Q’eqchi’ Maya Reproductive Ethnomedicine
Q’eqchi’ Maya Reproductive Ethnomedicine

Author: Jillian De Gezelle

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-11-28

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 3319107445

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​The Q’eqchi’ Maya of Belize have an extensive pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants used traditionally for reproductive health and fertility, utilizing more than 60 plant species for these health treatments. Ten species were selected for investigation of their estrogenic activity using a reporter gene assay. Nine of the species were estrogenic, four of the species were also antiestrogenic, and two of the extracts were cytotoxic to the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. Women’s healing traditions are being lost in the Q’eqchi’ communities of Belize at an accelerated rate, due to a combination of factors including: migration from Guatemala disrupting traditional lines of knowledge transmission; perceived disapproval by biomedical authorities; women’s limited mobility due to domestic obligations; and lack of confidence stemming from the devaluation of women’s knowledge. Q’eqchi’ medicinal plant knowledge is highly gendered with women and men using different species in traditional health treatments. Revitalizing women’s healing practices is vital for maintaining the traditional knowledge needed to provide comprehensive healthcare for Belize’s indigenous communities.

An Imperative to Cure
An Imperative to Cure

Author: James B. Waldram

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2020-11-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0826361749

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James B. Waldram’s groundbreaking study, An Imperative to Cure: Principles and Practice of Q’eqchi’ Maya Medicine in Belize, explores how our understanding of Indigenous therapeutics changes if we view them as forms of “medicine” instead of “healing.” Bringing an innovative methodological approach based on fifteen years of ethnographic research, Waldram argues that Q’eqchi’ medical practitioners access an extensive body of empirical knowledge and personal clinical experience to diagnose, treat, and cure patients according to a coherent ontology and set of therapeutic principles. Not content to leave the elements of Q’eqchi’ cosmovision to the realm of the imaginary and beyond human reach, Q’eqchi’ practitioners conceptualize the world as essentially material and meta/material, consisting of complex but knowable forces that impact health and well-being in real and meaningful ways—forces with which Q’eqchi’ practitioners must engage to cure their patients.

A Good Position for Birth
A Good Position for Birth

Author: Aminata Maraesa

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0826504124

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In order to understand the local realities of health and development initiatives undertaken to reduce maternal and infant mortality, the author accompanied rural health nurses as they traveled to villages accessible only by foot over waterlogged terrain to set up mobile prenatal and well-child clinics. Through sustained interactions with pregnant women, midwives, traditional birth attendants, and bush doctors, Maraesa encountered reproductive beliefs and practices ranging from obeah pregnancy to 'nointing that compete with global health care workers' directives about risk, prenatal care, and hospital versus home birth. Fear and shame are prominent affective tropes that Maraesa uses to understand women's attitudes toward reproduction that are at times contrary to development discourse but that make sense in the lived experiences of the women of southern Belize.

Nutrition·Immunity·Longevity
Nutrition·Immunity·Longevity

Author: Dr. Jau-Fei Chen

Publisher: Red Publish

Published: 2016-09-28

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 9810946929

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Nutrition aside, there are other interesting topics worth exploring in the pursuit of health. Can cancer be prevented? Why doesn’t everyone live long, healthy lives? What is the relationship between cardiovascular disease and the immune system? How does the immune system affect overall health? Which is a healthier food option: natural and wholesome plant foods or animal-based foods? How do our lifestyles affect our health? Good health is not a secret. To achieve good health, we must first understand it. By drawing links between diet, health, and the immune system, this book provides fascinating insights into the preventive science of Nutritional Immunology.

Maternal Death and Pregnancy-Related Morbidity Among Indigenous Women of Mexico and Central America
Maternal Death and Pregnancy-Related Morbidity Among Indigenous Women of Mexico and Central America

Author: David A. Schwartz

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 789

ISBN-13: 3319715380

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This ambitious sourcebook surveys both the traditional basis for and the present state of indigenous women’s reproductive health in Mexico and Central America. Noted practitioners, specialists, and researchers take an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the multiple barriers for access and care to indigenous women that had been complicated by longstanding gender inequities, poverty, stigmatization, lack of education, war, obstetrical violence, and differences in language and customs, all of which contribute to unnecessary maternal morbidity and mortality. Emphasis is placed on indigenous cultures and folkways—from traditional midwives and birth attendants to indigenous botanical medication and traditional healing and spiritual practices—and how they may effectively coexist with modern biomedical care. Throughout these chapters, the main theme is clear: the rights of indigenous women to culturally respective reproductive health care and a successful pregnancy leading to the birth of healthy children. A sampling of the topics: Motherhood and modernization in a Yucatec village Maternal morbidity and mortality in Honduran Miskito communities Solitary birth and maternal mortality among the Rarámuri of Northern Mexico Maternal morbidity and mortality in the rural Trifino region of Guatemala The traditional Ngäbe-Buglé midwives of Panama Characterizations of maternal death among Mayan women in Yucatan, Mexico Unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and unmet need in Guatemala Maternal Death and Pregnancy-Related Morbidity Among Indigenous Women of Mexico and Central America is designed for anthropologists and other social scientists, physicians, nurses and midwives, public health specialists, epidemiologists, global health workers, international aid organizations and NGOs, governmental agencies, administrators, policy-makers, and others involved in the planning and implementation of maternal and reproductive health care of indigenous women in Mexico and Central America, and possibly other geographical areas.

Ethnopharmacology
Ethnopharmacology

Author: Michael Heinrich

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-07-29

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1118930738

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Ethnopharmacology is one of the world’s fastest-growing scientific disciplines encompassing a diverse range of subjects. It links natural sciences research on medicinal, aromatic and toxic plants with socio-cultural studies and has often been associated with the development of new drugs. The Editors of Ethnopharmacology have assembled an international team of renowned contributors to provide a critical synthesis of the substantial body of new knowledge and evidence on the subject that has emerged over the past decade. Divided into three parts, the book begins with an overview of the subject including a brief history, ethnopharmacological methods, the role of intellectual property protection, key analytical approaches, the role of ethnopharmacology in primary/secondary education and links to biodiversity and ecological research. Part two looks at ethnopharmacological contributions to modern therapeutics across a range of conditions including CNS disorders, cancer, bone and joint health and parasitic diseases. The final part is devoted to regional perspectives covering all continents, providing a state-of-the –art assessment of the status of ethnopharmacological research globally. A comprehensive, critical synthesis of the latest developments in ethnopharmacology. Includes a section devoted to ethnopharmacological contributions to modern therapeutics across a range of conditions. Contributions are from leading international experts in the field. This timely book will prove invaluable for researchers and students across a range of subjects including ethnopharmacology, ethnobotany, medicinal plant research and natural products research. Ethnopharmacology- A Reader is part of the ULLA Series in Pharmaceutical Sciences www.ullapharmsci.org

Manipulation of Allelopathic Crops for Weed Control
Manipulation of Allelopathic Crops for Weed Control

Author: Khawar Jabran

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-22

Total Pages: 90

ISBN-13: 3319531867

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This book clearly defines ways to maximize the allelopathic potential of important field crops for controlling weeds, either in the same crop or others. Compared to the use of herbicides, allelopathy is an attractive option to control weeds naturally under field conditions. The book highlights the allelopathic potential of several important cereals (wheat, maize, rice, barley, sorghum, rye) and two oilseed crops [sunflower and canola (as well as some other member of Brassicaceae family)]. Further, the book explains how the allelopathic potential of these crops can be manipulated under field conditions to suppress weeds. This is possible by growing allelopathic crop cultivars, using mulches from allelopathic crops, intercropping an allelopathic crop with a non-allelopathic crop, including allelopathic crops in crop rotation, or using allelopathic crops as cover crops. Equipped with several basic concepts of allelopathy, this book will be highly useful for the farming community as well as students and researchers.

Messages from the Gods
Messages from the Gods

Author: Michael J. Balick

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 019935913X

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Despite its small size, Belize is one of the most ecologically and culturally diverse nations in Central America. Over 3,400 species of plants can be found here, within a diversity of ecological habitats. Because of this, Belize is paradise for ecotourists, hosting over 900,000 visitors annually, who enjoy the natural habitat and friendly people of this nation. Many of the plants of Belize have a long history of being "useful," with properties that have served traditional herbal healers of the region as well as those who use plants as food, forage, fiber, ornament, in construction and ritual, along with many other purposes. With Messages from the Gods: A Guide to the Useful Plants of Belize, Drs. Michael Balick and Rosita Arvigo give us the definitive resource on the many species of plants in Belize and their folklore, as well as the natural history of the region and a detailed discussion of "bush" uses of plants, including for traditional healing and life in the forest, past and present. Both Balick and Arvigo bring important perspectives to the project, Balick as ethnobotanical scientist from The New York Botanical Garden, and Arvigo as a former apprentice to a Belizean healer and an experienced physician. The book has been decades in the making, a culmination of a biodiversity research project that The New York Botanical Garden and international and local collaborators have had in motion since 1987. Drs. Balick, Arvigo and their colleagues have collected and identified thousands of plants from the region, and have worked extensively with hundreds of Belizean people, many of them herbal healers and bushmasters, to record uses for many of the species. This collaboration with local plant experts has produced a fascinating discussion of the intersection of herbal medicine and spiritual belief in the area, and these interviews are used to compliment and contextualize the numerous species accounts presented. The book is both a cultural study and a specialized field guide; information is provided on many different native and introduced plants in Belize and their traditional and contemporary uses including as food, medicine, fiber, in spiritual practices and many other purposes. Richly illustrated with over 600 images and photographs, Messages from the Gods: A Guide to The Useful Plants of Belize will serve as the primary reference and guide to the ethnobotany of Belize for many years to come.

Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers
Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers

Author: David F. Lancy

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 113753351X

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The study of childhood in academia has been dominated by a mono-cultural or WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) perspective. Within the field of anthropology, however, a contrasting and more varied view is emerging. While the phenomenon of children as workers is ephemeral in WEIRD society and in the literature on child development, there is ample cross-cultural and historical evidence of children making vital contributions to the family economy. Children’s “labor” is of great interest to researchers, but widely treated as extra-cultural—an aberration that must be controlled. Work as a central component in children’s lives, development, and identity goes unappreciated. Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers aims to rectify that omission by surveying and synthesizing a robust corpus of material, with particular emphasis on two prominent themes: the processes involved in learning to work and the interaction between ontogeny and children’s roles as workers.