Ulcerative Colitis Treatments: Ancient Remedies

Before you can talk about Ulcerative Colitis and ancient remedies, you need to talk about ancient remedies. After all, we are sophisticated modern medicine proponents, right? Ancient medicine concepts are for the uneducated, agreed?

Had I done research for this topic a couple of weeks ago, I would have entered into it with much less enthusiasm and wonder than I currently have. Why? As they say in scary movies, "I saw something."

I was researching the effect of music on illness. There was a tribe in Africa that used an ancient remedy to cure different illnesses with music.

There was a film of a teenage boy with a high fever who could hardly move. The tribe slowly began one by one to enter into a common song and beat and then began to move in closer to the boy. After a time, two men picked him up, one on each side, and began to literally drag him around in a circle.

At first the boy could do nothing, but as the music beat and movement continued, he developed more and more strength until he was running full tilt with the other two men. In checking, his fever was normal. I was stunned at the video and certainly do believe that there are remedies that are not considered modern but are effective.

With respect to Ulcerative Colitis, one of the most common references to an ancient remedy is the mention of barley grain. Germinated barley grains provided relief for people with mild to moderately active Ulcerative Colitis.

Another methodology is the alternate use of cold and warm applications to the abdomen or lower bowel, a form of relaxation technique.

Much ancient medicine is a form of "mind over matter" with the exception of barley and high-protein foods.

In studying the Greeks and Egyptians, it is easy to find carefully written treatments for many conditions. Ulcerative Colitis seems to have warranted use of Vitamin E which, interestingly enough is of value today. In fact, much of the ancient medicine was the basis for today's medicine with the positive ingredient simply part of say, a plant rather than an isolated vitamin

Ancient medicine is a combination of an incredible amount of historic knowledge upon which our modern medicine is built, again primarily Greek and Egyptian medicine and perhaps a little less traditional approaches like those of the African tribe that we have more trouble explaining.

One thing is sure, ancient medicine was at least partially viable and certainly shouldn't be dismissed as any form of archaic worthlessness.