"I am the Allower of my own Wellbeing"

A monthly newsletter written by Sherry Dell, PhD, CN

Volume 2, Issue 7
March 2009

 
The Castor Bean Plant, Ricinus communis

The Many Uses for the Castor Bean

Castor Beans (seeds)

*The active poison in castor seeds is ricin (RYE-sin). which is found in the meal that is leftover after the oil has been extracted; not in the pure oil itself. 

You may recall in 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who was living in London, died after he was attacked by a man with an umbrella. The umbrella had been rigged to inject a poison ricin pellet under Markov’s skin.

It's estimated that ricin is 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide and 12,000 times more poisonous than rattlesnake venom.   According to the Merck Index, a dose of ricin the weight of a single grain of table salt is enough to kill a 160 pound person. Eating as few as four seeds can cause death in an adult, and lesser amounts can cause vomiting, severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and convulsions. However, short of ingesting the seeds or running into a spy, accidental exposure to ricin is virtually impossible.

One of my favorite home remedies is castor oil.  You may have heard of it or even tried it as a laxative.  Since it is quite irritating to the intestinal tract, it is decidedly effective as a laxative.  However, I have seldom recommended it for that purpose (since there are so many more palatable options for natural laxatives).  Rather, I frequently recommend and use it for its topical properties.

Edgar Cayce (1) often gets credit for the invention of the castor oil pack, however, 4000-year-old Egyptian tombs have also been found to contain castor beans (seeds), so it's probably safe to say that the castor bean plant has been finding medicinal use for humans for a good long time.  In any case, the castor oil pack is a method of using castor oil topically for the purposes of pain relief and internal detoxification.  In my clinical practice, I've seen it relieve pain from injuries, hormone imbalance, and even cancer, as well as relieving discomforts stemming from liver or gallbladder congestion, skin eruptions, and spine or joint pain.

Make a castor oil pack for your own use in pain relief in this manner.  First buy a cold pressed or expeller pressed quality castor oil at a health food store.  Saturate a small cloth such as a washrag or piece of flannel and apply it to the painful area.  Cover the cloth with saran wrap or another cloth (castor oil is very sticky) and then apply a heat source such as a hot water bottle or moist heat pad and relax for 1 hour.  You can repeat this procedure on a daily basis as needed. One possible side effect is very soft skin.

In fact another excellent use for castor oil as a home remedy is as a topical moisturizing ointment for dry or cracked skin.  It is especially helpful for those deep cracks that often appear on the heel of the foot.  Remember, castor oil is sticky, so you may want to apply it in the evening immediately before bed or even put on a pair of socks or cover the moisturized area in some fashion to prevent it from attaching itself to other fabrics.

One other amazing use for castor oil that I've seen in my practice is as a detoxifying agent for use on moles, sun spots, age spots or other unusual discolorations, and even those little skin tags and bumps that appear with aging.  I say "amazing" because I have seen so many of these spots and bumps disappear with regular applications of castor oil.  Again, the only possible side effect is softer skin, so there isn't much of reason not to try.

1. Edgar Cayce, 1877-1945, sometimes called the "Sleeping Prophet," gave more than 14,000 readings produced in a meditative state, which are on file at the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc.