[Artemisia] SCA Skills in a Modern Plague- specifically insulin.

[Dan Reese]

Quoting:

> In one of my books and herbal info I found where "One cup of String bean tea 
> is equal to at least one unit of insulin"
> Now you just have to figure out how to make stringbean tea and you may have 
> a chance.
> The book also says that if you mix peeled Pumpkin seeds,  Fragrant valerian 
> root and bilberry leaves in equal parts and steep 1 tbsp in 1 cup boiling 
> water and drink one cup in the course of a day unsweetened it can help to 
> improve sugar tolerance.
>     Another recipe it gives is to mix bilberry leaves in equal parts with 1 
> or 2 of the following : Bean pods, nettle, milfoil, European centaury, 
> Dancelion or Blackberry leaves.  Parboil 1 tbsp in 1/2 cup water for 10 min. 
> Drink 1 to 1 1/2 cups a day unsweetened but not with in an hour of meals 
> before or after.
> 
> I have no idea how or if they work but if your looking at death it may be 
> worth a try.
> Annabella

No offense to your book but if that worked at all, it would only work for a type 2 diabetic. Type 1 Insulin dependent diabetics 
can't use substitutes. Insulin is a protein peptide hormone composed of 51 amino acids. Stringbeans are nowhere close to this. 
Even if it did work for a type 1 diabetic at all, the formula given would require monstrously huge quantities to live. 
Personally, by the formulas given in your book, I'd require something around 11 gallons of stringbean tea per day to get by. 



> Message: 9
> I think another health consequence of "modern times" is frankly our diet
> and lifestyle.  There wasn't prevalent and endemic health issues such as
> diabetes, heart disease and cancer in the middle ages.  Sure they were
> present, but the medieval lifestyle wasn't backed up with a high
> sugar/low exercise couch potato lifestyle. They didn't have large
> amounts of the population, including children being significantly
> overweight which leads to many of the above issues.  Diets and
> lifestyles were very different.  
> 
> I think taken in account, after a world changing event the general
> population health should improve from those known health issues. Diet
> and exercise it already a regimen for modern sufferers so over the years
> with a change back to an agrarian/working lifestyle things should
> reverse. Sure, there will be a huge die-off of the current population
> with modern health issues, but that is to be expected when a loss to
> resource event happens. 
> 
> Juliana

What you say there is very true regarding type 2 diabetes, but again, for type 1 diabetics like myself, lifestyle had nothing to do with it. Type 1 Diabetes is a genetic disease that results from autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. If modern society falls apart, all type 1s will die.