Alternative medicines, pandemic, health and news in Ecuador and the world

Ecuador is a country that has the greatest biodiversity in the world and this also means many medicinal plants, that is why from the Colony, in Malacatos, Loja Province, then part of the Viceroyalty of Lima, Quinine was discovered, which was the first medicine of global use against malaria, and the one that gave rise to pharmaceuticals, since until then doctors did not agree on the treatment of diseases and each one invented a treatment that combined natural products, chemical substances, diets, fasting, even martyrdoms. The place where they got everything from leeches to suck blood, to poisons were the apothecaries, and the apothecary was an alchemist, who dispensed the prescriptions, which at that time were called magisterial recipes that doctors gave to their patients.

Phytotherapy was greatly developed in the Inca Empire since before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, a wise man in plants traveled through the 4 suyos, as the 4 regions into which the empire was divided were called, taking and bringing medicinal plants and seeds of food, for its cultivation, in this way plants such as matico, quinine, and others were cultivated in the houses of the more than nine million inhabitants of the empire and largest civilization in the American.

In each Inca village, there was a healer, who was the one who cured with plants, and a shaman who handled hallucinogens such as coca, ayahuasca, san pedro or mescaline or guantug, or scopolamine. The shamans were at the same time priests, of a religion where the Sun, which regulates the annual planting cycles, was the God, but also, the rain, the rivers, with which life disappeared in its absence, the moon that regulates the planting cycles each month, or the mountains, which attracted rain and clouds, or the snow-capped mountains that were, together with the moors, sources of water, long live the water that has less than 20 degrees Celsius, with microparticles of ice Like spring in the northern hemisphere, which are a source of life regeneration, birds and even some insects that brought the seeds, pollination was part of worship.

The natives also saw God in nature and animals, for example in birds the supreme gift of flight and the lullaby of human language, in boas or anacondas their strength, and the jaguar's agility and cunning. . This was the fundamental difference between the Christians who arrived in America and the natives since Christians saw God in themselves first and only in human beings, which gave way to the so-called humanism, where the human being is the center of the universe, as one day they thought that the Earth was the Center of the Solar System, something that we now know for sure was a mistake.

In Ecuador, this is in the Pacific, the Andes, and the Amazon of the Middle of the World, through which the Equator Line passes, a medicine was developed in which the climate, which only has two seasons, the days that regularly have 12 hours of light or presence of the sun and 12 of shade or absence of the sun, with different climatic floors that go from sea level to more than 6000 meters, it was possible to have medicinal plants and food from the high mountains and páramos, the inter-Andean valleys, between the mountain ranges, where the volcanoes produce hot springs, most of them medicinal, the slopes of the mountains called the cloud forest, because in that place the clouds that come from the Pacific Ocean or from the Amazonian plains, stop and condense in the afternoons, which produces one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, and where precisely there are medicinal plants such as red quinine or succuba, guaviduca, or calauhala. In the Amazon, the biodiversity of the planet is so far the most important in the world, and in that place plants were discovered that revolutionized medicine, such as anesthetics such as those now obtained from the tricolor toad, which is 100 times stronger than morphine and is not addictive or poison that indigenous people use to hunt animals and produces flaccid paralysis of the respiratory muscles, and which is now the basis of surgical anesthesia because before this medicine it was not possible to control and manipulate the breathing of patients during surgeries, Powerful antibiotics such as cephalosporins also come from the Amazon, and it is estimated that most of the current medicines originate from plants and animals from the Amazon. From the Pacific coast of Ecuador, in addition to the spondylus shell that came to be considered the most valuable and even currency, also come rubber, tagua or vegetable ivory, the nut of a palm with which spoons are made, tools and utensils that are used until today, by pipe smokers, to consume drugs such as cocaine, or basuco, in addition to the toquilla straw that allowed the indigenous people to protect themselves from the sun,through hats, and the cotton that revolutionized the world's textile industry.

Foods such as potatoes from the Andes, tomatoes from the coast, hearts of palm from the cloud forest, or coconuts and other palm nuts from which oil is now extracted and which are of Amazonian origin also come from each of these places. These foods revolutionized human nutrition.

But since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors there began a contempt for the native medicine of the peoples of America, especially against the medical practice of the Shamans and a rejection of the hallucinogenic drugs that they used to communicate with their gods, since this was considered idolatry, and idolaters were put to death.

With the arrival of the pharmaceutical industry and the so-called scientific medicine, the healers and their plants, or the sobadores, with their massages and traditional chiropractic, or the midwives were discredited. Their knowledge and skills, which were not studied in universities but were passed on from parents to children, from scholars to apprentices, by not submitting to the so-called scientific rigor, became disqualified and even censored.

The so-called Western medicine or scientific medicine introduced the use of medicines made by factories, and these medicines revolutionized medicine. Among the medications that produced the most changes are antibiotics and vaccines, analgesics, vitamins, regulators of organ function, or surgeries.

Today, thanks to Western medicine, a good part of the inhabitants of planet earth are addicted to hallucinogens, stimulants, painkillers such as morphine, opium, and cocaine, tranquilizers such as tobacco or marijuana, stimulants such as coffee, tea, and even sugary drinks, coffee energizers, B vitamins and taurine, even electrolyte drinks.

Urban medicine, and especially rural medicine in Ecuador, turned peasants into antibiotic addicts, who furiously demand it from doctors, as well as analgesics and vitamins. This indiscriminate use of antibiotics is creating resistant strains of bacteria, which can trigger the next pandemic. The use of pain relievers in pain clinics led to deaths from opioids, now one of the leading causes of death in the United States, in an epidemic of deaths caused by fentanyl, and oxycodone.

The abusive use of medications such as ibuprofen, and paracetamol, or the use of triglyceride regulators such as simvastatin, are now the cause of heart or liver diseases, for which they have even been withdrawn from the market.

But Western medicine proposed a sedentary lifestyle as a therapeutic resource and calls the patient a patient, or inactive, forcing them to rest or even confinement in hospitals or clinics, until sedentary lifestyles became the main cause of diseases, due to automobile and motorized transport, and that together with sugar, tobacco, or fast food, are the origin of a new epidemic called the epidemic of chronic degenerative diseases, which is already visible in a large number of obese people in the United States, from Mexico or from the coast of Ecuador.

During the Covid 19 pandemic, in which most of the deaths were the elderly who had pre-existing diseases, especially chronic diseases, which now also come from the chemicals used in crops, in animals raised for immediate consumption before their maturities such as chickens, cattle, and shrimp, where antibiotics, hormones, are used indiscriminately, there are also diseases that come from poor air quality such as the air in cities in China, in the United States. Europe, or from cities in Latin America, where heights such as Quito, added to the congestion of combustion vehicles producing air pollution, and the consumption of exotic species, such as those produced by coronaviruses, such as Covid 19, which It was more deadly in these places. Today stress is caused by communications, bad news, domestic violence, violence in the streets, ports, or fields, workplace violence, political violence, the speed of transportation, of information, study or work routines, etc. They generate new illnesses, especially mental ones, and accelerated physical deterioration.

Given this, it is necessary to rescue medicinal plants, traditional foods, body mobility, reflective behavior recommended by religions, yoga, and healing spaces, that is, hot springs, beaches, fields, and mountains, where the air is purer, stress is not lived, unprocessed food or food production without chemicals, reduce the consumption of drugs, sugar, salt, sugar, and other harmful products, reduce the consumption of medicines, surgeries, food consumerism, sexual consumerism, consumerism in entertainment, in information in everything, as new therapeutic resources.

CONCLUSIONS

1. Western medicine is running amok and has become a nefarious business.

2. Viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites are evolving faster and it is more difficult to deal with them, only the covid virus now has more than 600 variants.

3. Traditional medicines, medicinal plants, and healing places, displaced by the health industry, must be recovered.

4. It is necessary to fight chemical contamination in food, and environmental contamination, and stop climate change, which is now the main threat along with nuclear war and urban violence.

5. It is necessary to consider stress and face it as a new pathological agent, and consider speed, accuracy, politics, war, news, information, consumerism, or dependencies on stress factors

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The Ecotrackers Foundation should replace medical offices and clinics with conversation and information centers on health, timely and recommend or guaranteed referral.

2. Rescue the use of medicinal plants, healing places, and traditional therapies, develop combined therapies

3. Produce healthy information, without political, commercial, or economic interests, that helps people to heal themselves and to seek correct information, professional services, laboratories, surgery, and more therapeutic procedures so that they are not deceived by advertising. , news, rumors, false information, or commercialism in health

4. Create a place for real and virtual meetings, for people, health professionals, traditional therapists, even politicians, and social communicators to analyze health problems, their causes, their solutions, and their alternatives.

5 Coping with stress, drug consumption, unnecessary surgeries, scams, lies, false news, recommending medical consultations, medicines, food, physical activity, human relations with the immediate environment, relations with political power, relations with the cultures of their country and relations with nature and planet Earth.