Plants are Important

An archaeologist and a botanist have teamed up to study artwork from the Mayan Classical period, dating from 250 BCE to 900 CE.

You might wonder, what is a botanist doing studying ancient art? Turns out the Mayans created lots of ceramic pieces depicting various plants of the rain forest, many with such accuracy that the genus and species of the plants can be determined. The scientists are trying to identify which plants were of importance to the people, in "hopes [that] the research will unveil secrets known to the Maya that have become lost in time."

What kind of secrets are they looking for? The archaeologist Charles Zadir says:

The Maya have lived and used rainforest plants to heal themselves for thousands of years. We are just beginning to understand some of their secrets.

That's great! Plants are awesome! It's wonderful that there are people out there advocating for the preservation of the rain forest and for research into the importance of plants in our lives.

But wait... keep reading:

This research has already been of interest to pharmaceutical companies that are looking to extract alkaloids from plants that were important to the ancient Maya.

Aw, man! Just when you thought that you could escape the clutches of greed, the truth comes out. In the researchers' defense, they probably had to provide some lucrative justification for the work that they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't get funding. But, it just irks me that there always has to be some kind of monetary motive.

Trees Make Electricity!

According to Sandra Tsing Loh, "Scientists have long known trees generate trace amounts of electricity".

If they've known for a long time, why is this news? You guessed it - a man named Love has figured out how to harvest electricity from trees! Go ahead and let your hamster get off that treadmill you have hooked up to your generator... and plant a tree.

Doc Hay

Today we bring you the story of Ing Hay, an herbal doctor from China who lived in Oregon in the late 1800's. He established an excellent reputation as a doctor despite the violent racism of the time.

He was the most famous Herbalist between San Francisco and Seattle in his day. He was a master of pulse diagnosis. Doc Hay could tell his patients what was wrong with them just by feeling the pulse in their arm. Then he would prepare an herbal mixture from local plants and herbs from China. Doc Hay was blind. When he shut the building up in 1948 to go to the nursing home, Doc Hay left behind over 500 different herbs, many that have never been identified.

-Kam Wah Chung Museum

What's interesting to me is that Doc Hay used both "local plants and herbs from China." An important part of Chinese medicine is to use an appropriate treatment according to your geographic location. For instance, what happens when your grandma who's lived in Queens all her life retires? She moves to Florida! Because the winters are too harsh in New York. Florida is much warmer and easier on the joints. All living things are a part of their environment and respond to their environment in different ways.

Doc Hay didn't only use Chinese herbs, he educated himself about the local herbs in his environment. In this way he was a naturalist as well as an herbalist. In southern California we have many native healing plants, sage being one of the most well-known.

Nature's Limits

I just came across a very interesting article on nature as it related to economics, sharks and politics.

Nature, in fact, places the most severe limits on animals and their behavior to make sure they stay balanced. Sharks don't have a "stop eating" mechanism in their biological blueprint. Under normal conditions sharks can't catch food fast enough to do themselves damage from over-eating. Nature has limited their ability to catch food. A shark in a feeding frenzy, however, given enough food, will eat until it quite literally bursts open like an overstuffed sausage. Its guts just explode out into the water. In some cases crazed, gut-busted sharks eat their own entrails, unable to distinguish between their innards and their kill.

What's the relevance to Chinese medicine, you ask? Chinese medicine takes nature as the all-powerful regulator. There is absolutely nothing man-made that can withstand the power of nature. If it doesn't drown you, burn you, sting you, gore you or freeze you, nature can wait you out. The power of time is on nature's side. Eventually humans will vanish from the earth, and many millions of years later even plastic will disappear. But the earth will still be here. If not the earth, then certainly the sun. If the sun itself has gone dead, the universe marches on.

Faced with this incredible power, the ancient Chinese tried to learn from and live in harmony together with nature, rather than conquer it (Grand Canal notwithstanding). The ancient maxim 天人合一 tian ren he yi or "heaven and man together as one" is an expression of this admiration and respect for nature.

One of the most basic things we as humans can do for better health is to live in harmony with the seasons. That means eating food that was grown in-season, not flown from halfway around the world. It means taking time out, at least once a season, to get away from the city, to a wilderness area where we can better appreciate nature's glory. It means dressing appropriately for the seasons and not letting our homes or cars become completely insulated from the outside environment - turn off your air conditioning!

Behold the Power of the Sun

This incredible display of yang energy comes to you courtesy of the sun. Scientists call it a spreading coronal mass ejection. I call it freakin' awesome!!!

Click here for even more jaw-dropping pictures of the sun.