Wellness is one of those words like hero or epic, that has just been overused to the point of numbness. It’s not enough to watch what you eat and exercise, you have to maintain your wellness. Go for wellness check-ups, wellness meditation, wellness vitamins, wellness cereal, wellness leaching and well, I could go on.
Monday’s comic didn’t get posted partly do to wellness. I had a bunch of running around to do in the morning. Picking up vitamins was the last of my errands and on my way home in the good ol’ Ontario winter, I slid off the road into a snowbank. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but oh! My poor car! Evidently, the engineers at Ford did not design the Focus for lateral impact. So, rather than sitting snug in my office sipping my green tea, doing my work and drawing comics, I spent the day sulking in the waiting room at Canadian Tire, waiting for a damage estimate.
As much as I love the guys at my Canadian Tire, they really don’t keep the waiting room stocked with adequate reading material for extended sitting. I burned through the weekly flyer and a July 2007 copy of Maclean’s pretty quickly but luckily the lady at my health food store stuck a wellness magazine in the bag with my vitamins. (Yay for freebies!) So I’m flipping through this thing, catching up on all the ways I’m neglecting my wellness, and there’s this lengthy article about oil of oregano.
If you’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you may remember the Father’s solution for every medical problem was “put some Windex on it”. A few years ago, my Dad discovered oil of oregano and it became his Windex. He puts it on every scrape, scratch and hangnail, in water, in olive oil, on his toothbrush you name it. My Dad is my buddy and we’re very close, but the whole family teases him mercilessly about this. “ha ha! Yeah Dad, put some Windex on it! The ol’ man smells like pizza, he must have cut himself shaving.” And so on.
Last week I had a bit of a break out. I’ve been working long hours, not eating my best and dog-sitting which kicks up my allergies a bit, so it caught up with my face and I got this monster zit. This thing was about the size of my fist and must have weighed at least eight pounds. Dad says “put some Windex on it.” Ha ha, ok gimme the oregano, I’ll try anything. Of course it worked, the monster was gone the next day and I though “oh gawd, there’ll be no living with him after this”, but didn’t give it much further thought.
Back to sitting in Canadian Tire with my wellness mag. This article, (Nature’s Most Versatile Herbal Remedy) is all about why it works and as it turns out, this stuff actually is the new Windex. I’m not going to copy out everything it does/seems to be good for. (It’s a two page article and if I did that I’d end up with carpal tunnel syndrome, but the good news is that I could just put some oil of oregano on it.) To sum it up though, oil of oregano is a pretty powerful antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antioxident…I think that’s all the anti(s). The active ingredient is called Carvacrol. It’s a natural phenol that contains powerful anti-microbial properties, flavonoids that provide a natural antiseptic, and Terpenes which are natural anti-inflammatory agents. (yeah, I had to look up phoenol, flavnoids and terpenes.)
So, in addition to clearing out blemishes and disinfecting minor boo-boos, apparently it’s also commonly used to treat congestion, cough, burns, bruising, tendonitis, arthritis, muscle pain, spasms, nausea, indigestion, allergies, insect bites, canker sores, cold sores, dandruff, bladder and kidney infections, you can put it on pizza and the list goes on. Obviously, talk to your doctor or pharmacist before jumping in to any kind of treatment, herbal or otherwise. There’s no information in this particular article about weather or not it conflicts with existing medications or conditions. But, it was an interesting read. Kinda makes me wonder what else my Dad was right about…who knows, if I’d been paying attention when he was teaching me how to drive, I may not have ended up in that snowbank!
