Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Unfortunate incident of food poisoning....

So, I had the unfortunately, though not entirely unfamiliar bout with some sort of bad food this week. I think it might have been clam chowder on the buffet. ( Lesson...milk and seafood not so fresh...not so good for you!)

ANyhow, i woke in the middle of the night with a funny rumble in the tummy, that just wasn't RIGHT. Come dawn...i was in the bathroom, and my body was in revolt from the bad clam chowder. Out it came- front and back. ( sorry if that is TMI- but YOU know the feeling.)

After picking myself up and managing to walk to the kitchen I brewed myself up some bitter herbal remedies to help ease the painful cramping, and get rid of the last of what was causing my illness.

There is usually little done about food poisoning in traditional allopathic medicine. Most people dont even go to the doctor or report it...unless the victim is particularly young, old or already weak, people usually recover on their own. Usually. Food poisoning can be serious....
usually people become quickly dehydrated after hours of either watery, frequent stools, and/or repeated bouts of vomiting.
The first thing to be done when dealing with food poisoning, is to ensure proper hydration. It might be hard to keep down even a glass of water, so small frequent sips is the way to go. Even better, some cool ginger tea ( or ginger tincture added to the water) to help ease the nausea.

I wasn't as good a doctor to myself as I might have been, because at the first sign of something amiss, I should have been eating garlic. Thats right, garlic, straight into the gut, to counteract and help fight off the infection that was brewing. Raw garlic can be hard to get down, espeically if you are already nauseas, but even a garlic tincture or capsule can be helpful. Instead, as it was the middle of the night, and I was warm in bed. I opted to stay in bed. Until I couldn't anymore. I ended up awake most of the morning anyway in pain.
Another first line of defense, when you know something is amiss, activated charcol tablets. I've not used them myself, but many people swear by them to help absorb the nasties in the gut in situations like this.

Next action plan...herbs to fight the infection, ease the cramping, and curtail the diarrhea, AFTER you've expelled the bad stuff. YOu really dont want to stop the body completely from its efforts to remove the offending stuff from your body, but hours and days of that can take it's toll. Along with ensuring proper hydration ( include baths and enemas if necesary)
I prepared myself a tincture tea to sip on during the rest of the day ( a big jar of water, mixed with tinctures in doses to last the whole day) of the following-
Artemisia tridentata (wormwood)
Mahonia trifoliata (algerita)
Passiflora mexicana (Passionflower)
Anemopsis californica ( yerba mansa)

wormwood and algerita are helpful in combating the infection, passionflower to help ease the cramping, soothe the frazzeled nerves, and ease tension throughout the body.
yerba mansa, while disinfecting, is also drying, and helps to diminish diarrhea. I would substitute any other tannin rich astringent appropriate for internal use if you dont have yerba mansa where you live ( it is a southwestern species). Black tea, white oak bark, buckwheat bush, blackberry root- even raspberry leaf. But dont start with this until you have allowed the body to rid itself of the bad stuff in the gut. You dont want that stuff lingering in ya. THis is more of a recovery herb. Start with the wormwood and mahonia ( that is oregon grape species) and follow up with the astringent herb.
As well, you can substite another gastric antispasmodic and nervine- my thoughts included wild yam, chammoile, hops, lobelia ( in DROP doses), valerian.

I'd also continue for the next couple of days with soothing, nutritious foods and herbs, slippery elm or marshmallow, oatmeal, broths ( miso is excellent- repopulate the gut with good flora!)
I took miso, kombucha, marshmallow root, and *gasp* chocolate pudding later in the evening as foods for the day.

Feeling much better...and will avoid the clam chowder from now on.

3 comments:

Darcey Blue said...

why is that funny?

Darcey Blue said...

Me too. Obviously it wasn't a worst case scenario. I could have been puking for days...
not at all funny. tho most cases go unreported, many people end up in the hospital over food poisoning...soooo....

anicry99 said...

This stuff is interesting. I might decide to read up on herbalism; to see what else would be a good natural remedy for other sicknesses. Glad u are better.

"The mother of us all, the oldest of us all, Hard, splendid as rock, Let the beauty you love, be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth"~ Rumi ~