I love it when my Thai business day gets down and dirty and connected to the astounding healing plants and herbs which surround this northern city of Chiang Mai.
Just a few days ago, I found myself ordering and paying for a consignment of gorgeous vanilla pods from high up in the mountains of Doi Tung.
Where in the heck is Doi Tung? "Doi" means mountain in Thai, and we're taking close to the northern border and the Golden Triangle. Although Doi Tung is only 258km from my Chiang Mai office, it's probably a 5-6 hour drive, depending on the weather and traffic on steep, single lane mountain roads.
What was curious was the discussion with my Thai staff, who'd had to assist me ordering and paying for it online, since the farmer I bought it from isn't actually Thai, per se, but Thai-Akha, which means he speaks a northern tribal dialect.
My staff were INCREDULOUS at what I paid for the vanilla pods. 🤣 To be honest, they're sold by the pod and not by weight, per se, and the price I got for premium, local & organic vanilla was about the same as what I would pay for chemically grown imported Madagascan vanilla pods. 10 pods weighing in at around 90g cost a little over USD $50. Yes, REAL vanilla is the second most expensive herb-spice in the world, second only to saffron. Even high quality weed is much, much cheaper here!
Having explained the rare orchid which produces vanilla pods, and the curing process, my staff looked back dumbly and asked why we didn't just give up the herbal product business and start a vanilla farm. 🤣 Which in turn led to a chat about how incredibly difficult it is to grow.
Thai vanilla, Vanilla siamensis, a member of the Orchidaceae family, is one of many cultivars around the world which share the common name Vanilla and share the same unusual botanical characteristic: the blooms are unbelievably short-lived and dead within the day. Each orchid plant produces flowers over just a few weeks, in the right conditions, and pods only form when the flowers are pollinated by particular species of bee. Nowadays, vanilla flowers are painstakingly hand-pollinated, usually using a toothpick.
And then came the clanger:
"Boss, why not just buy vanilla in the bottle? Very cheap at bakery store."
And that sparked a longish rave 😁 from me about the 200 plus amazing poly-phenols and flavenoids that are found in natural vanilla pods. And the fact that this plant was so revered and important to the Aztec culture, that they demanded it as a TAX from the Totanacs whom they invaded and conquered back in the 15th century in the mountainous regions of northern Mexico.
My staff, knowing me very well, asked me "What else is Vanilla good for?"
The Aztecs used vanilla pods combined with natural cacao in their sacred xocolatl rites. When you use any of the traditional search engines, you basically come up with the fact that vanilla was used medicinally, but has never really been studied enough to verify those claims.
But after some digging on base-search.net, I found some fascinating information that filled in my own knowledge gap substantially. The primary flavonoid which has been studied, Vanillin is found to have the following huge range of healing properties:
anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, anti-sickling, anti-amyloid aggregation and inhibition of non-enzymatic glycation, antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-quorum sensing, antibiotic potentiation, wound healing/tissue engineering, antiviral”, “toxicity”, “nanoparticles” and “nanocarriers". Source
Suddenly my secret plan to soak some vanilla pods in vodka for 6 months takes on a little more of the moral high ground. 🤣 Love having a whole new range of socially acceptable justifications for a relaxing vanilla-vodka over ice on the front porch at dusk.
Did I start out using vanilla in our Vanilla-Cassia Beeswax Lip Balm for its medicinal properties? Errr.... no. I wanted something that paired well in terms of fragrance for the anti-viral cassia (wild cinnamon) that protects against cold sores, and also wanted something artisan and hand grown which would support the struggling tribal and ethnic groups high up in the northern Thai mountains. I also needed something that wouldn't taste bitter or nasty, given that studies have shown we end up DIRECTLY INGESTING about 40% of our lip products.
And so our lip balm has gained a few notches in its healing properties, given that the epithelial skin inside our lips is FAR more effective at absorbing molecular compounds, of both the healing kind and the toxic variety.
I'm constantly striving to add more medicine plants into my daily life - the drip, drip, drip of better natural health through a steady inflow of healing agents and compounds. I love knowing more about herbs and healing plants, and hope this shared blog journey has taken vanilla well and truly out of the "just a flavor" category.
Grateful in my natural Thai world.
And suddenly craving the rich, heady scent of natural vanilla!
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