Cassia Tora a Wonder leaf in the making
All the wonder food kinds are quite expensive. So what about one that is not just cheap, but apparently free, atleast for now.
Dr Tapas Chakma was a young Indian scientist in the early 1990s, working with tribals of central India. A chance news item in a local newspaper and a visit to a tribal hamlet in Mandla, close to Jabalpur, were he worked, changed his career and life.
There, he found children of the same village with severe bone deformities. As a doctor working with tribals, he knew about malnourishment among them and Calcium deficiency Rickets. But this was something different.
This set him exploring and he found that the root of the problem was water which they were drinking. It contained high amount of fluoride that was causing the bone deformities, and their Calcium deficiency was only making it worse.
As a doctor, he was limited to making inroads into their water problem, but he worked on getting them safer water, by making the water department know about this. But the problem of Calcium remained.
That is were Cassia Tora came in. Known as Chakora Bhaaji in these parts of Central India, it grows wildly and is consumed in the monsoon as a green leafy vegetable. Dr Chakma had a look at these leaves in his lab, and found extraordinary amount of Calcium in it. Later results showed it also contained good amount of Magnesium and Vitamin C, that are important for Fluorosis affected patients.
His work led to recovery of these children, and today Cassia Tora is powdered and used in some parts of Madhya Pradesh in central India.
Known as Chakramardha in Ayurvedic literature, Cassia Tora is available across India, known as Kuvadia, Puvadia, Tagarai, and other names in different languages. This and other green leafy vegetables keep our bones healthy and save us from serious problems such as Fluorosis.
To know more, Visit www.fluorideindia.org and joinwww.facebook.com/groups/fluorideindia/
