Arctic Drugs

Factual Questions
1

It’s thought that Amazon people, as well as other tropical cultures, learned how to treat at least some diseases with substances derived from the rain forest. In fact I believe we continue to discover new pharmacological substances from rare tropical plants and animals. So presumably, hundreds of years ago, long before contact with more “modern” cultures, tropical people had access to crude medicinals to treat some ailments. But what about cultures that survived in the frozen polar regions? How did inuit cultures, for example, treat their diseases? Did they derive medicinals from seal fat? Or did they not suffer from most common diseases due to their extreme climate and harsh environment?

2

Believe it or not, during the summer months here on the tundra (Jun-Sept) there is a cornucopia of plants, lichens, grasses, mosses,low shrubs, flowers, etc that grow. They tend to grow very quickly due to the short growing season. I do know that there are indeed traditional Inuit remedies for different ailments, however I have no idea as to what they actually are.

3

Here’s a bit on Inuit use of herbs.
It is to be expected however, that potential medicinal compounds are going to be much rarer in arctic regions than in the tropics.

  • First, the overall diversity of plants and other organisms is much lower in the arctic.

  • Second, as a corollary, tropical plants have to deal with a very wide range of insect herbivores, fungal infections, other diseases, etc. For this reason they have a wide array of bioactive compounds to fend these other organisms off. And compounds that are active against one kind of organism may fortuitously be active against human disease organisms, or have physiological or other effects that make them useful drugs.

4

Perhaps surprisingly, Arctic plants have much higher micronutrient content than their relatives living in milder climates. Vitamin C, for instance, helps plants minimize frost damage. As a result the vitamin C content of many inconspicuous arctic plants is quite staggering. Eating local flora must’ve been a (preventative) medicine in it’s own right.