Participants: Agatha Thrash (Host), Don Miller, Rhonda Clark
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000246
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00:01 Hello! Skin problems can cause quite a lot of annoyance
00:05 or sometimes fright and to know a little bit about the skin 00:10 and how it operates and what can go wrong with it can help 00:14 you to feel more comfortable as you deal with skin lesions. 00:17 We hope you will join us for this program, we think you will 00:20 learn some things and we know you will enjoy it. 00:43 Welcome to Help Yourself To Health 00:45 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute 00:48 and now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 00:54 A lot of books are being written today on how to take 00:58 care of the skin. 00:59 One such book is like the one that I am holding, it's 01:04 a very good book it's called Encyclopedia of Foods and 01:08 it's in two volumes and you can find this from the 01:12 Education and Health library published by Dr. Pamplona Roger 01:20 is the editor of it and several people have contributed, 01:24 I think you will find it very helpful. 01:27 Now I enjoy so much understanding about the skin and 01:33 other diseases that can be treated with foods or that can 01:39 be treated with herbs and then a lot of things that can't be 01:43 treated with either food or herbs can be treated by other 01:47 very simple things and skin diseases and skin afflictions 01:51 are among those. 01:53 Now I have asked Rhonda Clark who is one of our instructors at 01:58 Uchee Pines and counselors to join me and Rhonda you are 02:02 going to talk to us today about something that I find 02:04 very interesting, tell us about that. 02:07 Well I brought the subject today of head lice, 02:10 any one who has had head lice or who had a child that had 02:13 head lice knows these are very contagious and difficult 02:15 to get rid of. - And sometimes can just go 02:17 right through a school. - Oh, so easily contagious 02:21 it spreads so very easily. 02:22 I have been called several times by the principal of a school 02:26 saying Dr. Thrash please come and examine all the students 02:30 in the seventh grade or the second grade, we have several 02:35 cases of head lice and then you go and you just look through 02:39 the hair and there's one or there is a nit which is the 02:44 little egg stuck to the hair. 02:46 - Oh, it used to be that people thought that head lice occurred 02:50 only in people who were very unclean, 02:52 - Yes, - But that isn't the case. 02:54 - The other side of the tracks but now it's on Carriage Hill 02:57 as well. - Exactly! 02:59 And it can be spread through coats, scarves, coat hooks, 03:03 ear phones, upholstery, sitting after someone with 03:07 head lice at a theater or a bus or any place where your 03:10 hair is resting against where their hair just was, very 03:13 easily contagious, and the traditional treatment for 03:17 head lice can be quite toxic and so it's nice to know that 03:20 there are some natural treatments for head lice 03:22 and I'm excited to share these with you today. 03:24 One thing, just to talk about the whole environment 03:29 if someone in your home has come down with head lice 03:32 the whole family should be very carefully inspected. 03:35 Head lice occurs most predominately of the back 03:37 of the head or scalp and especially behind the ears is a 03:42 good place to look and it appears a lot like dandruff 03:45 little white flakes but they won't be easily combed out, 03:49 when you try to comb them out they will stick very firmly, 03:52 especially right at the shaft of the hair up against the scalp. 03:55 The clothing and bedding should be laundered on the 03:59 hottest cycle in the washing and drying machines, 04:02 the upholstery and carpets should be very thoroughly 04:06 vacuumed, you may have to do that more than once. 04:08 The entire house should be cleaned as well as possible, 04:11 any item that can't be laundered could be sealed in a plastic bag 04:15 and kept sealed for 10 days that would give enough time 04:18 for the lifecycle to complete and the living lice and the 04:21 little eggs to hatch and those to die, so after 10 days 04:24 protected it should be safe. 04:26 To actually get rid of the head lice themselves, kerosene 04:30 of all things is one of the three treatments that's a good 04:33 natural treatment, kerosene mixed in equal parts with 04:36 olive oil can be massaged into the hair and scalp, 04:39 it should be left on for a couple of hours and then 04:42 shampooed out, a very fine tooth comb can be used to 04:46 help comb the hair to see if there is any remaining evidence 04:49 of the lice or their eggs, the little nits. 04:52 Another treatment that you can use is garlic, 04:56 if you blend several cloves of garlic in the blender with 04:59 some water and then apply that to the hair and scalp, 05:03 leave that on for two hours then shampoo out again, 05:06 that should take care of all of them and maybe the whole 05:09 rest of the family and the neighbors as well, 05:10 because that will be quite a potent smelling 05:12 treatment indeed. 05:13 The last treatment to recommend is citronella oil. 05:17 - I like the smell of citronella. 05:19 - Yes! It has a nice smell 05:21 and bugs don't like it so that's a wonderful advantage 05:24 for it, citronella oil can be obtained at a health food store 05:27 and it can be massaged into the scalp and into the hair, 05:31 the hair covered with a cap and then left on overnight. 05:35 Now some people can have an allergic reaction or an 05:39 inflammation of the skin from the citronella oil, so if any 05:42 burning or discomfort occurs it should be shampooed out 05:45 and one of the other remedies tried, but after over night 05:49 with the citronella on, often those can completely eradicate 05:52 the head lice. 05:54 So try those if you ever come across an infestation 05:58 of head lice, which can happen to the best of us. 06:01 - Absolutely! I was doing some research one time in 06:05 a rural area in the Appalachian Mountains and one day 06:12 after about four days into the research I had a 06:17 little itchy place and OH! there was something up there 06:20 so I brought my fingernail down and there under my fingernail 06:24 was a head louse, oh what to do, I was very embarrassed 06:30 and I didn't want to tell anybody about it but 06:32 a day or so later somebody else did the same thing 06:35 they reach up and brought out another louse so I felt I 06:39 was in good company, so we did a number of things 06:41 one thing that we did was the kerosene treatment and 06:45 another thing that we did was some soap that was particularly 06:49 strong, we just soaped up the scalp and put a scarf 06:56 around it for several hours and then shampooed and we 07:01 got rid of it, I don't remember that we had any residual problem 07:05 I can't even remember that we had to deal with the nits. 07:07 But they make these very fine tooth combs that you can comb 07:13 the hair with a strand at a time to comb out the nits, 07:17 now if you can't get all the nits and sometimes there will be 07:20 hundreds on each hair, then what to do is simply to shampoo 07:26 frequently to get rid of the lice. 07:28 Well thank you so much for coming I appreciate it 07:32 very much. - Thank you for having me! 07:34 I was looking at this book called The Green Pharmacy 07:38 written by James Duke who is a friend of ours, who has done 07:43 some really powerful research in a number of areas, 07:47 one of those is making data bases of a lot of food chemicals 07:55 that can be helpful for all sorts of disease and he has one 08:00 for head lice, one is Neem, Neem oil which Neem grows in 08:06 India and in Hawaii, and various other tropical areas 08:11 and Neem oil is readily available in this country 08:15 and can be massaged into the scalp, it's very good and 08:19 turmeric can also be used, just ordinary kitchen turmeric 08:22 can be mixed with a little olive oil and especially if you 08:26 mix it with Neem oil, that's very good and then it's massaged 08:30 into the scalp and then shampooed out after a few hours, 08:33 very good for that turmeric by itself or Neem by itself 08:37 can also be effective. 08:39 Then another one is Sweet Flag, there is an American species 08:44 of this plant and you can find this Sweet Flag in herb stores 08:48 in America it's an aromatic root is what is used and that's 08:54 very good for head lice and for other body lice. 08:59 We always hope that we will never get these companions 09:03 but if you do there are very natural things to do and 09:08 not to have to use the substances that can be obtained 09:12 from a physician that may be toxic to your body. 09:17 Now I have asked Dr. Donald Miller if he will show us 09:22 some things about how to make some very nice things for the 09:25 skin, welcome Dr. Miller! 09:27 - Thank you! - I am happy to see your 09:30 little things here. - My little things, yes! 09:33 - I almost want to say what is that? 09:35 - You know I like my little things and I've become a 09:41 collector of these little things, this comes from 09:44 Malawi. - May I see that, 09:46 from Malawi, oh yes! 09:49 Now that is a work of art. - Yes it is! 09:52 - I can see that it is quite functional too, 09:54 it has been used a little. - I use them! 09:56 This is part of a thing that is vital, a person that works with 10:02 herbs a little pharmacopeia there, so I was working with 10:08 some student at Uchee Pines, it was one summer and mid summer 10:12 and it had been a moist summer a little bit and the weeds were 10:16 high and the blueberries were plump and I had a family staying 10:20 in my home and the children used to love to go out in the 10:23 early morning when the grass was a little bit dewy wet and 10:26 pick those blueberries and of course if you've ever been in a 10:29 southern area in the summer time in weeds, 10:32 there is something else that lives in there. 10:34 - Oh yes! The little chiggers! - The little chiggers! 10:37 - We have about three moths of the year we have the chiggers 10:40 at Uchee Pines. - This summer had to be the 10:44 worse that I could remember in my 20 years at Uchee Pines, 10:46 "it was terrible!" - At least 4 months and I wasn't 10:49 even certain that in January as warm as the weather was 10:53 we weren't having a few. 10:54 - Well you know some people are more allergic to things 10:57 like this than others, and there is one of these children 11:01 staying in my home that just had a terrible case. 11:05 Well I was working with my students in making different 11:08 types of herbal preparations trying to experiment 11:11 and just show them the technique for making them, not so much 11:14 that we are making them for a purpose, so I decided to 11:18 use some poke root, now poke grows all over the country 11:22 as far as I know, I saw some growing in Japan one time 11:24 so it is not indigenous to the southeast. 11:27 There is a lot of poke around, I wouldn't take it internally 11:32 at this stage in the summer time, I took the root and 11:35 what we did was we cleaned it off and I had someone use a 11:39 grater and grate it until it's real fine pieces, 11:42 put this into a pot along with some oil, vegetable oil, 11:52 and I put that double boiler type, put that inside another 11:56 pot and heated that for about 4-5 hours, 12:01 slowly heated this oil, and the oil was extracting what I 12:06 wanted out of the poke root. 12:08 Then I brought it back and poured the oil through a 12:12 strainer back into another pot and put that on top of the 12:16 boiling water, and what I was trying to make was a salve 12:21 or an ointment and depending on where you live the conditions 12:26 if you are living in an area where the weather is 12:29 going to be very warm you want a little bit more solid, 12:31 if you are living in a cold area not quite so solid as far as 12:36 what you put in there, because the heat is going to make it 12:39 softer and might pour it out of your bottle. 12:41 So what I use to harden it is bee's wax, 12:47 - Oh yes! - Now this is an amazing product 12:49 this is something that the bee makes, so I have some of this 12:53 bee's wax and this is unbelievably hard stuff. 12:56 - I can hear. 12:57 - So what I would do is up the temperature, I would slice 13:02 pieces of the bee's wax into the pot until it melted, 13:06 stir it around a little bit, and you experiment with this 13:10 after you have put in enough and you think it might be right 13:13 you take out a small spoonful and you pour it on a piece of 13:17 glass or metal and blow on it until hardens and then you 13:22 test it's consistency. - If it is to hard you 13:26 add a little more oil and if it's to soft you add 13:29 a little more bee's wax. 13:30 - I would rather go in the direction of having to add 13:33 more bee's wax because more oil is going to dilute 13:37 the product you want, so I put a little bit in test it, 13:41 if it's still to soft I scrape that back put it in there 13:44 let it set some more, put some more bee's wax until I get 13:48 a product just right. 13:50 Once I've got it just right I pour it into my clean 13:53 containers and that's my salve. 13:55 Now I was teaching my students this and when I got done 13:58 I though well I've got some nice salve here, 14:01 and then here's this child and I was reading in my 14:04 herb books that poke root is very for itching and 14:08 different types of inflammations so I gave the mother of these 14:11 children a bottle of this salve, within two days 14:15 it was all gone, not the salve but the lesions on the leg, 14:20 and the child was completely well and this child would 14:21 have been itching for a month. 14:22 - Yes! That's wonderful! - Now you know I believe 14:28 in the Bible of course, and in the Garden of Eden there was 14:32 the tree called the Tree of Life and what happened to the 14:36 Tree of Life, what happened to the Garden? 14:38 I don't think it was destroyed in the flood, I think just 14:39 before the flood God took that garden back up to heaven 14:43 again, but I believe that the branches of that tree still 14:48 hang over the walls and trail down to the earth and we can 14:51 find the healing properties in tree and in shrub 14:55 and in flower. - Very good spiritual lesson. 14:57 - This is one that I'm very thankful for, it's a green herb 15:03 it's comfrey. - Oh yes the comfrey that grows 15:07 it's also called Russian weed because it grows so readily 15:10 and in so many places. 15:12 - Most of these things are just good old weeds. 15:14 - Yes! - Well I had had an accident 15:16 with a table and cut off the tips of my fingers and I used 15:20 comfrey poultices after cleaning the wounds and having them, 15:25 you couldn't repair them, it was right down to the bone 15:27 fingernails, everything was gone used this comfrey poultice. 15:31 Every night I just make a little bit of a paste, 15:34 put that on my finger tip take the tips of a rubber glove 15:38 pull it down over my finger tips, my two fingers that 15:41 had been cut off and three weeks later I could play the 15:44 guitar again. 15:45 - You replaced the tip of your fingers? 15:48 - They couldn't find it! 15:49 - Because I see that you've got them all and I... 15:51 - It was this hand. - They must have re-grown 15:53 very nicely. - Well this is a cell growth 15:56 proliferator, it accelerated the growth, and I have no scars, 16:01 I have full sensation and like I say in three weeks, 16:06 this is the fingers that you push the strings with, 16:08 and I can do it without discomfort. 16:10 - Don't tell my that you've got fingerprints also. 16:13 - I have fingerprints, everything is there, 16:16 you can not tell anything happened to these fingers. 16:18 Now there is another thing that you can find commonly in the 16:21 yards, pretty much around the world is a thing called plantain 16:26 or Plantago which would be the Latin name, 16:28 there's a broad leaf and a narrow leaf and it's just about 16:34 the same as comfrey. of you have a wound on the skin 16:38 you can take that stuff and bruise it, that's where a 16:42 mortar and pestle comes in handy, put it in there 16:45 and just get it pulpy, take that out and apply it 16:48 right over a lesion, and that is extremely good. 16:51 If you have a cut, a bite, an itch, there is everything 16:55 you need in nature. 16:57 - Comfrey is very anti- inflammatory. 16:59 We have had flat wound injuries that we have treated with a 17:05 compress of comfrey and it has been most effective 17:08 and the anti-inflammatory effects are... 17:12 the person can sense it almost immediately, 17:16 within ten minutes they can tell that the congestion 17:21 the pain, the inflammation is not as bad as it was. 17:25 - Right! Another one I like very much and you've got this 17:29 tree growing right next to your house, Elderberry! 17:33 - Yes! I like this tree, it's a bush that grew up there 17:38 by itself and I use a lot of the berries for a lot of things. 17:47 For infections on the skin, for colds and flu, 17:50 for any kind of infection, I like the berries but 17:54 I see you have the leaves. 17:55 - Yes, well you probably see me sometimes over there 17:58 picking your berries. - I don't mind a bit. 17:59 - Now the thing about herb gathering is what we call 18:04 wild crafting, getting your own, there's lots of 18:06 Elderberries along roads but there going to pick up the 18:10 pollution from the vehicles so in your side yard there is 18:14 no pollution, so gather these berries... 18:16 Yes, I have taken leaves and put them in alcohol to 18:22 let the alcohol extract the properties that I want, 18:25 this is very good for bruising and for external inflammations. 18:29 Again we are just experimenting with my students to see 18:32 what can these things do, this was rubbing alcohol so 18:35 you can only use it externally but I would use this on any 18:38 type of external inflammation and even over painful joints 18:43 to see if that might give some relief. 18:44 What I am trying to do is awaken in your mind an interest 18:47 in God's healing properties, into the herbs that 18:50 God has given us. 18:51 We know many of them, some of them are extremely important 18:55 to us today: Echinacea, every one knows about Echinacea. 18:58 - It grows nicely in a garden. - It's a perennial, 19:01 it's a purple coneflower, it's a very attractive flower. 19:04 - It has seeds that you can plant for next year. 19:07 - Yes! Everywhere I go in the world I find Echinacea. 19:10 I don't find Golden Seal as much. 19:13 - Golden Seal grows apparently in higher elevations. 19:17 - So I am thankful for what God has given us in the 19:21 simple remedies here in nature. 19:24 If you are using a powder, this is beauty berry leaves 19:29 that we dried and just ground up. 19:30 - Beauty berry leaf made into a little ointment is good for 19:37 chronic skin disorders, it's a very good little leaf. 19:42 - It's also good for the complexion from one thing 19:44 I read. 19:45 What you can do here if you make up a powder out of 19:49 an herb and you want to get it right on the body but 19:51 you don't know how you are going to keep it there 19:53 you can just mix it with some Vaseline, just mix it really 19:57 nicely until it's the same color as the herb - green 20:00 just enough to hold it together and put that over the area 20:04 that in itself could hold it there and give you some 20:06 properties that you are looking for. 20:08 - Very good idea, thank you so much, I appreciate your 20:11 discussion of these things. 20:13 I appreciate your being on this program. 20:15 Now with the herbs you should learn a few and use those 20:21 for yourself, those that you know are non-toxic and helpful 20:26 and the Lord will bless you by these very simple things. 20:30 Now I have some pictures that I would like to show you 20:33 that will show some other problems with the skin 20:37 and these pictures can be themselves instructed 20:40 then I will tell you a few things about how to treat 20:45 people who have these various afflictions. 20:49 So you will see here on the screen a picture of something 20:54 that I hope you will not see, while this thing that I am 20:59 showing is not exactly what I want to teach you from but you 21:04 will see that there is a central portion of this picture that's 21:09 a little redder, then a little pale zone around that white 21:14 nipple looking thing and then a little bit redder, 21:18 then another pale area that's bigger and then way out on the 21:23 periphery you will see more reddening. 21:26 This disease is the disease that I want to teach you about 21:31 is Lyme disease, Lyme disease is caused by the deer tick 21:35 and the deer tick bites one then there may be a red spot 21:40 in the center followed by a very pronounced pallor, 21:47 or pale zone, then the pale zone spreads out and 21:53 much more reddening on the outside. 21:56 This Lyme disease can be a serious problem and in some 22:01 people it's not serious, but if you get the Lyme disease 22:05 one of the best things that we have found for this is hot 22:09 baths, sit in a tub of very hot water and after about 22:14 a half an hour of being in the hot water, about as hot as you 22:17 can stand keeping your face cool, your head cool as much 22:21 as you can with cold cloths to the neck and the face, 22:25 after a soak in the tub for about half an hour, you are 22:30 very likely to already be able to tell that you are better. 22:33 But if you do this daily for five days then skip a couple 22:37 of days repeat it again for five days, skip a couple of days 22:41 and yet a third week in this way five days doing the baths 22:47 and two days then you are finished at the end 22:50 of that time having done 15 hot baths. 22:53 This can be a curative for cases of Lyme disease, 22:59 the Lyme disease is caused by a spirochete and the spirochete 23:05 can be treated by very hot baths. 23:09 We learned this is when I was in Medical School 23:11 treating another spirochete which causes syphilis, 23:15 Syphilis' vary and Lyme disease as well, spirochete is very 23:21 sensitive to a little heating or a little chilling 23:25 but you can't get the body cold enough to kill the 23:28 spirochete by chilling but you can by getting the body hotter. 23:33 Now my next slide, this is another slide that has some 23:39 instruction with it, this one is Leprosy, you'll remember 23:44 that Leprosy in the Bible was a serious disease that required 23:50 quarantine of the person. 23:52 Leprosy today is usually confined to more tropical 23:59 countries but we do have some cases in the United States. 24:03 Now the next picture that I will show you is on the screen 24:09 now, this is a common disorder of the fever blisters. 24:15 This shows a patch of fever blisters on a pink base 24:22 it's a little tan lesion with a pink base, a little patch 24:29 of fever blisters, this was on the side of the face. 24:32 Now the next graphic shows another form of herpes 24:37 which is what a fever blister is caused by a herpes simplex virus 24:45 and this is caused by another virus, the Herpes Zoster. 24:50 This is chicken pox, most people have never seen 24:53 chicken pox because even doctors often have not seen 24:58 a lot of chicken pox because if we think the case is 25:01 chicken pox, please don't come to the office or please 25:04 don't come to the hospital keep the child at home. 25:07 But you will notice that the lesion is what we call a 25:11 dewdrop on a rose petal, and that is what the chicken pox 25:16 looks like and it's disseminated all over the skin. 25:19 The next picture is another form of the Herpes Virus, 25:24 this is also Herpes Zoster, but this one is shingles. 25:30 You will notice that this starts in this 11 year old child 25:35 at the spine and comes down across the hip and goes on to 25:41 the thigh. 25:42 This has the same typical lesion of dew drop on a rose petal. 25:48 This is usually not very painful but if it is painful 25:53 then it can be treated with hot compresses or hot baths 25:56 and a charcoal compress, very good to keep the disease of 26:03 shingles from going into the postherpetic neuralgia, 26:07 which is quite painful. 26:09 The next slide you will see is a slide that tells us how 26:14 chronic pain affects the body, in cases of postherpetic 26:20 neuralgia where the pain is what we might call senseless 26:25 that is it is not something that we are going to work with 26:30 directly because it is going to hurt the body, 26:33 but you will see that pain can can come into the place where 26:40 the blue dot is, pain impulses can come in through those 26:45 parallel lines and if you have a lot of 26:50 other input such as from a neutral bath, 26:54 or a hot bath, then you cannot get a lot of impulses 26:59 through this gate into the place where the blue dot is 27:04 so if you cannot get pain impulses through this channel 27:10 that has to go to the place illustrated by the blue dot 27:15 which is the interpretation center in the brain, then 27:19 this kind of senseless pain cannot get through. 27:23 So hot baths or a massage or a neutral bath, just ordinary 27:29 tepid water, these kinds of things can be most helpful 27:34 in treating people who have senseless pain. 27:38 The Lord has provided for our successfully dealing with 27:43 pain, infection, hereditary diseases, by the things of 27:48 nature, the things He has provided for our comfort 27:52 and I hope that you love the Lord more 27:54 because of these things. |
Revised 2014-12-17