Antiseptic Spices

I have been plagued by the flu for the past two weeks, and am only now able to sit upright and think straight. No fun at all. As I deliriously went about life the past few days, I kept craving curry and Vietnamese pho. Curious, and bored by the constant onslaught of the Disney Channel that I and the YTP child – who was also sick -  had been watching for days – I looked up the curative properties of my favorite Indian and Thai curries as well as the ingredients in pho.

Now, we hear all about the healing properties of this oil or that oil, this all-natural thing or that all-natural thing – but I can never get too excited about it all since the majority of all medication that we take are ultimately derivatives of oils and plants, just refined, measured, and tested for efficacy. In other words – pretty darn natural, just with a lot of documented science about it all and people to sue if it turns out badly (as compared to supplements, which have little regulation and no recourse if it turns out that herb you are taking causes cancer in that dosage). I once had someone recommend I give the YTP child selenium (a liver poison for children under the age of four) instead of tylenol for his aching tooth because the selenium was more natural. And while acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is a very refined derivative of coal tar (no joke), selenium is a semi-metal best known for its semi-conducting properties and ability to poison people. Let me think, a large dose of semi-conductors, or 150 years of pharmacological study and refinement plus thousands of double-blind clinical trials on coal tar. How to choose… at least it wasn’t a choice over what was more “natural”

But I digress. Anyway, so I was looking up all the properties and uses of the spices I was craving, and was blown away by how many of the stronger spices have very powerful roles in healing. I remembered some of this, but I did not realize the full extent of it all. Here is the full list assembled by UCLA.

What really impressed me about this list? How easy it would be to manage your day to day health just by tweaking your diet with spice. If you run down the list, you can really get creative as using what you eat to proactively manage how you feel in a very subtle but direct way. I printed this one out and stuck it in my on the desk file where I keep similar reference materials that I draw on throughout the day. Take a look for yourself and tell me what you think!