Choctaw Indian Legend, Sassafras and the Flood. Lifesaver Raft.

The Flood: Choctaw Legend

How does sassafras attach to Native American creation legends? The picture here is not Mississippi, Choctaw country, but it sets an overall mood.

We know that sassafras was banned after inadequate testing and after thousands of years of use and reference in cultural lore in the Americas, including in religious legend.

Should we not take a second look at the discard pile.

Do go to www://choctawindian.com/, and read the tale aloud to yourself. It is sassafras that saves the life of the last human before the Flood. This is not the creation myth I was looking for from eastern countries, but this flood story may be even better.

The Choctaws are (were?) a matriarchal society, with roots in the Mississippi-Alabama areas, and seeing nature's bounty as symbolic of a mother's love. See www"//choctawindian.com/.

They lost out when the European Patriarchal and conquering cultures arrived.

Their Creation story is at that site. I found elsewhere their Great Flood story, with parallels to our Noah. The flood looks like a tsunami, rather than after a long rain. Read the www.tc.umn.edu/%7Emboucher/mikebouchweb/choctaw/flood1 for Ancient Choctaw Legend.

Sassafras - Seven Bedbugs In One Blow

Sassafras as Insect Repellent

Uses of Plants: A Matter of Dosage, Extraction, Information 

Give a bug enough aspirin and it, too, will expire.

Economic opportunity. Bedbug resurgencies are in the news.  See Just Try To Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs are Back at ://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/27bugs.html?_r=1/  Our solution is at hand.  Put people back to work. Use sassafras wood to make your bed frame.  See ://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-3/sassafras/.  Here's more:  see://www.crabapplehillsfarm.com/chf2001/showrooms/ArkansasSassafras/ArkansasSassafras.shtml/

Sassafras in Summer: three leaf forms, on one branch in understory

Use it in the kitchen, for cupboards.  Insecticides have used sassafras oil for years, from early explorer and colonial times, see current use at ://www.diatect.com/kill-bed-bug-ppc.php/. Grow your own.  See ://www.kerrysgarden.us/2006/03/01/digging-sassafras-trees/

We already know it repels rodents. Use it for children's cribs.

A multi-purpose plant. How it is used, with what dosage, with what preparation, makes the difference between a good use and a malignant one.  Just as with aspirin.

Sassafras and Cholesterol Control? Liver Detox?

Sassafras and Cholesterol Control?

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Sassafras, as a tea, made from de-barked, and minced-pounded, tender roots from the understory level,  has long been ingested as a "blood purifier."  See ://www.florahealth.com/flora/home/International/HealthInformation/Encyclopedias/Sassafras.htm/ 

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Sassafras, summer grove, understory emerging

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Even that mainstream site is skeptical of the ban on sassafras/safrole (issues of preparation and dosage really) but it gives a sensible overview of the status today of use of sassafras; and how a plant that used to be useful we now handily discard.  The site also gives the recipe for making tea, with the sensible precaution to use it only for 4-6 weeks over the course of a year. We can live with that. Now, to get the roots and try it. The site also offers a bibliography. See also ://www.foundationsofherbalism.com/pdf/11.pdf/.

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Issue:   High bad cholesterol; toxins building up in the liver. Some 17,000 people are waiting for liver transplants, do a search for liver transplants and get that and other stats.

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Start with the premise that centuries of use of sassafras as a "blood purifyer" produced enough good results for the practice to become widespread.  Then, logic would have it that "purifying blood" - whatever that is, but the term recurs so often in folk remedies and cultures - would be beneficial in purifying blood of its nastier cholesterol elements, and help the liver in that and other filtering actions. 

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Research in the public interest. 

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Not to criticize our national Pharma Preservation of Profits cult, but is there not a public interest component in exploring and testing folk remedies to see how and if they work, even though the ingredient cannot be patented.  Or do we only test the moneymakers?  Wrong question.

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Look up, do a search for words like blood purifier sassafras cholesterol.  Sassafras is known as a good liver detoxer and general stimulant.  See ://www.steaptv.com/2008/05/06/how-to-dandelion-tea-sassafras-tea/.  

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Liver detox.

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Liver detox? What is that?  See ://www.liverdoctor.com/index.php?page=liver-detoxification/. 

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Livers go amok trying to filter out all the bad stuff we eat, drink, are exposed to environmentally that gets inside. Think great big gobs of greasy grimy fatty stuff, greasy grimy fatty stuff, greasy grimy fatty stuff, great big gobs of greasy grimy fatty stuff and me without my spoon. See, if you must, ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK1RBj1sKo/ and ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaX95ImQcqc&NR=1/  

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Sassafras, understory close-upThe point is, if we can do little backyard remedies as in the old days, take your tonic in the spring when the little roots are nice, pare them and mash them up, the little things, and add your hot water, and go rock on the porch to health, why not. 

It often looks like surrounding vegetation.  Takes some looking when it is just taking hold in a woods of other woods.  

Beats ICU. Make some bread of it even - see ://www.ingestandimbibe.com/Articles_p/rootbeer_p.html/  And if the testing ever shows toxicity to humans in the doses we use, that, of course, is different.

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FDA,  you are interested in the proper functioning of all the Cholesterols, Healthy Livers. 

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Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it.  

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Unhinge from Pharma and profits.  Unembed yourself.  And sponsor government or other altruistic and well-funded group testing of the ordinary remedies in our back yards.  

Offer sensible dosing and preparation information, while continuing to foster regular medical checkups. Sassafras:  less toxins than in a beer beer.