In this series, we shall be discussing plants with medicinal values in Nigeria. This is what we have always done on this column. The only difference is that they will be a compilation of exceptionally medicinal plants that we never imagined have medicinal values.

Medicinal plants are synonymous with traditional medicine. Let us inform ourselves about medicinal plants and traditional medicine. A medicinal plant is any plant which one or more of its organs contains substances that can be used for therapeutic purposes or which are precursors for the synthesis of useful drugs. In a study titled, “The role and place of medicinal plants in the strategies for disease prevention,’ by Abayomi Sofowora et al, in the African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, traditional medicine is defined by a World Health Organisation expert group as the sum total of all knowledge and practices whether explicable or not, used in diagnosis, prevention and elimination of physical, mental or social imbalance and relying exclusively on practical experience and observation handed down from generation to generation, whether verbally or in writing (WHO, 1976).

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind itself. Awareness of medicinal plants usage is as a result of the many years of struggles against illnesses due to which man learnt to pursue drugs in barks, seeds, fruit bodies and other parts of plants. Man has also learnt from watching many animal species create their own pharmacies from ingredients that commonly occur in nature.

I want to share some stories which have motivated me to start this series. Sometimes in 2016, I started having pains in my rib cage (diaphragm area).The pain got so bad at some point that it moved to my back. After seeking medical help, the diagnosis came as peptic ulcer. For months, I lived with the pain despite the fact that I was taking my medications. Before 2018 ended, nature gave me a total relief from the ulcer pain even when antibiotics failed. The discovery was accidental. I was studying about soursop leaves and I liked all the things I read about the plant, so I got the leaves and was boiling and taking the water like tea. One day, I noticed that the ulcer pain was totally gone! I had no doubt that soursop leaves did the magic because I already stopped using my medications at the time.

This one is credited to my father. A friend whose son was sick and also enjoyed the power of nature shared it with him. The son suffers from sickle cell anaemia, so while in the hospital a nurse called the man aside and told him to get Lawsonia inermis known as “ ewe laali” by the Yoruba and Marandaa by the Hausa for the boy. The leaf was prepared and the boy’s blood level rose.

I belong to a group that has online meetings from time to time about some supplements made from nature. I was shocked the first day I attended the meeting because there were doctors and pharmacists in attendance. I kept wondering why they all gathered to discuss supplements and not synthetic drugs. In one of our meetings, one of the doctors said, “We all sit in hospitals treating our patients, you discover that at the end of the day, your diabetic patient ends up with an amputated limb even after taking his medications. I then concluded that there must be other ways we can help our patients apart from using drugs.” That night, I said to myself that what Thomas Edison said over a hundred years ago that “the doctors of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs but rather will cure and prevent diseases with nutrition” has come to pass.

From the foregoing, you all must think I am biased against medical science. Not at all, I am not in any way discrediting medical science. As a matter of fact, when a client consults me, the first thing I ask them is what they have done medically about their ailments. When they say they have not done anything medically, I still send them to see their doctors. The only grouse I have is that herbal medicine is looked down upon and labelled as “alternative medicine” while medicine is seen as being superior.

Medicine has its limitations, herbal medicine has too. At the point each has limitations, the other should come to the rescue.

I can say authoritatively that no doctor can ever treat a woman with polycystic ovarian syndrome successfully with drugs alone, help must be sought from nature! Mostly, a sufferer is overweight, she needs to shed some weight and the only way to do this is by eating foods that are close to their natural forms and not processed foods. Like Hippocrates said, “Nature itself is the greatest physician.” We have no choice than to resort to nature all the time. On the other hand, it does not make sense telling a woman with an extremely big fibroid to use herbs, surgery is the best option.

For me, medicinal science and herbal medicine should be seen as Siamese twins that must not be separated. After all, most of the pharmaceutical products currently dispensed by physicians have a long history of use as herbal remedies. A large percentage of drugs considered “basic and essential” by the World Health Organisation are “exclusively of flowering plant origin.’’

Another thing worthy of being mentioned is that whether we believe or not, some people have “received knowledge” about plants. Most of the research in the area of Ethnobotany (Ethnobotany is the study of a region’s plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people) has benefited from the indigenous knowledge of Aboriginal peoples all over the world. These people will remain relevant in the development of knowledge about plants because they are the custodian of the genetic resources of plants. This reminds me of a story my father once shared with me. He said in our hometown, a man had for a long time searched for a particular herb used in the preparation of charms that prevent bullets from penetrating into people’s bodies. All of a sudden, the same plant started springing up around houses! The man now called some people and told them that there would be a war outbreak. Truly, the Nigerian civil war broke out!

It is comforting to know that the power of nature is on our side and these herbal choices are available to complement our health practices. The world is endowed with a rich heritage of medicinal plants and it is a good thing that many people now find themselves turning back to the medicinal plants that started it all. Medicines and prescriptions do not have to be the only approach to healing. Herbal medicine should be given a chance to thrive.