Tri­cia St John

Herbs are plants with aro­mat­ic prop­er­ties used for flavour­ing food, med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, or fra­grances. They typ­i­cal­ly have soft, green, leafy parts and can be used fresh or dried. Ex­am­ples in­clude basil, mint, rose­mary, thyme, and pars­ley.

Med­i­c­i­nal herbs are plants used for their heal­ing prop­er­ties to treat or help pre­vent ill­ness­es. Many have been used for cen­turies in tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine sys­tems like Ayurve­da, tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, and herbal­ism.

In my quest to find some­thing to help me with my knees, which both seem to be years ahead of me, I had a chat with my mum­my, Lystra, who is a lo­cal au­thor and al­so holds a diplo­ma in clin­i­cal herbal­ism. She al­ways says in an amused way that God prob­a­bly shakes his head and ‘tsks’ when­ev­er he sees me com­ing, and I of­ten times won­der how near to the truth that state­ment is.

Per­son­al­ly, I have no is­sues with age­ing. I’ve got­ten ac­cus­tomed to the greys that dance across my brow and have ac­tu­al­ly giv­en up on ar­gu­ing with them. I tried dye­ing them a few times at first be­cause ini­tial­ly, they al­ways looked like they didn’t be­long, but two to four days was ba­si­cal­ly all they were will­ing to give, and then they were back, de­fi­ant in their quest not to al­low me to brain­wash them in­to be­liev­ing they were ac­tu­al­ly the colour I want­ed them to be.

As for my knees, al­most dai­ly, I found my­self re­mind­ing God that I nev­er signed up for the aches and pains that do get sprin­kled in as re­minders that we can no longer do cer­tain things the way we used to. My knees kept per­sis­tent­ly try­ing to be my re­minder, ‘Not so long on the bike, Tri­cia. No run­ning up, La­dy Chan­cel­lor, and will you please just ease us up on the squats? Some­times my back chimed in, re­mind­ing me that I wasn’t as young as I used to be and that I should prob­a­bly not try to run any­where, least of all up­hill, un­til I got the hang of it.

Of course, when I de­mand­ed to know how to get the hang of it with­out prac­tice, every­body went silent. The ut­ter au­dac­i­ty! I hate tablets. Which is what the doc­tor pre­scribed: one set for pain and an­oth­er for in­flam­ma­tion. So off I went, to take a peep in­to my mom’s book, be­cause as a young woman with grown chil­dren, my el­dest be­ing 30, there was no way I was just go­ing to sit down en­ter­tain­ing two can­tan­ker­ous knees and a back that just need­ed to learn his place.

Ac­cord­ing to her, her first health cor­ner was her home in Point Fortin, where she grew up. Her grand­moth­er Nel­lie El­der, who I, re­gret­tably, nev­er got the chance to meet, was the vil­lage mid­wife and herbal­ist in an era when go­ing to the doc­tor was a last re­sort and go­ing to the hos­pi­tal meant you were at death’s door. Some of her ear­li­est mem­o­ries are of anx­ious hus­bands or oth­er close rel­a­tives com­ing to call my granny to de­liv­er a ba­by.

Oth­er peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty came for a ‘lok’ for the cold, a ti­sane, hair con­di­tion­er, colon cleanser or ‘sleep­ing draughts’ (a sleep­ing draught is an old-fash­ioned term for a liq­uid sleep aid, usu­al­ly made from nat­ur­al or med­i­c­i­nal in­gre­di­ents), and all the in­gre­di­ents came from their back­yard.

In her book, Moth­er Lystra’s Health Cor­ner, she shares God’s gift of herbal reme­dies for the heal­ing of the na­tions. Her shar­ing helps us re­dis­cov­er some of the heal­ing el­e­ments in na­ture and teach­es us how the herbs and spices we usu­al­ly take for grant­ed in our kitchen cup­boards and back­yard gar­dens can add val­ue to our lives.

Once we can tru­ly ac­cept that our body is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and some­times the right cup of tea can work won­ders, we will be able to ac­knowl­edge that con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine has its place but nat­ur­al reme­dies are al­so part of the heal­ing process.

Some com­mon med­i­c­i­nal herbs men­tioned in the book are turmer­ic, which con­tains cur­cum­in, which has an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry and an­tiox­i­dant prop­er­ties, and gin­ger, which helps with nau­sea, di­ges­tion, and in­flam­ma­tion.

Paracel­sus says, “Every­thing that man needs for health and heal­ing has been pro­vid­ed by God in na­ture. The chal­lenge of sci­ence is to find it.”

Build­ing up­on this idea, the wis­dom of na­ture lies in its vast ar­ray of plants, min­er­als, and el­e­ments, each hold­ing po­ten­tial reme­dies wait­ing to be un­der­stood and used. This book is the first step in your jour­ney to es­tab­lish­ing your per­son­al health im­prove­ment regime.

It can as­sist with a myr­i­ad of health chal­lenges ... Moth­er Lystra’s Health Cor­ner is on sale at Scrib­bles & Quills in Ch­agua­nas and can help you work along with your doc­tor to main­tain your health and im­prove your qual­i­ty of life.

Tri­cia St John is a do­mes­tic abuse sur­vivor, au­thor, and mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er.