Hibiscus for covid
My company Sansar Media was started as a social enterprise, to bring about social change through advocacy, the use of traditional and social media, documentary and film, and publishing.
In addition to documentaries which highlight movements for gender equality, I as founder have also advocated extensively for sustainability issues, including water, soil and air. I have advocated for an end to plastics, which is clogging up our waterways and our agricultural soil.
Since 2009, I have written and spoken in favor of traditional healing systems. I believe the Western medical system, tech heavy and with its reliance on big pharmacological corporations, do not work for poor countries where people spend their lives as migrant laborers in other countries working under difficult circumstances to earn money which is swallowed up in a single medical emergency. The preventative aspects of traditional healing traditions like Ayurveda, Sowa Rigpa or Amchi healers (Tibetan healing), Unani as well as Western herbal traditions should be encouraged and given legitimacy.
Because my organization is pretty small, with a team of outside staff which I draw upon when I get funding to do projects, I have been the main advocate and voice of this enterprise. After my earthquake accident in 2015, in which I was buried in an earthquake, I was also forced to rely on social media as the main channel of communications, which is where you will find most of my advocacy.
I have advocated for the use of hibiscus to cure covid in newspapers and social media extensively. This was done at a time when vaccines were seen to be the only solution. I believed that a natural remedy like hibiscus would be easy for people across cultures to adopt due to its association with food and fun.
As an age old Ayurvedic remedy used as an anti-viral, I had been giving hibiscus tea to my elderly parents for almost ten years. They have diabetes and high blood pressure and I had seen them do well with the tea, which also eased their skin issues, kept the uterus healthy, kept the liver healthy, acted as a diuretic, amongst other benefits.
I was blocked by twitter for saying ginger and hibiscus tea would cure covid. They demanded I remove the tweet before I could enter the platform again.
I wrote this article about hibiscus’s healing benefits in early 2020:
Nepal’s ayurvedic masterplan
https://theannapurnaexpress.com/news/nepals-ayurvedic-masterplan-2866
On November 17th 2020, food giant Nestle added hibiscus to its burger. While I can’t prove that my article influenced them, I note that this is an unusual ingredient for Nestle, especially in burgers.
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1328623853355012096
Whole Foods said hibiscus was in the Top Ten Food Trends for 2022
https://media.wholefoodsmarket...
On December 31, 2021, Forbes said hibiscus would be the biggest flavor of 2022.
It was eventually recommended by the Harvard School of Public Health as an anti-viral in February 2022.
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
I attach the links to my articles and tweets.
Tweets advocating for hibiscus in covid cure:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%40joshi_sushma%20hibiscus&src=typed_query
-A new/novel technology that doesn't exist anywhere else: Nobody else was advocating for hibiscus as a cure for covid, not even in Ayurvedic protocols
-Transformation of an existing solution: While hibiscus is an age old remedy, and had been used extensively for many different ailments, it was not used exclusively for covid
Vaccines were seen to be the only solutions to the covid pandemic. While India’s Ayush ministry put out a protocol for covid (which also seems in large part to be influenced by the initial usage of ayurvedic medicines first used in Nepal, which I wrote about in the Annapurna Express and on Twitter), they do not mention hibiscus.
Hibiscus was disruptive because it is a) cheaply available b) widely accepted as a food and drink worldwide and c) it could be used even by those who were skeptical of alternative healing and who did not believe in complementary medicine. You can see here an exchange I had with my uncle who wanted WHO approval for hibiscus as a cure for covid. This sort of scientific legitimacy was missing, even though I found research to validate hibiscus’s antiviral properties against avian flu of all types and shared it online. Interestingly the tweets from March-April 2020, when I started to advocate for using hibiscus as a cure for covid, are missing, but you can find later ones below.
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1388749050267148291
https://twitter.com/search?q=%...
High antiviral effects of hibiscus tea extract on the H5 subtypes of low and highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
It was transformative because it could be inserted into the food trends of countries like the USA and via Nestle, and heal people even if they did not believe in its curative and anti-viral properties.
You can see here two tweets sent to me by readers who did not believe hibiscus could cure covid. I respond with the research which proved its anti-viral properties:
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1387649948666122242
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1387650009764483074
I learnt about hibiscus tea while attending a literary festival in Bali, Indonesia. After returning to Nepal, I started to make the tea, first for myself, then for my parents, from a hibiscus bush which produced flowers in my garden. Although they were reluctant at first to drink it, they eventually took to the drink. In the beginning, I thought of it as a refreshing summer drink rather than a medicine. But as I started to research its properties, I realized it had very extensive healing properties. Because my parents were elderly and suffered from multiple health problems, I was able to see its benefits firsthand, as well as the way it did not have side effects, unlike strong pharmacological products.
When my father had covid early on in the epidemic (despite taking an Astrazeneca shot), I gave him the hibiscus tea as a curative. I could see how he was eager to drink it—even going so far as to drink my mother’s share, although he’s a very measured man who always takes minute portions of any food and drink during other times. I could tell then that there was something in the drink which healed him, which is why he was craving large quantities of it. He was cured in a shorter period than my brother, who took Tibetan medicine as a complementary medicine for covid.
Big pharmacological companies did not come up with an oral medicine for covid until December 22, 2001 (Pfizer’s Paxlovid.) This seems like an astonishingly long time to come up with an oral medication for a pandemic which had killed millions of people for the last 24 months. I had been advocating for hibiscus almost since the beginning of the pandemic around February or March of 2020, although those tweets seemed to have been erased or hidden from view by Twitter. I do not know how many people adopted my protocol, but I assume there may have been some people who took note.
Over here, you can see a Ghanian newspaper reporting on how Ghanians were discussing hibiscus as a covid remedy in April 2020, because it was used in “Chinese medicine.”
The WHO denies hibiscus can cure covid, according to this article—although I cannot find information on this online on the WHO website. I suspect this exchange may have been triggered by my tweets rather than Chinese medicine, which has used different herbs to cure covid.
Chinese covid protocol and medicines
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32669523/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32843234/
You can see this article about medicinal herbs used in Nepal to cure coronavirus. The article doesn’t mention hibiscus, meaning its not part of the ethnopharmacological tradition.
https://ethnobiomed.biomedcent...
Poynter flags “hibiscus cure” as misinformation.
- Build fundamental, resilient, and people-centered health infrastructure that makes essential services, equipment, and medicines more accessible and affordable for communities that are currently underserved;
- Pilot
Nestle includes hibiscus in its garden gourmet sensational burger on November 17, 2020.
“#ICYMI — In Europe, our flagship plant-based burger is now even more sensational. ??
With more and more people looking for great-tasting #PlantBased food, we're introducing a further upgrade to our #GardenGourmet Sensational Burger. Learn more: http://nes.tl/MoreSensational”
https://twitter.com/Nestle/sta...
Hibiscus Or Sorrel Will Be The Biggest Flavor Of 2022
Whole Foods includes hibiscus as Top Ten trends of 2022. Whole Foods has 500 stores in the USA and is the leading health food chain in the country, leading trends which the rest of the country are likely to follow. It is also an Amazon subsidiary, meaning anything which becomes a trend in Whole Foods is likely to be sold widely to Amazon customers through targeted, online marketing. Amazon has over 200 million Prime subscribers, 148.6 million in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
*1.5 Do you have a way of protecting your innovations from being copied by your
competitors?
No, I intend for it to be easily replicated by others.
*1.5.1 Please explain how, including patent numbers or hyperlinks if appropriate
I do not want to patent the cure because the idea is to make it as widely available as possible in all cultural settings. While a pill would certainly be efficacious, the idea is to get people to include it into their cuisines and beverages so that it acts as a curative and preventative tonic without taking on the façade of an expensive pharmacological drug. By including it into their daily lives, I hope people will come to realize that food can be medicine, and that they will also start to research and investigate the properties of other commonly used herbs and healing botanicals which we as humans have always used to cure ourselves in all cultures, whether modern, traditional, scientific or hunter-gatherers, worldwide.
*2.1 Please detail how your solution has benefitted people's lives?
Hibiscus is an anti-viral with wideranging curative properties, and keeps uterus, liver, kidney, blood pressure and blood sugar healthy and in balance. All of this is documented by medical research done before the pandemic. Most of all, it doesn’t have the side effects of vaccines, which are known to give lethal cerebral thrombosis, myocarditis and pericarditis, as well as immune disorders, to those vaccinated with the gene based and mRNA vaccines. By taking this as a nutraceutical, people avoid the worst of covid symptoms and avoid hospitalization.
Hibiscus is hepatoprotective.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24549255/
Hibiscus is nephroprotective.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4053229/
*2.2 How many people have directly benefitted from your solution? (numerical value only; no
commas or periods allowed)
300000000
Amazon has over 300 million customers, according to the web. Over 200 million are Prime subscribers, and 148 million of these are based in the USA. With hibiscus as the trending flavor, I assume many of these subscribers will buy hibiscus teas, juices and other flavored food items.
I have also advocated for hibiscus to be adopted by Indian institutions.
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1384376812860444678
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
https://twitter.com/search?q=%...
*2.3 Does your solution provide access to essential and affordable healthcare?
Yes.
*2.3.1 If yes, please elaborate, how?
Hibisucs is widely and cheaply available in many forms (food and beverage) and can also be planted.
Here is Amazon marketing hibiscus plants during its sale in March 2022. This means hibiscus is a popular house plant being sold by Amazon, as well as the trending flavor of 2022. I imagine that people who live in climates where flowering is suitable will also use their garden plant’s blooms to make juice and tea.
*2.4 Does your solution provide maternal and new-born healthcare?
No, although hibiscus does have uterus strengthening properties and also works excellently as an anti-cramps tea for menstruating women. Entirely possible it is good for newborns and mothers, but I would have to research that extensively before saying anything about that.
*2.5 Does your solution help to prevent epidemics and diseases?
-Yes.
*2.5.1 Which of the following epidemics and diseases does your solution address? (you can
select multiple options)
-Avian influenza
-Covid
-Most likely also works on MERS
-The flower and plant may also be useful in other diseases listed, including hepatitis, but that would have to be researched on each specific disease. Due to its antiviral properties, it may have an overall protective influence on diseases caused by microbes (bacteria, virus) but it may not work in cases where the disease is already advanced and has had significant harmful impact on vital organs.
*2.5.2 How does your solution help to prevent the epidemics and diseases, selected above?
By acting as a preventative. If the patient has contracted the disease, the antiviral properties will lessen the viral load and cause the patient to have a milder version of the infection. It is also hepato and nephroprotective, unlike pharmacological drugs and vaccines used for covid which can exacerbate and kill patients with kidney and liver problems.
*2.6 Does your solution address illness from pollution and hazardous chemicals?
By providing a natural remedy which doesn’t require plastic packaging, glass vials, sharp needles, rubber gloves, PPE, and other medical devices and apparatuses which cause chemical and plastic pollution, hibiscus eliminates metric tonnes of pollution.
*2.6.1 How does your solution improve or mitigate the occurrence of illnesses from hazardous
chemicals and air, water and soil pollution or contamination?
Modern medicine depends upon plastic packaging to deliver medication. These must be incinerated since they are not bio-degradable. Vaccines come in glass vials, and need plastic syringes and needles, which also have to be incinerated. The doctors have to wear plastic gloves and PPE when attending to patients. All of these cause massive plastic pollution. My solution doesn’t require any of these expensive and harmful devices, clothing and instruments. It eliminates a very large concentration of air pollution by eliminating the need for plastic delivery mechanisms.
*2.7 Please elaborate how your solution has improved inclusion and equality? (e.g., gender
equality, inclusion or empowerment of disadvantaged community members etc.)
Hibiscus can be planted by anyone, male or female. Due to its feminine associations, it is attractive to women, who are more likely to use it due to its approachable look and culinary usage. It is widely used in every continent including poor countries in sub-saharan Africa. Sudan is a major supplier of hibiscus.
*2.8 How many jobs have been created as a result of your solution? (numerical value only)
There may have been fulltime jobs which were created by hibiscus, although I think most of its impact comes from people from all walks of life incorporating it into their daily routines in small increments.
*2.9 Has your solution created any impact beyond 'Health', in the following areas? (you can
select multiple options)
--Food: Has had wide impact on the food and beverages industry, as evidence in the Whole Foods Top Ten Trends of 2022. I also see it is included in flavorings in many contemporary drinks like kombucha.
--Water: Hibiscus requires very little water to grow, so it is not a water intensive crop.
*2.9.1 Please explain how your solution has improved people's lives in other areas, selected
above. (Please include relevant metrics)
Vaccines and medical procedures like tracheostomy have damaged people’s health in many ways. Many now have lifelong disabilities. Thailand has handed out 45 million dollars as vaccine compensation to over 14,000 people. Other countries have yet to acknowledge these effects and follow suit with compensation.
Many people also died of secondary side-effects after their vaccinations, including impacts to hearts, kidneys and livers. Hibiscus, if used in appropriate quantities and in a moderate manner (not mixing it in alcohol, pharmacological drugs and so forth), has no such side-effects. By healing people in a manner gentle to their bodies, it allows for people to recover from infections without any harm. The “do no harm” ethos of Hippocrates is embedded in this herb, and also teaches people about the wisdom of going the low impact healing route as the best way.
*2.9.2 Please quantify the impact in the areas, selected above. You can add more rows (up to
5).
N/A
*2.10 Please describe what other health issue(s) you have targeted and summarise the
outcomes and impact. (Please include any relevant metrics)
In my article, you can read about timmur (Szechuan pepper) and the way it has been used to oxygenate the blood of high altitude climbers when they become sick from low oxygen conditions in the mountains of Nepal. I also advocate for the use of timmur during covid when people experience lack of oxygen. I believe the complementary use of these herbs act together in coordination and help to bring the body back into balance.
- Financial (e.g. improving accounting practices, pitching to investors)
Expected outcomes: clinical trials of ayurvedic herbs on different diseases, a greater acceptance of herbal medication as “real medicine,” and partnerships with universities in the west to establish traditional healing.
Scope: there is vast scope to research the healing potentials of herbs that are already extensively used in local pharmacopeias for diseases that they are thought to heal, as well as for diseases and viral/bacterial infections that they may not be used for, currently.
Timeline: 2022-2024
2022-2023--Collaboration with scientists in universities like Brown University (my alma mater) as well as local hospitals, doctors and Ayurvedic vaidyas in Nepal and India to document local herbal usages for range of diseases, and note down beneficial as well as harmful effects of the most common herbs and Ayurvedic preparations used
2023-2024--Development of new medicines for hard to cure illnesses like HIV, TB and other diseases which cause pandemics
--Advocate for traditional healing systems to be included into international medical regulatory authorities like the WHO
--Light carbon footprint
--low cost
--affordable
--non-invasive
--adaptagenic, not harmful to bodily organs
--can be grown at home and doesn't need to be purchased
--widely accepted as food and beverage worldwide
Hibiscus is acceptable to all cultures, and it doesn’t require massive farms or industrial agriculture to grow, meaning it has a light footprint on the earth. In terms of human development: Hibiscus has a light footprint on the earth, both in terms of cost as well as bodily impact. Here I write about the cost of western medicine
https://theannapurnaexpress.com/author/103
It therefore points towards degrowth as the way forward for all humans in the age of climate change and overconsumption. Although it might be pricier in urban economies in the West where it is included in more expensive food and beverages found at Whole Foods, which tends to be dominated by upper middle class customers, it is otherwise accessible to most people. Due to its adaptogenic nature, the flower enhances health on all fronts rather than destroying vital organs, as we saw with pharmacological products like Remdesivir, and encourages people to seek low cost, non-invasive solutions to their health.
I believe hibiscus’s success as a curative herb has been noted by big companies (as we saw with Nestle and Whole Foods.) I am encouraged to think that this herb may be more widely adopted worldwide due to my advocacy of its healing properties.
• Has further inspired sustainable actions from the wider community by instigating behavioural
changes: people are more likely to question the curative claims and the beneficial aspects of big pharmacological products now. They are also more likely to do more research and investigations into the background and financial motives of big pharmacological companies before taking new drugs. I think this is important and something we all had to learn during this pandemic.
There was a lot of skepticism initially about natural cures in Nepal. People were jeered and called “besaray” (turmeric seller) for advocating for turmeric as a cure for covid. I wrote this article in response:
Proud Nepali Besaray
https://theannapurnaexpress.co...
You can see how I advocated for guava leaf tea for delta, and Prime Minister Oli also started to advocate for its use. This led to poor people nationwide adopting it as a measure of prevention. I had already written about the healing properties of guava in 2010—you can see the article here:
http://sushma.blogspot.com/201...
In addition, Prime Minister Oli was widely reviled for advocating for guava leaf tea for delta strain of covid. I believe that this skepticism receded once people started to note the mass deaths in the West, and the way in which people who adopted ayurvedic principles of food and healing were able to weather the pandemic with less side effects and financial losses.
“Now that mutant variant of #covid requires tougher measures, #traditional #medicine also needs new herbs.
Here's the old favorite #guava leaf: I saw it being sold as tea in Thailand, although not used in Ayurveda. Bark tea is used in Nepal for diarrhoea.”
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
https://twitter.com/joshi_sushma/status/1493537896753950725
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
Note the tweets had to be somewhat aggressive in order to get the attention of people who were completely convinced Ayurveda and natural healing was nonsense and therefore without any validity:
https://twitter.com/joshi_sush...
https://twitter.com/search?q=%...
I would like to set up a global organization which advocates for natural healing and traditional healing systems. I believe that people should plant local plants with healing properties close to their homes, and use it on a daily basis, as our ancestors have done for much of human existence until the past 100 hundred years, when corporations took over the authority to make medicine. Because I advocate for local solutions, I don’t want the institution to be the uber authority which decides which medicine is harmful or beneficial—this has to be decided by local communities themselves after localized usage and testing. People will adopt medicine if it works well and has no harmful side effects. Many of these are known for generations and are not new to the cultural pharmacopeia of that place and time.
I also believe that these disparate healing systems worldwide are a strength and not a weakness in keeping pandemics at bay. Asset management propaganda and globalized corporations have depicted these systems as uncivilized, backwards, and not comparable to the modern technologies and methodologies of modern scientific pharmacological standards. But what is undeniable is that science itself is becoming increasingly problematic with new, opaque techniques involving gene splicing, human embroyonic and fetal cells in vaccines, as well as testing on monkeys which torture animals in restricted, inhumane lab settings. None of these methods of making medicine is necessary when people worldwide have always tested herbs through animals and livestock that they kept in their farms and homes, then tested the herbs in small amounts once they determined it was not poisonous for humans. Most herbs in traditional healing systems have been tested on humans for hundreds if not thousands of years of “clinical trials”.
I would eventually like to make medicines with curative and preventative properties for the global market, using herbs found in the Himalayas. These preparations would be based on traditional usage, with some modern modifications (perhaps a throat curing herb sold as a tea rather than a visually medical looking tablet or ball or other recognizably pharma product.)
Natural herb.
- A new application of an existing technology
- Ancestral Technology & Practices
- 1. No Poverty
- 3. Good Health and Well-being
- Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
I have always advocated for inclusive policies in the organizations where I have worked or led.
Start a business which would make new medicines from herbs in Nepal. The medicines would be based on ayurvedic and sowa rigpa principles, but also would be based on new research.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
Through patents, sales, workshops.
No funding raised, as of this moment.