By Brian Myers
A community garden near Fairmount Boulevard and University Avenue is growing medicinal plants that can relieve the symptoms of asthma, which they say is a community health epidemic in City Heights because of poor housing stock.
The volunteer-run Remedy Community Medicine Garden has a small, but dedicated, crew of caretakers, including Rich Macgurn. He’s an accredited acupuncturist and herbalist.
“A major problem we have here in City Heights is really poor housing conditions,” Macgurn said. “You have really bad, old apartments, landlords who are just not fixing up apartments, old carpets, mold, cockroaches, rats. Those are all major irritants, triggers for asthma.”
The garden contains various herbs that can be steeped in tea to open the bronchioles, said Valerie Camacho, a volunteer at the garden. They can also help treat other common ailments such as diabetes.
A recent study found that the asthma rate for City Heights adults is much lower than the the rate for adults countywide. It also reported that obesity rates have dropped for children in the area.
But more City Heights residents reported just fair or poor overall health than county residents, and an alarmingly high number of children in the neighborhood are without health insurance. The remedy garden could help bring needed relief.
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Transcript:
Rich Macgurn, Volunteer, Remedy Community Medicine Garden: This is purple aster, we use the roots, the roots are these crazy looking reddish things. They’re used for coughing and wheezing, so that’s commonly added to an asthma formula.
If you look at asthma rates in this country, its primarily urban areas in poor communities of color. I know specifically for City Heights asthma is an epidemic amongst young people, like it is in most urban areas. A major problem we have here in City Heights is really poor housing conditions. You have tons of really bad, old apartments, you have landlords who are just not fixing up apartments, you have old, old carpets, mold, cockroaches, rats. Those are all major irritants, triggers for asthma.
Valerie Camacho, Volunteer, Remedy Community Medicine Garden: We started with a focus on health problems that have environmental roots that are super common in City Heights. So we started off looking at asthma, diabetes, and conditions that are caused by long term stress and tension. There tends to be a lot of, “Take these pills, change your lifestyle.” No real guidance. The pills have a lot of side effects and often are not very effective at managing the conditions. There’s no differentiation between what people are experiencing, it kind of becomes, “You have diabetes, deal with it.”
Rich Macgurn: And plus it’s a major class issue, because if you look at what’s cheapest, crappy food, unhealthy food is the cheapest. You are able to buy more calories for your dollar if you’re buying nutrient poor, but high calorie food. There’s a real blurry line between food and medicine, because food is medicine. And if you look at lots of these plants here, there is no clear distinction between herb and food. And diet is something that is so crucial to all these problems we were talking about.
Valerie Camacho: Herbalism was one of those ways in for me to figure out how to relate to my body with all the complicated problems I was experiencing.
Rich Macgurn: When we’re talking about any health problems, we can’t just talk about herbs, we can’t just talk about food, we have to talk about every aspect of a person’s health, and that includes, emotional, physical, spiritual.
Valerie Camacho: We work with other groups in the community to talk about means of self care, means of reducing your need for medicine, of understanding what’s happening in your body. So that way, you’re not quite as powerless in the dynamics of the Western medical system.
Rich Macgurn: It’s really important when you’re talking about a problem like asthma, not to just treat an individual and say, “Ok, how are we going to deal with your asthma,” look at nutrition, look at herbs and stuff, but we have a major epidemic here. So, what are we going to do as a community to resolve this problem, because it’s not an individual problem, it’s a community problem.