When I first visited Ivey Harris, she was living in more or less a half shack/half house that she had lived in all her life. She inherited it from her grandmother, and it’s on a nice little piece of property.
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Ivey Harris grew up in this half shack, half house. Now, thanks to Healing Herbs of Jamaica, she’s built a new house and has a healing center where people come to see her from all over the world. |
It’s a gorgeous place. You’re up about 3,000 feet between the John Crow Mountains and the Blue Mountains, so it’s cool. It rains a lot, but it rains and then clears out. When it does, the Blue Mountains really do look blue because of the humidity and the greenery.
You have a panoramic view, and there are places where you can see down the valley across the Rio Grande river.
And after I visited Ivey at her home, we started working together on what became the book Healing Herbs of Jamaica, and her whole life changed.
She’s become kind of famous, and she’s done very well with the book. We’ve given her a whole bunch of copies twice, and she’s sold every one of them. You can find it in all the bookstores in Jamaica. It’s even sold at the airport. If you go to the Kingston airport you’ll find it right there.
Ivey took the first payment for the book and used it as a down payment to start building a house. Now she’s finished it using the money from the sales of the book. It’s a nice, solid brick house.
Then, when we gave her the next couple of installments, she built a separate building on the property that is kind of a spa, with these really nice baths. And now she’s building a kind of a plant where she can process the herbs she grows, and she employs a couple of other people.
Ivey now has a whole Maroon Healing center there, and people are coming from all over the world to see her. She uses her roots and herbs to make healing teas, tonics and formulas for the people who visit her.
I’m going to bring some of these unknown cures back here for you, but Ivy’s garden – while a treasure trove of West African, Native American and local Jamaican herbs – isn’t big enough for me to grow a supply of them that I can share with you.
I’ve looked around for suppliers in the U.S., but they told me even they had never heard of the herbs I want to use, and I was out of luck.
So I’m looking to grow them on a nice piece of property near Long Bay in the same region where Ivey lives. Ivey tells me that she and her Maroon ancestors have successfully used them in their remedies for hundreds of years.
Of course, I’ll need to evaluate their effectiveness with my own clinical trials. And I’ll have to arrange with customs to get this non-native flora into the country.
One of the herbs she uses that you can find here in the states, and that I’ll be using in one of my new formulas, is very useful, and can help you stay healthy all year ‘round, no matter where you live. In Jamaica, they call it balsam.
Knock Out Fevers, Aches and Chills
Ivey uses balsam to treat flu, fevers and colds. When she visited Ghana in Africa, the original home of her Koromantyn people, they told her they use it the same way. Except they call it “fever tea.”
As I traveled through Africa, I noticed that many people used the herb to treat malaria, which is very common there. It makes sense because balsam has a lot of an oil called thymol, which has anti-microbial and anti-viral properties. Plus, the leaves are high in vitamin C. One study showed it also has very powerful anti-biotic properties.1
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Balsam, which Jamaicans sometimes call “mary bush,” is from the mint family. In India where it’s a revered herb, they call it “vana tulsi.” |
Another study showed that balsam relieves pain, and can protect your liver.2 And a little known benefit of balsam is that it helps protect your teeth and gums when you drink it in tea or rinse your mouth with it. It can reduce plaque and gingivitis.3
But mostly it’s used to help bring down fever and reduce pain. If you have a cold or fever, you can boil balsam into a tea. Add 1 ounce fresh or ½ ounce dried balsam leaves and flowers to 1 ½ pints of boiling water. Steep fresh for 5 minutes or dried for 15 minutes. Makes 4 cups
Drink three times a day or as often as needed. From the first drink, you can feel relief coming on, and if you drink 2 or 3 cups, you won’t feel the cold or fever the next day.
Balsam is from the mint family and called Ocimum gratissimum, and in India, they call balsam “Vana Tulsi.” You can get the dried leaves at specialty stores and online from sites like tulsiorganics .com and even amazon .com. The site I like the most and find easiest to use is organicindia .com. But remember not to get balsam confused with Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum) because they are not exactly the same.
If you’d like to learn Ivey’s herbal healing secrets and how you can use them for yourself, click here.
P.S. – I have so many stories like this, and have discovered amazing cures from the unique healers I’ve met around the world. The problem is that until now, I haven’t been able to tell you everything I wanted to. But we’ve found a way to bring you all the incredible solutions I’ve been finding and using successfully in my clinic with my patients. To do it, I created an entirely new publication I’m calling Confidential Cures: Your Guide to Truth and Lies in Medicine from Around the World. And you can use it to help you live life the way you want – disease-free and without worry. Just click here now and I’ll send you powerful, in-depth advice on the hidden cures you need to know but won’t hear about anywhere else.
1. Nweze E, Eze E. “Justification for the use of Ocimum gratissimum L in herbal medicine and its interaction with disc antibiotics.” BMC Complement Altern Med. 2009 Sep 28;9:37.
2. Zamin M. “An analgesic and hepatoprotective plant: Ocimum gratissimum.”Pak J Biol Sci. 2011 Oct 15;14(20):954-5.
3. Pereira S, de Oliveira J, Angelo K, da Costa A, Costa F. “Clinical effect of a mouth rinse containing Ocimum gratissimum on plaque and gingivitis control.” J Contemp Dent Pract. 2011 Sep 1;12(5):350-5.