mugwort tea and kite patch

[asakiyume]

mugwort tea

A cool drink for a hot day, an infusion of mugwort leaves. Mugwort grows so tall, pale and silvery on one side, olive green on the other; I just pick the tips, pretending I'm harvesting tea. Well, it will be a tea of sorts.

It has a scent like chrysanthemum and pine. Here's leftovers from the first batch:



It looks like rich pond scum doesn't it? But it's delicious and cooling.

kite patch

This is an amazingly innovative idea for a fighting mosquito-born diseases like malaria, dengue fever, encephalitis, and West Nile virus. It's a tiny, nontoxic patch that you put on your clothing. It disrupts the mosquitos' reception of your CO₂ signature, so they don't find and bite you. It lasts for 48 hours.

It's been proven effective and safe in preliminary tests, but, as with all pharmaceutical developments, it takes a whole lot of money and time to get FDA approval. Boy would I love to have some of those patches to take with me to East Timor! Both the teachers I'll be working with have suffered bouts of dengue fever, which is rife in Dili. But it's not available to the public yet, except in the test area of Uganda.

The indigogo kite patch campaign has reached its initial goal, but as with many of these campaigns, there are various stretch goals. Take a look and see what you think.

Comments

[avalonestel.livejournal.com]

I'd love to try "mugwort tea" one day! :)

Also, those patches sound amazing! But as usual, all the technical and political things can easily get in the way, like with malaria medicine itself, and slow things down. *sigh* We have solutions. It's the implementation that makes things hard.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The kite patch seems to have garnered a lot of attention, so with luck it'll move through the approval process quickly. (And a *little* slowness I don't mind: I'd rather be sure things are truly safe and truly effective before they get out there on the market.)

One day I'll make you mugwort tea!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it is true and am too lazy to look it up, but I heard from someone who got dengue fever that the mosquitos that carry it always bite on the neck. If that is so: Make sure you spray your nape!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! I definitely will!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The kite patch sounds exciting, but I suspect it will only be a short-term solution. Mosquitoes are amazingly good at adapting.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You're probably right. It would be great if were possible to develop an algorithm of stepwise changes in the formula of the patch that made it possible to stay one step ahead of the mosquitos.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

So we force them to adapt the way we want them to: engineer them to have a distaste for humans... somehow. If only.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

From a human-centric point of view, that seems like an ideal solution to me--it's not like there's any shortage of other blood-filled animals for them to feast on. (Right now all the mammals and birds in the world are looking at me and saying, "Thanks, pal.")

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

If only there was some other way breeding mosquitos could get their protein.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

More subtly, perhaps, if there was a way to help another species outcompete the anopheles mosquito, it incidentally stop the transmission of malaria. Until the virus evolves as well, of course...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The universe says, "you like challenges, right? .... right?"

[judo100.livejournal.com]

What does mugwort taste like? It really does look like pond scum, but I hope it tastes better than that!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It tastes like it smells--astringent and vaguely piney on top of floral (edited to add: a nice taste!)

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

I have heard that there exists a patch that uses simple B-12 to drive off skeeters.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Huh! I didn't know about that.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I just bought some lemon stuff to spray to scare off skeeters. They adore my skin.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The Australians call them mossies, and we call them skeeters--funny!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

mossies==heh! I like that!