Chapter Two: The Highlands of the Andes
South America – Travels and Adventures through the Amazing World of Medicinal Plants
By Geoff D’Arcy, Lic. Ac. DOM.
Geoff in the mountains close to Machu Pichu, Peruvian Highlands.
The wealth of medicinal plants in South America springs not only from the Amazon basin but extends far into the highlands of the Andes. The highlands ecosystem had produced important and fascinating traditional medicines, medicines that I am convinced continue to be crucial to the health of mankind. This was the impetus that brought me and my friend high into the Andes to explore the sacred sites, to observe the terrain and to immerse ourselves into this unique environment: I had to experience this ecological treasure firsthand.
We flew directly from the polluted hot, humid sea breezes of Lima, the capital of Peru, to the highland town of Cusco. After banking and twisting at impossible angles, our airplane contorted itself into landing in a mountain basin. We were met with the shock of a completely new culture and the unexpected challenge of the high altitude. Almost immediately, I experienced symptoms of altitude sickness, including increased heart rate, light-headedness, fatigue, and nausea, and thankfully received the offering from our hotel of a tea made from coca leaves.
The coca plant has a sinister reputation in the U.S. Its concentrated extract, cocaine, has proven to be a highly addictive substance that has fueled a dangerous drug trade and has been the ruin so many lives. Yet, in its organic form as a decoction from warm water, it was a welcome cup of tonic tea that helped to ease the aggravating symptoms of mountain sickness. In decreased atmospheric pressure high in the mountains, the body struggles for oxygen. This can become life threatening at much greater altitudes, but for those of us traveling to Cusco, unaccustomed and unprepared, it was more of an annoyance than a hazard. (I tried taking an over-the-counter supplement which proved unsuccessful, while my friend tried using a Chinese Ginseng paste, which helped a little. These days, after much research and testing, I now prefer a formula of Ginkgo, Reishi Mushroom and Siberian Ginseng.)
The contrast from the warm, expansive smiles of the “lowlanders,” the contracted coolness of the highland people was the first contrast that was apparent to me. The Aymara and Quechuan speaking peoples of the Andean Highlands are the largest indigenous group in the Americas. They are herders and farmers and live at altitudes of 8,000 - 14,000 feet above sea level (2,700-4,300m.). The most skillful herbalists in the highlands are considered to be the Kallawaya peoples who live in the high plateaus of mid-western Bolivia. The Kallawaya herbalists are known as the “Lords of the Medicine Bags,” for the woven saddlebags in which they carry their herbs. These interesting highland people are renowned throughout South America, with 25% of their population considered skilled herbalists, many of whom become tribe leaders.
Kallawaya medicinal knowledge is transmitted from father to son, or by male apprenticeship to an expert herbalist, and their training may last up to eight years. The Kallawaya collect their own herbs among vast, diverse climatic conditions that range from alpine mountains to cloudy rainforests; their knowledge extends to over 800 plants, with some 300 used medicinally. They have adopted and grow only eighteen medicinal herbs from European traditions. At the turn of the century, their reputation was so great that people traveled from as far as Europe to be treated of supposedly incurable diseases by the Kallawaya.
I was completely charmed by Cusco. Cusco is the oldest continuous1y inhabited city of the Americas, with an amazing array of Inca and Spanish architectural styles found in temples, palaces, and plazas built with precisely fitted granite blocks. The town square is filled with old colonial Spanish houses, complete with ornately carved, antique wooden doors and wrought iron porches offering views of a town square, that appears isolated in time. It is easy to imagine the Spanish colonists sipping their after-dinner wines looking down on us from the past. In conversation with the town’s colonial past, Andean history comes vividly alive here as well. Classic Spanish colonial churches sit atop bases of massive smooth stone work laid centuries before the Conquistadors. Quechuan-speaking descendants of the Incas fill the streets and markets with their brightly colored clothes and hand-made crafts, their Incan facial features making them quite distinct from the lowlanders. The “campesinos” (the highland rural farmers) dress very colorfully and move busily back and forth across the plazas. Cusco's largest open market and the adjacent Witches Market are quite a sight to behold.
The Pizarros arrived in Cusco in 1532. This first wave of Spaniards was not the most enlightened group of explorers. They were mostly illiterate, uneducated, brutal adventurers driven by greed, who had little interest in anything besides wealth and power. I have long wondered how a ragtag band of adventurers of some180 Spaniards could bring a well-ordered Incan civilization to its knees. At that time, it is estimated that the Incan empire consisted of 12 to16 million people. Timing and courage was on the side of the Spanish. It is estimated today that more than half of the Incan population was wiped out by disease carried by the Spanish, including smallpox. This was compounded by the fact that, at the time of their arrival, the Incans were involved in a bloody civil war that divided the people. When the Spanish arrived in Cusco, they were welcomed without resistance, the people believing that they were avengers, sent by the Gods, because they had murdered its civil war enemy en route. Moreover, they were treated as gods because they were so different in appearance with their white skin and bearded faces, they used powerful “fire weapons,” and rode powerful four-legged animals (horses). The Incas believed that horse and Spaniard were a single creature able to split into two. They also believed that they were divine beings because old mythology stated that the Incan gods arrived by ship, and this was how the Spanish arrived. They were thus accepted and even welcomed in the city of Cusco.
The battles were over before they had even begun. Just four years after the arrival of the Spanish, in 1536, there was a major, countrywide rebellion. The Incan leader, Manco, after a failed siege of Cusco, abandoned his headquarters at Ollantaytambo and took the remnants of his Court, army and followers, and retreated back into the remoteness of Machu Picchu region. This was to be the trail we would follow the next day. Leaving Cusco, visiting the amazing stones ruins of Ollantaytambo, where you could almost imagine Manco’s panicked retreat, then onward following in his footsteps nearly 500 years later, onward to Machu Picchu
The sacred city of Machu Picchu is nested like a condor’s perch on the steep eastern slopes of the Vilcanota mountain range, a chain of mountains stopped by the Apurimac and Urubamba Rivers. Fifty miles (80 km) Northwest of Cusco, Machu Picchu stands at an altitude of 2,350 meters above sea level with a wholly different climate of cloudy rainforest from where we’ve been.
After a most spectacular train and bus ride, we arrived at the base of Machu Picchu looking up at its peak in disbelief. A mudslide had completely wiped out the road to the peak. If we wanted to go up, we had to walk through the cloud forest. We slung our backpacks over our shoulders and began the arduous hike guided through the forest by a mountain goat of a nine-year old guide. The climate is subtropical with dense rainforest. The temperature is mild, warm and damp. The rainy season runs from November through March, while the months of April through October bring drier, hotter temperatures. Some of the typical plant life we saw along our hike included plaonayes, qientas, alisos, puya palm trees, ferns and orchids (of which there are more than 90 species.) There is dense undergrowth, enough to swallow-up and hide the last remnants of the Incan empire hiding away from Spanish brutalities in the lush Andean jungle.
My friend and I arose before dawn and completed another slippery and arduous, steep hike to the Huayna Picchu, where we were hoping to watch the sunrise over the ancient sacred city of Machu Picchu. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the sun, but the slippery hike through the lush cloud forest to the Temple of the Moon offered it’s own reward.
The Incas were able to control their remarkable state system through a pyramidal hierarchy. While they did not possess a written language, the Inca maintained a class, or guild, of verbal historians. According to the accounts of the time, Pizarro’s own men considered the Incan medicine men far more skilled in the use of medicinal plants than their own Spanish doctors. This shows us the medicine the Incas had available to them was far more evolved than that of the Europeans.
On the walks around Machu Picchu we saw so many beautiful and different colored orchids growing everywhere in this lush rainforest area, along with huge bromeliads that were in bloom. The fauna of this area of Peru includes the spectacled bear, cock-of-the-rocks, or tunqui, wildcats, and an amazing abundance of butterflies and insects that are unique to the region. The natural surroundings and the hidden location of Machu Picchu give this sacred sanctuary great beauty, harmony, and balance unlike any other area in the world.
The ruins of Machu Picchu, rediscovered in 1911 by Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham, are one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ancient sites in the world. While the Inca people utilized the mountaintop (9060 feet in elevation), erecting massive stone structures from the early 1400's, legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu (meaning 'Old Peak' in the Quechuan language) was revered as a sacred place from a pre-Incan earlier time. The site is a small (5 square miles) but striking, mystical city. Invisible and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs, Machu Picchu seems to have been utilized by the Inca as a sacred ceremonial city. Perched two thousand feet above the roaring Urubamba River, the cloud-misted ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150 houses, all remarkably preserved. It was inconceivable that this civilization had constructed these massive stone structures from building blocks weighing fifty tons with such exactitude that the mortar-less joints that will not permit the insertion of even a thin knife blade. Carved from the granite of the mountaintop they are true architectural and aesthetic wonders. Little is known of the social or religious use of the site, yet the skeletal remains of ten females to one male suggests that it may have been a sanctuary for the training of priestesses and /or brides for the Inca nobility.
One of Machu Picchu's primary functions was as a precise indicator of the date of the winter solstice, as well as other ritualized celestial periods. Every midwinter, the Incas held a ceremony at this stone, in which they “tied the sun” to halt its northward movement in the sky. Shamanic legends say that when sensitive persons touch their foreheads to the Intihuatana stone, the Intihuatana opens one's vision to the spirit world. Intihuatana stones were the supremely sacred objects of the Inca people. The Spaniards never found Machu Picchu, even though they suspected its existence; thus, the Intihuatana stone and its resident spirits remain with their original power.
The ancient pre-Incan cultures developed in the Andean highlands quite solidified supernatural beliefs. Closely attached to these beliefs was the extensive use of "magical herbs" used in the course of their rituals and was a common practice among the curanderos (healers), brujos (sorcerers) and shamans. Due to their consciousness-expansion properties, hallucinogenic plants including certain cacti and the Ayahuasca are common choices for soul-cleansing and evil-spirit expulsion rituals, as well as for vision quests. The sheer volume of medicinal plants available to the Incas amazed the Spanish.
The Incan civilization also gave the world the potato. They cultivated many different varieties, seemingly aware of the importance and necessity of developing different plants. This would be a lesson lost on the agricultural practices of Ireland in the late 18th century, where a potato blight caused the failure of the entire potato crop leading to a massive famine, death and a huge wave of Irish emigration around the world. The lesson of species diversity is also lost on the giant American agribusiness conglomerates of today, as their business plans depend on only a few patented “genetically modified” species.
Another Peruvian highland root vegetable is making recent headlines:
Maca, a.k.a. Peruvian Ginseng (Lepidium meyenii)
This hardy medicinal plant grows at high altitude among the glacial mountains of the Peruvian Andes, 11,000 to 14,500 feet above sea level. The root is so nourishing that it is said that when the Spanish chased the Incas high into the Andes where they had no feed for their fatigued altitude-sick horses, they fed them Maca root, which energized and fortified them enough to continue the chase. Peruvian Maca root is a vegetable root or tuber, distantly related to the Mexican Wild Yam. Maca was used by the native Peruvians before the time of the Incas as a sexual tonic and for its nutritional properties.
Maca root grows wild in the Peruvian Andes below the glacial icecap. It is able to survive extreme weather changes, such as freezing, high winds, and intensive sunlight. There are not many plant foods that will grow at this high altitude and survive with such nutritional value. Native shepherds learned early on that as they grazed their herds in higher elevations, where Maca grows naturally, the herds became healthier, with more stamina and demonstrating more sexual stamina. The Andean herd people included Maca root in their diets and found Maca root could help promote increased energy and stamina for themselves.
The rich soil located at these high plateaus of Peru, where it is very cold and oxygen deprived, may account for the high levels of trace minerals found in Maca root. As a crop it was domesticated 2,000 years ago. As the Indians had noted increased fertility in themselves and their livestock, so did the early researchers. Recent animal studies noted increased fertility in rats with its use. Although referred to as “Peruvian Ginseng”, it is not related to Asian or American Ginseng. Its rich supply of nutrients contains alkaloids, tannins and saponins, with reputed aphrodisiac properties from isothiocyanates. The use of Maca has grown in recent popularity due to its energizing, aphrodisiac and fertility increasing properties. In Peruvian herbal medicine, this pre-Incan herb is used as an immuno-stimulant, an aphrodisiac in both men and women, and it also balances menstruation and menopausal disorders. In order to survive and thrive at such heights with little oxygen, this plant has learned to produce compounds much needed by those that eek out a meager living at such head-splitting altitudes.
Based on recent studies I consider using Maca for increased energy, vitality, stamina and endurance in athletes, promoting mental clarity, enhancing nutrition for increased fertility and to increase male seminal fluid volume, sperm count and sperm mobility, for treating male impotence and erectile dysfunction. Women with menstrual irregularities have experienced greater consistency, while women with hot flashes, mood swings and most associated peri-menopausal and menopausal symptoms diminish dramatically. It may be due to the number of steroidal glycosides present in Maca root. It seems to be gaining popularity among the weight lifting and body building community as a natural alternative to anabolic steroids. We will be hearing much more about this nutritious medicinal food, in the near future.
Cinchona Bark, a.k.a. Peruvian bark (Chinchona spp.)
“There’s no place on Earth that’s off the malaria map: Artic circle, freezing mountaintop, burning desert, you name it, malaria has been there. We are not talking millions of cases here; more like hundreds of millions.”
– Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Cinchona bark was discovered over three and a half centuries ago, and has an amazing history filled with international intrigue and medical miracles. Legend has it that, in 1638, the beautiful wife of the Spanish Governor, the Countess Dona Francisca Henriquez de Ribera was miraculously cured of a particularly virulent strain of malaria with an herb commonly used for such fevers, that was suggested by a Jesuit missionary who had studied with local Peruvian herbalists. Other myths about the discovery of Cinchona bark state that the Indians noted the bark’s qualities after observing pumas who suffered their own intermittent fevers drinking from a lake that had been infused by the trunks fallen Cinchona trees. In the 16th century, the discovery of a “cure” for malaraia was considered sensational. The effects of this miraculous cure and herb rippled throughout Europe, where from England to Rome to Spain, great malaria epidemics of 1638 and 1658, had swept mercilessly throughout. Even today, this deadly parasitic infection, spread via mosquitoes, kills 3 million people every year. Some parasitologists ague that, astonishingly, malaria (mal “bad” + aria “air” in Italian, as it was thought to be caused by the bad air around swampy environments) may have caused the death of one out of two human beings who ever lived!
Cinchona bark, the inner bark of a tree/shrub, grows as far north as Merida, Venezuela and as far south as Santa Cruz, Bolivia. It prefers hot, moist climates and thrives on rich organic soils and well-drained slopes such as the sheer sides of volcanoes throughout the 1,800-mile region of the Andean mountain range, between 4,000 and 10,000 feet above sea level, passing through the Peruvian highlands. The most effective bark and root come from the species of red Cinchona, cascarilla roja. Its active ingredient has been identified as Quinine. Before it was replaced by the synthetic drug Chloroquine after World War I, any endeavors in the tropics, whether motivated by war or business, could not be embarked upon without first securing an ample supply of Cinchona bark. In nearly every engagement by the U.S. Army and Navy, more casualties were caused by disease than from enemy fire. The English, in India, would place the herb preventively in water to protect their soldiers and colonists. This was the origin of tonic water with quinine, from whence came the popular drink “gin and tonic” during the British Raj. The French placed it in the drink Dubonnet for their Indo-China colonists (a very civilized way to take anti-malaria protection). The colonization of the tropics could not have been completed without this herb. Quinine is a powerful antipyretic (anti-fever) medicine that lowers the body’s temperature and blocks the malaria parasite’s ability to invade the red blood cells.
The parasites, just like bacteria, are also constantly evolving, countering our moves against them. First with the French and then with the Americans in Vietnam, it was noticed that the first drug-resistant strains were starting to be appear. Chloroquine’s effectiveness was on the wane almost soon as it was developed and the reason was due to the evolution of the parasite itself. The state of the medical art for malaria returned to combinations of several chemicals or alklaloids at once; in other words, a combination not unlike cheap Cinchona bark! It seems the only long-lasting hope for malaria will be the development of a vaccine.
“We have let our profligate use of antibiotics reshape the evolution of the microbial world and wrest any hope of safe management from us. Resistance to antibiotics has spread to so many different, and such unanticipated types of bacteria, that the only fair appraisal is that we have succeeded in upsetting the balance of nature.”
— Marc Lappe, When Antibiotics fail
The scientists during the 1950’s thought we were within reach of a world free from malaria. A world free from bacterial infections also seemed to be in sight. Sadly, we now know the vision of a “silver bullet” -- or a drug for all bacterial diseases -- is tarnished. We are now, at the turn of the millennium, struggling to hold on to medical “advances” as they are slipping away. According to the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 13,000 patients in the U.S. were killed by drug-resistant bacterial strains in 1992. By 1997, over 100,000 people were estimated to be dying, and 3 million people were admitted to hospitals with difficult-to-treat, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, while an additional 2 million people developed infections getting routine medical procedures. Even Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, noted as early as 1945 the danger of staphylococcus bacteria’s resistance to penicillin. In 1945, despite the fact that it only had five years of limited use, up to 14% of all staphylococcus were resistant. By 1950, 50% were resistant, and by 1995 fully 95% were resistant. In 1943, streptomycin became the first cure for Tuberculosis (TB), and by 1947 streptomycin-resistant TB strains were reported. These bacteria are quick. Bacteria evolve at fantastic speed; one bacterium can produce almost 17 million in a 24-hour period! This allows them to pass along the drug-resistant gene not only to their own species but, more significantly, to other unrelated microbes. Exacerbating the resistance problem is the prevalence of the overuse of antibiotics. In the U.S., it is legal for 80 different antibiotics to be added directly to animal grains to fight infection and make livestock to grow more quickly in factory farms. These enter the precious food supply, via meat and milk and cheeses, yogurt and eggs.
On the positive side, we must remember that our immune systems are remarkably efficient if we keep ourselves and our own bodies fully healthy and fully supplemented. When we eschew unbalanced pharmaceuticals in favor of the proactive protection of herbs and vitamins, when we use Mother Nature’s medicine with all of her complex chemistries, there are never acquired resistances due to their use.
Even peers of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, researchers such as Max von Pettinkofer and Elie Metchnikoff, insisted that bacteria do not cause disease, but rather it is an interruption in the normally health ecology of the body that permits infection by pathogenic bacteria. Basically, human beings live in and have evolved from a sea of bacteria, and we as a species have adapted to deal effectively with them when our systems are in balance and in full health. As Marc Lappe says, “It is the body which ultimately controls infection not chemicals. Without underlying immunity, drugs are meaningless.”
Plants generate chemicals as medicines to protect themselves
Plants have evolved from the same “sea of bacteria” – they, too, have been generating chemicals to protect themselves. Anti-fungal, antibiotic and pre-infection anti-microbial compounds protect the plant from invading pathogenic organisms. For example, they can produce anti-fungal compounds to protect their roots; chicory roots produce anti-fungal compounds that are so strong, that if they are kept moist for long periods on a plate they will not mold. It is a matter of survival for this plant, in damp, wet soil, to protect itself and its roots against mold. Plants need to generate these natural, yet complex chemistries to survive. They can generate antibiotic, anti-microbial, mucilaginous, gum, resin, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic compounds. Plants can generate, combine and move any of these compounds where they are needed, and yet, because many of them are extremely reactive to the air, they are often stored inside cells, deep within the plant. Anti-inflammatory compounds such as quercitin are made by plants for release into damaged areas to control cellular inflammation. Salicylic acid, the precursor of aspirin, was isolated from willow bark and meadowsweet. Both plants were used as anti-inflammatory agents in herbal medicine. Salicylic acid can stimulate or inhibit growth depending on the dosage used, and it is also analgesic. Plant compounds that inhibit cell division maybe used as anti-cancer compounds. Within the plant they may inhibit cell division in other seedlings attempting to germinate too close to the plant. Plants also generate hundreds of compounds to protect themselves from animals and insects. They may produce glycosides that can be toxic only when digested by the animal, thus deterring a certain animal from that plant. Tannins in leaves have mild anti-bacterial compounds and act as a barrier against penetration and colonization by plant pathogens. They dry out leakage of fluids from any break in the plant’s cells, causing contraction of the tissues. They also can bind with these pathogens on the surface causing a hardening or tanning of the cells, creating a protective layer, shutting down entry of the pathogen to the plant.
Bacteria do not develop resistance to whole plant medicines. Plant medicines, unlike pharmaceuticals, contain thousands of complex compounds that work synergistically; they are so complex that it is very difficult for pathogenic agents to develop resistance.
Numerous plant medicines have shown activity against all the bacteria that have developed resistance to human pharmaceuticals. They also show very few side effects. The African herb, Cryptolepsia, and Chinese herb, Qing Huo (Artemisia annua,) are more effective against non-resistant malaria strains than pharmaceuticals, and produce none of the side effects seen from Chloroquine. Artemmisen in the Chinese herb Qing Huo especially, has shown in clinical trials, to be very effective against the most deadly strains of Malaria and will soon be the treatment of choice.
Maca References
Zheng, B. L., et al. "Effect of a lipidic extract from lepidium meyenii on sexual behavior in mice and rats." Urology 2000 Apr;55(4): 598-602
Cicero, A. F., et al. "Lepidium meyenii Walp. improves sexual behaviour in male rats independently from its action on spontaneous locomotor activity." J. Ethnopharmacol. 2001 May; 75(2-3):225-9.
Gonzales G. F., et al. "Effect of Lepidium meyenii (maca) roots on spermatogenesis of male rats." Asian J. Androl. 2001 Sep;3(3):231-39.
Gonzales, G. F., et al. " Lepidium meyenii (Maca) improved semen parameters in adult men. Asian J. Androl. 2001 Dec; 3(4):301-3.
Cicero, A. F., et al. "Hexanic Maca extract improves rat sexual performance more effectively than methanolic and chloroformic Maca extracts." Andrologia 2002 Jun;34(3):177-9
Gonzales, G. F., et al. "Effect of Lepidium meyenii (MACA) on sexual desire and its absent relationship with serum testosterone levels in adult healthy men." Andrologia 2002 Dec;34(6):367-72
Scibona, M., et al. "L-arginine and male infertility." Minerva Urol. Nefrol. 1994 Dec;46(4):251-3.
Cara, A. M., et al."The role of histamine in human penile erection. Br. J. Urol. 1995 Feb;75(2):220-4.
Gonzales, G. F., et al. "Effect of Lepidium meyenii (Maca), a root with aphrodisiac and fertility-enhancing properties, on serum reproductive hormone levels in adult healthy men." J. Endocrinol. 2003 Jan; 176(1):163-8.