111 Moods of Herbal Tea — Day 48, Pata de Vaca
Dear Gentle Reader,
It is in simple things that we find the answer to complex issues. Often times, these answers come to us in curious ways. After thousands of scientific experiments and decades of research, you wouldn’t expect the milkman to discover the potential cure for diabetes, would you?
In my travels around Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the herb grows profusely, I could not find a tea house that served “cow’s foot” tea. Argentinians use the tea strictly as medicine. But, this wouldn’t be a tea challenge if I settled for that, right? The problem was easily solved when I bought the Pata de Vaca tree. It will one day grow to ten feet, according to the herbalist who sold it to me. Señor Leonardo Sirit shared the story of how the town’s milkman discovered the “vegetable insulin”:
Ruben, the milkman, let his cows graze one morning as usual. He noticed one of them was eating from a plant he had not seen before. He saved one of the leaves in his pocket and led his cows to town. He asked around, but no one had seen the leaves before.
“As the first man to name this plant, I shall call it “Pata de Vaca,” he announced. “Because the cow’s foot print in the mud looks just like it,” he proudly clarified.
His family used it as a tea for several months and remarked that those suffering from diabetes started suffering less.
The herb became such a staple remedy for diabetes and kidney disease over the years, that scientists took a closer examination into its potential. The results are promising — not as a complete cure, but as a way to prevent diabetes and improve the quality of life for people in advanced stages of diabetes.
Studies show that Pata de Vaca is highly effective to eliminate the accumulated glucose in the bloodstream, preventing further damage to the kidneys, liver, and pancreas (1)
One of the easiest things in our culture is to overeat sweets. If that happens to you oftener than self-preservation calls for, you can balance some of the damage with this Pata de Vaca tea recipe:
1 tablespoon of dried Pata de Vaca leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon of fresh lemon peel
- Bring water to a rolling boil
- Remove the kettle from the heat
- Steep the Pata de Vaca leaves, cinnamon stick, and lemon peel for 10 minutes
- Strain and serve warm
To simple measures,
Valeria Paz
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Sources:
Pepato, M. T., Baviera, A. M., Vendramini, R. C., & Brunetti, I. L. (2004). Evaluation of toxicity after one-months treatment with Bauhinia forficata decoction in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. BMC complementary and alternative medicine, 4, 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-4-7
