Traditional Use of Herbs in Treating Urinary Disorders Among Indigenous Peoples of North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Indigenous Peoples historically created medicinal treatments derived from plants native to their environments. This review explores the herbs employed by different tribes across North America for treating presumed Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) signs and symptoms, such as burning, frequency, urgency, and incontinence. Antibiotics are the standard treatment for UTIs. The increase in microbial resistance prompts the exploration of alternative therapies. This review identifies these herbs to investigate whether they could be a potential alternative to antibiotics in modern medicine. Sources and Methods: Field notes, species descriptions, illustrations, and primary North American Indigenous Peoples’ phenological observations were reviewed for the herbs used to treat and prevent UTI symptoms in various tribal communities. Additionally, the geographic distribution of the herbs and the tribes was researched. Results: Wild mint (Mentha arvensis), was used by the Cherokee, Ojibwa, and Cree tribes. Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) grows throughout North America, was used by the Cree, Innu, Inuit tribes of Northeastern Canada, and contains arbutin, which has antiseptic and diuretic properties. The Iroquois, Micmac, Wampanoag, and Algonquin-speaking tribes, which spanned across Canada, used cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) to treat irritative urinary symptoms. Like cranberries, mossberries (Vaccinium oxycoccos) are found on low shrubs in northern, cold regions and were used by Inuit and Cree tribes. Algonquinspeaking tribes used Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) as the leaves and flowers have diuretic properties. The Eastern Cherokee used a mix of herbs that included Solidago odora for urinary problems. Conclusions: Indigenous People of North America employed a variety of herbs and berries to manage irritative urinary symptoms that may have been indicative of a UTI. Many of these natural remedies have since been discovered to contain compounds with proven antibacterial, antiseptic, and diuretic qualities. Exploring herbal therapeutics as alternatives to antibiotics is a promising avenue, especially given the rise in antibiotic resistance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".