look about?

On the endless road of cold, warm, wet, dry, tightening, loosening, winter towards spring..

cold and wet season

Hydrangea arborescens

 Hydrangea arborescens is an easily found perrenial shrub understory plant of eastern woodlands.

A meter to shoulder height. The leaves are opposite ovate to a sharp point with moderately serrated edges, on an extended petiole, the leaf veination is more pronounced on the underside, and a lighter green. The plant has an interesting cyme panicle with white, sterile 3-4 petaled phlox like flowers around the flat topped bunches. It has an extended bloom time from spring to late summer. If you look at the flowers you imagine they would turn into berries but I don't think they do. There are cultivated varieties around peoples houses that have a more snow ball appearance which I have never seen in the wild free varieties, do not use the cultivated variety only the wild. 

    Hydrangea has diuretic properties, meaning it promotes urination, kidney activity. It relates well to kidney, bladder, uti, prostate and other likewise complaints in male and female. Use the dug up root which you can sometimes clean with a nylon brush rinsing in water, or lightly peel scrape with a knife, then cut into small pieces to dry or tincture. It's easy to find in winter because you can identify the flower tops from last summer if you need to gather in winter.

     Hydrangea root is usually combined with a couple different herbs for a specific condition. For example if uti is the issue you may want to use it with pipsisewa and or uva-ursi, and yellow root, a mahonia or golden seal. These could probably be best used as a strong tea. For prostate combine with carolina saw berries, stinging nettle root. For stones maybe joe pye and some kind of antispasmodic like viburnum cramp bark, silk tassel and so on. 

   

Some people have recently made a topical with hydrangea root a for sunscreen made with butter, lard or olive oil, a little bees wax and creosote bush. The roots contain a compound called hydrangin, aka 7-hydroxycoumarin, which has been used in sunscreens. 

     Definitely spend some time with hydrangea

Vitalist Golumpki Jesus Prayer

 Vitalist Golumpki,

in winter solstice, at Christmas, long nights. dark, cold, wet. with even days,

accord with season. Whether plaki, kasza, latke, it is who we were, are and will continue to be. Our ethnic identity is rooted in cold dark times, positioned to embrace the light.

https://youtu.be/5dMptP7XGjU
The centerfold union of vitalism is the golumpki or stuffed cabbage, the plaki, latke and kasza. Cabbage, buckwheat, sour milk, cheese, meat, salt. Nourishing the center is the ethnic vitality prototype unfoldment. https://youtu.be/9EDui9EFb5M

Attentive to person, time and place. Cabbage is cold wet, moist and expresses this time as a lacto-ferment. Likewise buckwheat flour plaki.

      Plaki recipe: buckwheat flour in a bowl, sour milk or kefir, an egg, teaspoon aluminum free baking powder, or leave buckwheat flour with sourdough starter. 

Mix ingredients in a bowl add water till a firm batter.

Sautee in butter. Top with ham, swiss cheese, top with cut up pears.

     Plaki may be topped with ham, sour cream, smoked salmon, pickles, meat, used as a bread to make a sandwich with spouts, cucumber, and so on.-

    Vitalist Golumpki, stuffed cabbage, buckwheat, cold winter roots. Christmas is made sacred as winter solstice, wrapped in cold dark snow, in a time of even days. Our faith is the mystery. We accord with season by placing the birth of Jesus before our hearts. O God cleanse me a sinner. Jesus Christ son of God, have have mercy on me a sinner. Enter the day with prayer upholding the mystery of Christ.

 https://youtu.be/COj58MT20IY

     Whether pierogi, plaki, kasza, latke, it is who we are, were and continue to be. Becoming as people invoking a pole star of tradition. In simplicity on earth as it is in heaven. ‘Thy will be done’, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28, … to the father and the son and the holy spirit now and forever unto ages and ages. The centerfold union of vitalism is the golumpki of stuffed cabbage, buckwheat, potatoes, butter, kefir, nutrolls, kolbasi, the plaki, latke and kasza meeting the sacred space of mortality and eternity.

     As we enter sacred space nourishing the center which is ethnic vitality prototype unfoldment. Attentive to person, time and place. Cabbage is cold wet, moist and expresses this time as lacto-ferment. Likewise dry buckwheat flour plaki becomes warm moist cakes. The potato grows in the soil and nourishes the people. Grateful for this day awakened by the giver of life for another day above ground. All praise to you O Lord, glory to thee. Holy God, holy mighty, Holy Inmortal, have mercy on us.

    

Be attentive. Every breath and heartbeat is the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Within Christ is the cross, an acknowledgement of suffering and pain. There is no escape from suffering, old age and death.  The Jesus prayer is who we are nourished by our kinsman redeemer, Christ. You, Mary Theotokos birth giver to our Saviour. Mary Theotokos give birth to saints. I venerate Mary Prokov, the protector, thank you Mary for safe keeping and prayer delivered to your son Jesus. 

      Plaki recipe: buckwheat flour in a bowl, sour milk or kefir, an egg, teaspoon aluminum free baking powder, or leave buckwheat flour with sourdough starter. 

Mix ingredients in a bowl add water till a firm batter.

Sautee in butter. Top with available protein, swiss cheese, top with cut up apples and pears.

     Plaki may be topped with sour cream, smoked salmon, pickles, meat, used as a bread to make a sandwich with spouts, cucumber, and so on. You nourish our bodies, In gratitude and thanks we take the body and blood of Christ at every meal eating Christ bread.

    So what is vitalism? Vitalism is an extreme localism of sovereignty both within the physical body, in the spirit, and within Christ’s divine kingdom around us. The holy herbs are given for our healing. In that way a majority minority tradition, outside the flag waver pill pusher filth generator of the occupying regime. We are grateful to the martyrs and grateful to live to praise another day.  By Mary Mother of God Theotokos we preserve this knowledge of holy blessed remedies, in trees, roots, leaves and flowers. We have a spark of divine life that animates, guides, nourishes and protects the body. This same spark of life, set in motion by God, creator of the world, animates the plants that we use to create remedies to heal the body of Christ.

Within this minority tradition, we invoke the mystery of faith that is our health outside of the occupied pharmakeia designed by the occupying regime to erase our people. We are not mechanical machines. Our narrative and story is within the mind of Jesus Christ that lives in our hearts, speaks through the spirit filled breath of our voices, and just as the Theotokos suckled him, so do our veiled women do likewise for our children. 

   

     Christmas in the habitation of sacred space. We are God created infused beings. Our worship of God necessary for health is supportive tradition. Those who seek to destroy the practice of tradition are Bergolian enemies working spiritual wickedness. We pray and bless all shepherds and pilgrims of the one true church. We pray for the conversion of Judas shepherds who betray our people’s culture and tradition. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, Russian Orthodox Jesus prayer. “When the son of man returnth shall he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:8 When the son of man comes to earth in judgement, will he find faith in men’s hearts? He will find faith because we live a life of faith. He will find faith because we are faithful. He will find faith because we seek faith and life abundantly.

              The Pokrov, in Russian, or Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God was placed above our heads, draped over the church a fresco painted by human hands on the upper dome. Here we take part in Divine Liturgy. 

     In Constantinople at the Church of the Virgin at Blachernae the mantle of Mary mother of Jesus was kept and venerated, in the 10th century the Most Holy Mother of God, Mary appeared at an all night vigil held in the church. The people were under attack. The people gathered to pray at the all night vigil. She appeared to them, to St Andrew the Fool, his associate St Epiphanius, and others praying in the church. She knelt in their midst, her eyes filled with tears. It is fundamental to acknowledge the mystery of our faith. The tears of the kneeling Theotokus are Mary’s tears. She came with the Essene Baptist John, and angel messengers who draped her mantle garment over all those praying. She knelt in prayer, remaining a long time comforting the people. In the icon she drapes an item of clothing over the people as a sign of protection.

     “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ Ephesians 6:12 The main struggle is of those human beings who make it their work to compromise with the evil power that attacks not only our people, but every people, every culture. The darkness seeks to erase the ethnic local sovereignty of person and place.This darkness of this world wants to destroy the spirit, the soul, the truth and replace the spirit, soul, and truth of the people with false narratives, bizarre concerns, fake news, deviant values of a perverted pseudo-civilization. When you defend the soul, which is the dignity of the spirit, of the people and place, you become a target of those rulers and darkness of this world, you will be erased, liquidated, suspended, taken out of circulation.

For that reason we honour tradition of our ancestors. The icon is an ancestor of our authentic bio-spirit. For that reason we hold fast to tradition, especially in our worship of Jesus Christ, Mary the Theotokus God bearer, along with the angels and saints, who as our ultimate ancestors, we beseech with continual prayer. Christ is with and among us, be attentive. 

     

       

     

Silk Tassel, Garrya wrightii

 Garrya wrightii,

Silk tassel

silk tassel, is a perennial south west, p&j manzanita woodland, woody shrub. Growing up to 12-15 ft tall, with opposite leathery pointed leaves, with unique upward tilt. Round purple berries with silky droopping tassels, hence the  name.

https://youtu.be/7tapVCKuCuQ

Birds eat berries, spread the seeds. Resprouts after fire. This stand was in a seasonal wash with luxuriant new growth. The entire plant taste is bitter, however new-new growth here had the smoky musky bitterness of earth tone predominant, sweet overtones noted, hint of spice. The plant immediately produces saliva in the mouth with a slight numbing of the tongue.  Described as a straight medicine plant, not an everyday tea or tonic herb.

silk tassel

silk tassel

   Part of plant used in order of strength: 1)root, 2)bark, 3)old growth leaf, 4)new growth leaf. Adjust amount accordingly. Smooth muscle relaxant antispasmodic. It will behoove you to take extra effort to dig up some root, to make a small batch of silk tassle root tincture. addition to fresh leaf tincture. Silk tassel is a common plant and if you are going to do medicine the root is the most powerful part of the plant. The root tincture should always be labeled as such and set aside for personal use in severe situations.

For severe menstrual cramps, lower GI cramping from diarrhea dysentery, extreme pain in a first aid situation, always have on hand and use root tincture. A good generalized formula equal parts  golden smoke, ginger and silk tassel. The ginger works both to allay nausea, to provide warmth and movement. Golden smoke works to relieve deep pain and promotes restful sleep, while silk tassel supplies the antispasmodic quality. 

Silk tassel is likewise useful in asthmatic coughing fits combined with lobelia, or extreme wet bronchial deep fitful coughing episodes combined with wild cherry bark for sleep. For mild but fairly chronic loose stool, where you are becoming dehydrated, leaf tincture with alum root tincture along with a pinch of salt can allow hydration, and rest recovery.

      Silk tassel, especially the root, is a real medicine in herbal form and is one you should become familiar with while going all in. If you feel cold and clammy with dry heaves, you took too much, don’t take anymore. 

Tronadora, Tecoma stans

Tronadora, Tecoma stans var. angustata, also called Esperanza, yellow elder, trumpet bush.

Tronadora, wild variety

Family: Bignoniaceae. Tronadora presents where I have found and worked with it, in the wild, in far southern Arizona, as a knee to thigh high, about 1 1/2 to 3 feet tall perennial deciduous shrubby wild flower. The wild variety found here on rocky bajadas is usually called Tecoma stans variety angustata, to distinguish it from the landscape varieties sold in nurseries in Arizona and the southwest. The cultivated drought tolerant, xeriscape variety, sometimes found in urban southwest landscaping, along highways, and in parks and so on, is a much taller shruby small tree, 6-10 feet tall, the leaves being twice as large.  Both have visually striking glossy, shiny pinnately compound, lanceolate leaves with serrated margins. The large pinnate leaflet complex appears as opposite leaves along a central leaf stem. The flowers are multiple brilliant yellow to orange. Flowers, in terminal racemes up to 10-15 bright yellow flowers (landscape variety), 3-4 flowers in the wild native variety, both varieties are 5 lobed trumpet shaped flowers. Grows in Mexico, Arizona, NM, Texas, Florida where it is temperature determinant, naturalized world wide. Growing here 4500ft, full afternoon sun, with ocotillo and acacia. Tecoma is abbreviated from the Aztecan, mesoAmerican name,"Tecomaxochitl", while stans means upright or erect.  Often used as a landscape plant known for its trumpet shaped yellow flowers, presenting as a 8-10 foot tree vs the wild variety, more likely less than 3 feet tall.

Tronadora leaf T. var angustata

     An important medicinal plant unique in that it is used in several well separated cultural lineages including Mexican folk, Aryuvedic medicine from the sub-continent of India, and Iran. Both Iran and Indian Aryuvedic herbal medicine are unique strands in that they both have schools of medicine that have strongly religious, Hindu and Islam, strong nationalistic focus India and Iran and racial ethnic focus while at the same time including scientific, chemical, medical and pharmaceutical research to back up historical folk usage. In both Iran and India there are medical herbal traditions that have the distinction of strong academic, medical research, on a university peer reviewed level. 

    Some key plant use of tronadora: Leaves contains several monoterpene alkaloids  including, "tecomine" and "tecostamine" which have been found to lower glucose levels. Anthranilic acid is found in the leaves which also lowers blood sugar levels.

1)ability to lower blood glucose. 

2) anti-inflammatory 

3) anti-oxidant 

4) anti-microbial 

5) anti-spasmodic 

6) wound healing

In addition the whole plant extract has a hepato protective effect similar to hepato protective plants like milk thistle, and others in the herbal repertoire, in addition to renal protective factors. Tronadora is related to desert willow, the flower looks similar, both plants frequently share the same eco-tone. It shares some of the anti-fungal usage with it's related Bignoniaceae tribe desert willow, and the flowers appear related, comparing the two shows a strong resemblance. The flowers themselves, are used as a tea for menstrual cramps, an and emmenaogue to promote menstruation. Tronadora as a poultice on skin interruptions is unique as having success topical and lends itself to ointments and salves. 

      

Tronadora flowers

     Tronadora should be looked at as a plant that purifies the blood and calms the nerves. The leaves and flowers are mainly used, but it is also possible to make a tea from the bark and root of this tree. All portions of the plant have been used in the folk tradition. Tronadora has a complex chemistry while at the same time is understood as mild. The taste of the fresh leaves and flowers is slightly sweet, loosely floral, with distinct yet mild bitter after tones,While having hepato protectant properties it also has renal protective factors, for improved function of the kidney. Taken as a tea infusion, the taste is pleasantwith diuretic effects. 

      Let's talk briefly about adult onset blood sugar de-regulation issues. I hesitate to use the 'D' word because it's a complex issue. Rethinking the 'D' narrative is essential. Glucose or sugar enters the body system in multiple ways. In other words, even if you don't eat anything, you still have sugar flowing throughout the body system, because sugar is essential to life. If you don't take in a single calorie, your body makes sure you have ample sugar to run what's between your ears. Your brain runs on glucose. (This is similar to the cholesterol issue. The body makes its own cholesterol. So controlling diet to eliminate fat intake is futile. Especially when hydrogenated vegetable seed oils are substituted.) No sugar equals non-functioning brain, equals death. Ironic that what your body needs to live, sugar, will slowly poison your body. If your blood glucose sugar level goes to around 30, you pass out, collapse on the ground, go into a coma and die. No sugar, equals no life. If a relatively healthy person fasts on only water for multiple days, their blood sugar level remains constant because the healthy body system has everything in place to fuel the system with sugar, without eating a single thing. If a person with a severely de-regulated body system decides to fast on only water, there is a strong possibility that at least initially, the body system is so out of whack that it will not be able to adapt to a fast, and will go into a hypoglycemic crisis, no sugar no life.Yet fasting is a legitimate tool for tis and many other conditions.  Although sugar, glucose is essential to human life, uncontrolled levels of sugar flowing through the blood body system eventually produce a cascade of damaging effects in the body. Beginning at the cell on cell level at the capillary level, the continuous excess sugar damages the tiny capillaries and hence sabotages every body system. Because every body organ requires a complex mix of nutrients and oxygen supplied via the capillaries, with continuous cumulative damage to the capillary system, every body system declines. Blood re-regulation issues related to neuropathy/nerves, macular degeneration/eye, hypertension/elasticity of veins and arteries, heart cardiac issues, cognitive issues, depression and mental illness are all part of metabolic syndrome. 

     Metabolic syndrome rapidly moves a person from independence and sovereignty to dependence. A dependent person is a controlled person. Control, as we saw during the last round of psyop reset protocols is the ultimate goal. The mask mandate is fully visible and exposed as a psyop humilation technique, only viable, within a system of fear based control. Every system in the body is positively codependent. Our social nature as human beings is to be positive co-dependent upon other human beings for input, feed back, information and interaction, As part of erasure of nationhood depersonalized, non-codependent autistic consumers are the goal and ideal. The dependence is shifted from in person, face to face interaction to modified AI protocols. The goal of lock downs during the recent psyop was to mandate AI dependence. The social experiment of masking children, normalizing humiliation and abandonment, closing schools, drugging alpha male children into life long drug addicts through psychiatric pharmakeia, all of the psyop protocols are erasure within an economic agenda. Medi-pharma is the biggest economic engine in the current western economies. So diabetes and metabolic syndrome is a net gain for the regime. Sick people in a systemic scenario of erasure are economic cash cows. Your medical disability is their economic gain. For that reason dissident medical voices are threats to the status quo set up by the elites, for the elites. Alternative voices of alternative people must be silenced within the fabric of pathological altruism.

coyote guarding protecting Tronadora

      The body is well primed for conditions of lack, problem is, the body is not well primed for the extreme abundance of modernism. Sugar is energy, if the electricity goes out, if there is a power failure, the body has multiple generator systems as back up sugar/energy supplies. The problem is the body is way too good at creating sugar from its own tissue body system stores. The body has too many sources of glucose available, too many redundant built in coping systems. You can not drive a car with three wheels. With three tires, you are parking that car. You are going no where. You can drive a body with one healthy kidney. Obviously the body is not an automobile. The body is not a mechanical system. Yet our thinking and narrative is mechanical post modern. Our culture is a mechanical based system, yet we are distinctly living beings. As living beings created, enlivened by God, we are fundamentally foreign cogs in the machine. The point of no return has been reached in many areas of human interaction. So when the resilient luxuriant coping systems of the body meets the continuous supply of modern living, it rapidly devolves into metabolic syndrome and early death. Welcome to the party, party on. The regime has found a way to exploit sickness and crippled life with economic returns, funneled into the elites. It is fundamentally important to understand, death, early death, malignant lingering debilitating illness like heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome are coping mechanisms. Your lingering illness is big business for the elites running the regime at this time. Completely and forever forget voting, democracy, politics and so on. Your vote is your monied purchase. Since health dollars qualitatively have the heaviest dollar weight in the economy, your health illness is your vote.  So when the body, whom is adapted for extreme conditions of lack meets the modern world of continuous supply, the result is lingering illness and early death. With the caveat of reproduce, make a couple babies, and by 35 you are history. Have a baby at age 15, raise it for 15 years, you're done by 35. See you later. Early death and illness is the body's adaptation to modern life. So if you're ok with that, go for it. All pain, all gain. 

      There is exogenous sugar and endogenous sugar. There is native and non-native sugar acting on the body system.  There is sugar you drink, chew and swallow entering by mouth entering the body via the digestive process. There is sugar already stored in the body as multiple substances, in multiple areas of the body that are converted to sugar blood glucose. One method that sugar enters the body system is through the mouth, by eating food. You eat something, then that something is digested, and the something you swallowed, through the digestive process, enters the body system. Eating something means in body system terms, 'Not you becomes you.', 'Other becomes self.'. Then we need to understand types of food and re-define food to actually mean food. Then there is endogenous native sugar or glucose already in the body system acting on the body system.  Then we need to understand body in balance vs body out of balance. 

     Briefly, a lot of what people eat, consume, put in their mouths as food today is total poisonous garbage, and could better be understood within addiction models of behavior. In other words, while it appears visually the person is eating, the person is in reality an addict completing a debilitating drug consumption interaction ritual. It's called eating, but it's much closer to shooting up, lighting up, chasing the dragon, popping a pill. When thinking about heroin, alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, methamphetamine, opioid, pill drug addiction; words like: early death, addict, exploitation, helpless, failed body systems, self defeating behaviour, sabotage, relapse, treatment, treatment center, harm reduction and so on come to mind. Until that style of thinking is understood within the falsefood fakefood sugar fix processed food eating, drinking, slurping paradigm, the only progress possible is within harm reduction. Remember during the last round of psyop reset, convenience stores selling alcohol and tobacco, liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries, and fast food were all essential business. Essential to what? Essential to your exploitation, your continued addiction, your erasure, and essential for the elite's maintenance at the top of the food chain. Whenever the regime says health, think sickness. When the regime outlets say speak up, stay silent. Whenever the regime says, freedom, think slavery. Whenever the regime talks, and they are talking continuously, think erasure. The regime has one goal, wealth redistribution, scarf up and grift out. This is a rich rich land so the possibilities for exploitation are endless. Every 15-20 years a new group matures for new intricate narratives. What once was a mud wrestling match between public and private is still a wrestling match only now the wrestlers wrestle the crowd of spectators. So what you eat has to be addressed with a lot of re-thinking, reowning narrative, unless you're ok with deathstyle erasure. Because right now your role is sick villain within their narrative. By participating within their narrative you are saying, 'I am ok with erasure because I deserve to be erased. I deserve to be sick because I am a bad lazy person. Sell me more meds. Give me more meds.' Guilt is so important to the regime. You deserve to be erased because you or your distant relatives did some bad shit, which makes you a bad person. So the food narrative has to change. 

Tronadora, cultivated variety, note larger leaves

       Next herbal remedies like humula and tronadora and many other plant partners I talk about here, and obviously face to face, person to person, can be helpful for certain people in certain situations. Face to face, IRL interaction is key. However again the narrative is essential. Rethinking your identity is essential in meeting every situation. It's important to address who you are, what you doing and why you are doing it. What is your goal and intention. Tronadora works intensely with the liver and glycogen. The dominant culture narrative is medical diagnosis, then medical treatment. What does a wild plant growing at 4500 feet on a hilly, rocky dry dusty bajada have to do with blood sugar? Again it is identity and narrative. Getting the dis-regulated system back in balance is key. Getting the sugar back into muscle and liver as gylcogen rather than just running around freely within the blood is key. Using and getting these plant medicines is key. Getting the negated person to reown their vital cultural narrative is key. The reality is that labeling, silencing a person's voice, making a person into a non-person for political objectives seems like a do no harm, compassionate choice. The idea is that in changing society for the better, certain ideas are no longer tolerated. Because people advocate ideas, limiting those people's ideas is a 'do no harm' way to lead society to a better future. The reality is personhood exists within a subset of persons. Disavowing a medicinal plant is the same as disavowing a plant person, you diminish the plant and you diminish the person. One of the reasons plants have been placed here by the Creator is to promote hailing within the human body. Eventually within the narrative of selective erasure you are erased. 

     Tronadora as a plant medicine has a role in integration of blood sugar regulation. In addition it also has neuro-protective factors that address the degenerative process of adult onset diabetes at the capillary level within the blood vessels. used internally as a folk remedy for Type 2 Diabetes, although the leaves and flowers are also used to treat colds, fever, jaundice, headache, and kidney problems (Argueta, 2014; Alarcón-Aguilar and Román-Ramos, 2006). The leaves contain the alkaloids known as “tecomine” and “tecostamine”, which have been found to lower blood glucose (sugar) levels when given intravenously to laboratory animals.

Tronadora landscape variety

Another compound present in the leaves, known as anthranilic acid, also lowers blood sugar levels (Kameshwaran et al., 2012). The flowers are used to prepare a tea to relieve menstrual cramps, as well as an emmenaogue to promote menstruation. The decoction made from the roots is taken as a tea to promote urination, as well as an antidote for scorpion and snake venoms, although this has not been proven scientifically (Argueta, 2014). Externally, the leaves and flowers are made into a poultice or wash to treat skin infections (Quattrocchi, 2012).

The plant possesses powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial activity due to its content of natural chemicals called flavonoids.

With regard to these compounds, Raju et al. (2011) found that an extract made from trumpet flower could be useful in protecting the kidneys from the toxic side effects of an antibiotic known as gentamicin.
Additionally, Jacobo-Salcedo, et al. (2011) found that this plant has important antimicrobial action against certain multi-drug resistant pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria.

Tronadora found 4500ft bajada zone

References:

https://www.utep.edu/herbal-safety/herbal-facts/herbal%20facts%20sheet/trumpet-flower.html

Dr Armando Gonzalez Stuart Phd, Trumpet Flower

Alarcon-Aguilar F, Roman-Ramos R. Antidiabetic Plants in Mexico and Central America.
Chapter 9. In: Soumyanath A (Editor) Traditional Medicines for Modern Times: Antidiabetic
Plants. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2006; pp. 179-191.

Argueta, A. (Editor). Plantas Medicinales de Uso Tradicional en la Ciudad de México.
Mexico City: UNAM; 2014; pp. 122-123.

Jacobo-Salcedo M del R, Alonso-Castro AJ, Salazar-Olivo LA, Carranza-Alvarez C, González-
Espíndola LA, Domínguez F, Maciel-Torres SP, García-Lujan C, González-Martínez Mdel R,
Gómez-Sánchez M, Estrada-Castillón E, Zapata-Bustos R, Medellin-Milán P, García-Carrancá
A. Antimicrobial and cytotoxic effects of Mexican medicinal plants. Nat Prod Commun. 2011
6(12):1925-8.

Michel Moore, Medicinal Plants of the Desert, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1989

Kameshwaran S, Suresh V, Arunachalam G, Frank PR, Manikandan V. Evaluation of
antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory potential of flower extract Tecoma stans. Indian J
Pharmacol. 2012; 44(4):543-4. doi: 10.4103/0253-7613.99352.

Quattrocchi, U. World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants (3 vols.).
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2012; p. 515.

Raju S, Kavimani S, Maheshwara Rao VU, Reddy KS, Kumar GV. Floral extract of Tecoma
stans: a potent inhibitor of gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity in vivo.
Asian Pac J Trop Med. 2011; 4(9):680-5. doi: 10.1016/S1995-7645(11)60173-9.

White R. Elsevier’s Dictionary of Plant Names of North America Including Mexico.
Amsterdam: Elsevier; 2003; p. 193.

Alonso-Castro AJ, Zapata-Bustos R, Romo-Yañez J, Camarillo-Ledesma P, Gómez-Sánchez M, Salazar-Olivo LA. The antidiabetic plants Tecoma stans (L.) Juss. ex Kunth (Bignoniaceae) and Teucrium cubense Jacq (Lamiaceae) induce the incorporation of glucose in insulin-sensitive and insulin-resistant murine and human adipocytes. J Ethnopharmacol. 2010 Jan 8;127(1):1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2009.09.060. Epub 2009 Oct 8. PMID: 19818843.