Medicine
Health Care

Physical and mental issues

- Granny, what parts of the body should be taken care of in order to have good health?

-The hands, the feet, the belly, thoughts...

-But thoughts aren’t part of the body.

-Then why do our heads hurt when we’re worried?

She believes that the human being is a unit in which the organic and inorganic are connected to each other. Disease is an imbalance that affects both the physical and the mental.

For my grandmother, health is a balance between hot and cold. Body parts have specific temperatures. A sign of good health is having warm feet and cold hands. Cold feet can be a symptom of stomach problems, flu or fever, and hot hands can be a sign of kidney problems. She says that body temperature is the most important thing to take into account in healing procedures.

If you cross the gate of her garden, you smell the refreshing scent of Ruda, a plant that is traditionally placed at the entrance of houses to prevent “bad energy” or “mal aire” (literally “bad air”) from coming in from the street.

For the Andean world, disease involves organic aspects (body) and inorganic aspects (mental state). Rue combats illness mainly on a mental level and is used in healing ceremonies called “limpias” (“cleanses”). During the "limpia," aromatic herbs are rubbed on the body while prayers are said. Ritual plays a key role in healing.

For my grandmother there are cold plants like Alelia and hot plants like Manzanilla. There are cold illnesses like the flu and hot illnesses like intestinal infections. A cold disease is counteracted through the use of a hot plant that raises blood pressure, while a hot disease is in turn cured with a cold plant that helps regulate temperature.

My grandmother says that to cure physical pain, you also have to take care of the patient's mind. The affections are part of the healing processes, since the disease attacks the body and the mind: