Many plant and fungus species are also renowned for their healing properties. Dating back to the Stone Age, human cultures have utilized a wide array of plants in their spiritual, cultural, and medical practices. These ancient beliefs state that the beginnings of disease originates from an imbalance or disharmony in our emotional and spiritual bodes and that plants are effective in healing these bodies (2). While modern society moved away from these practices to embrace western medicine, many are beginning to question whether pharmaceutical drugs are really the best solution to improving health and wellbeing. One such person is Mark Pischea, a 42-year-old political consultant and father of five from Williamston, Michigan. Ten years ago Mark was rushed to the hospital with severe stomach pain. He was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic autoimmune condition that can cause extreme abdominal discomfort, weight loss, fatigue and fevers. For the next decade of his life, the formerly healthy husband and father lived in a constant cycle of flare-ups, surgery and recovery.
At his wife’s insistence, Pischea made his way down to a rustic healing center in San Roque de Cumbasa, a tiny village in the Peruvian Amazon.
Pischea spent most of the next three weeks in solitude, following a strict dieta of rice, plantains and specially prepared plant teas. Several times a day, he met with a shaman named Antonio, who prescribed him local plants known to induce vomiting, as a way to cleanse the body and “reboot” the immune system. The shaman’s recommendations also included ayahuasca, a potent hallucinogenic brew, and kambo, the venom of a rain forest tree frog. Four months later, Pischea was freed of not only his Crohn’s symptoms, but also the depression that had developed. Pischea remarked that, “I went to the top Crohn’s clinics in the world and saw the top doctors in the world, and none of them could help me. There is a curative quality to the plants in the jungle that you really need to be there in that environment to experience. I think it really does work.”
Mark's recovery led him from skepticism to an outspoken proponent for alternative holistic healing practices and many scientific research groups are following suit. One such scientist is Dr. Mark Plotkin, an Amazonian ethnobotanist, conservationist and author of the 1994 book Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice. Plotkin recognizes the benefits of wester medicine but believes there are many instances in which the holistic approach is the healthier option. “All you’ve got to do is look at pancreatic cancer, insomnia, acid reflux, stress — all these things that Western medicine can’t cure — to realize we need alternatives or additions,” Plotkin told HuffPost. “As Westerners, we’re taught that anything that isn’t done by a white guy in a lab coat isn’t science, but that obviously isn’t true.” (3)