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Wheatgrass, Plantar Fasciitis, Anal Fissure, Otitis (Earache)
When I entered medical school, my vision was to do something to help others. But when I eventually graduated and started clinical practice, the vision gradually wore thin. Not because medical practice was not interesting or challenging, but because I so often felt that I was somehow limited in what I wanted to achieve in a healing sense. Pharmaceuticals, my main tools of trade, were not up to scratch. Adverse effects, cost and limited efficacy often left me feeling unequal to the task of being a doctor. Of course clinical outcomes in infectious diseases, heart attacks and other acute conditions were often very satisfactory, but when it came to common, every day type conditions such as plantar fasciitis, anal fissure and acute otitis, there was very little one could do to assist patients without thinking that the "treatment" may be doing more harm than good.
For example, the approach to plantar fasciitis was (and still is) usually to inject a steroid into the plantar fascia (very painful for the recipient), but one always sensed the outcome would be doubtful at best, and anal fissure was definitely a case of heartsink for any doctor. The available treatment, then as now, was limited, somewhat expensive, imposed side effects such as headaches on the patient, and, worst of all, rarely worked.
And what about acute otitis? The family doctor's nightmare. There's nothing worse than being called out in the middle of the night to "treat" a young, miserable child screaming with the pain of otitis media or bullous tympanitis. After all, what can one do? Well, there's analgesics, antibiotics, antihistamines and.....? But unfortunately, in the acute situation, none of these work and the child just keeps screaming. The doctor's priority being to get out of the house as soon as possible and leave the parents to placate the child.
Plantar Fasciitis
My approach to all these problems has been assisted considerably using my wheatgrass extract. Take plantar fasciitis for instance. I had had some rather startling results where patients had recovered, in some cases overnight, from chronic, severely painful and disabling heel pain. This prompted me to run a small pilot study on the internet where some thirty PF sufferers, mainly from the United States, applied a wheatgrass-based cream on their heels daily for a period of three months. Around 65 percent of them had significant improvement in pain, and some had complete resolution of symptoms. Subsequently, a university in Melbourne has extended it to a controlled double-blind trial which is currently under way. Needless to say, I don't inject steroids into patients' heels any more! Of course wheatgrass doesn't work every time, but it's harmless and therefore worth trying first. The rapid response of some of my patients to wheatgrass also raises questions about the "biomechanical" etiology of plantar fasciitis. But more of this another time
Anal Fissure
A 23 year old female overseas student attended for "a laxative that works please doctor" for constipation that had persisted for seven years. She only had one or two bowel actions a week and had undergone all manner of investigations in her own country, including blood tests and an abdominal MRI scan which showed only that she was constipated. She had consumed laxatives every day since the onset of symptoms. Prior to my wheatgrass days, I would have felt quite helpless under such circumstances. If everyone else had tried to help her, what then could I possibly offer? Well, the first thing I did was to ask her if anyone had ever examined her anus. She looked surprised and shook her head. But when I explained that constipation is often caused by anal fissure and not the other way round, she conceded to physical examination. Not surprisingly (to me), she had a large, chronic, posterior fissure and the well-known "sentinel pile" that frequently pre-empts the diagnosis. As is often the case, the fissure was completely asymptomatic. No pain and no bleeding - just constipation. I gave her some wheatgrass cream to apply and a week later she walked in smiling broadly and announced, "Doctor, I can pooh!"
Now, if I had not seen so many patients with anal fissure (and constipation) heal so rapidly with wheatgrass as I have, I would never have thought of fissure causing constipation. I would also not have examined the anal canal of numerous constipated patients, discovered almost invariably a fissure, and "cured" their constipation by curing their fissure. ( » More on anal fissure
Acute Otitis
Finally, a mother brought in her 6 year old son. Hot, miserable, hand over his ear, crying "Mummy, it hurts." Quite a sick child. For three days and sleepless nights he had been in pain being plied with frequent doses of paracetamol to no effect. Thoughts other than the child's physical illness crossed my mind. On examination, he was highly febrile and moribund, but apart from the very red, glowing, blistered eardrum of bullous tympanitis, there was nothing else to be found. With mother's permission, I instilled a few drops of wheatgrass into his ear. I chatted to her for a while as I jotted down some notes. Altogether, about ten minutes had passed, when I asked the boy to get down off the couch. But there was no response - he was fast asleep! When he awoke, his pain had all but disappeared. The following day, the tympanic membrane was no longer blistered and the inflammation almost completely resolved. Both the boy and his mother had had a peaceful night's sleep.
As I previously mentioned, there is very little if anything the pharmaceutical industry has to offer for otitis (wheatgrass eases pain in otitis media also). But here we have a simple herbal remedy that is highly effective, very safe and free of adverse effects. How many children actually go through life without suffering earache? I think most parents would say, "Not many". How does wheatgrass work in this situation? The simple answer is that it is an anti-inflammatory, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. Words like "rapid immunological response" come to mind, but just how that happens will have to wait for the right person to come along and tell us.
Dr. Chris Reynolds. M.B.,B.S.
