In 1492 Chris Colon, Admiral of All the Seas stumbled upon the New World. Shortly there after some drug pursuing Italians discovered that ignorant aborigines were eating tree bark in the lands we now call Equador and Peru. So they, the smart and enterprising Italian explorers, sent some samples back to the home office, whereupon the local Jesuit pharmicological staff decided that the tree bark might be good for combating malaria. Soon this bark was transporting all over Europe and the world. The Brits, enterprising world travelers that they were, took it to India where it became known for its bitter characteristic and developed the drink we call gin and tonic, as a reasonable means to consume the tree bark. The tonic contains quantities of this tree bark, and not so many people died of malaria as before.
The Dutch smuggled seeds of the tree bark source out of South America and took it to Java where they cultivated it and became a world source of the tree bark. The Brits tried to do similarly and were not as successful with their seeds. Along about the turn of the last century the US took seeds to Africa and were successful. Then WW2 happened and some smart American doctors extracted the core ingredient from the tree bark, calling it quinine. After that quinine made it way onto the shelves of most stores in the form of a bittering agent for stuff like Schweppes bottled water.
So things were all well and good and one thing led to another until a study (???) was done in 199X by the FDA, where upon they determined that the dosage of quinine needed for treating malaria was quite close to the level of quinine needed for killing patients. In their study they concluded that 93 people had died nationwide over a 28 year period from too high levels of quinine. So they began a campaign to remove quinine from the grocer shelves. Coincidently the US medical profession had determined that quinine could also be used for nocturnal leg cramps. This should not be confused with the latter day ailment du jour known as Restless Leg syndrome but is a different ailment. It is quite common in older folk. I have read somewhere that something like 70% of all mature adults suffer from this symptom. So widespread use of quinine for an "off prescription" has existed for decades. So on Dec 16,2006, the FDA decided that all misuse of quinine must stop and all manufacturers of quinine must cease production. There's a website at the FDA.gov that details these findings.
So last Friday after much discussion with my doctor, he wrote a prescription for 200 mg of the drug to be taken daily. 2000 mg is thought to be the lethal dosage. Quinine is available through Internet pharmacies in Canada at the 200 mg level. I had been taking 325 mg which was the acceptable US "off prescription" level previously. Upon receiving notice from my mail order drug supplier - MEDCO that my quinine prescription could not be refilled, I started down the path looking for alternatives. I immediately experimented with myself and discovered that by taking the quinine prescription every other day I could get by with the dreaded leg cramps. So now armed with the prescription that will allow me to order a lessor dosage supply from Canada I should be fine for a year.
But in the mean time, I also looked at homeopathic sources. The main supple seems to come from a company in the great southland called Hylands. When I called Hylands their people indicated that their formula contained less than .0001 percent of quinine and a whole list of other drugs which I was totally unfamiliar with.
In the end, I stumbled on an enterprise based in Carson City, Nevada that goes into the rainforest of South America and meets with the few remaining witch doctors and has developed a source of nutritional supplements from many types of bushes and trees, one of which is the bark of the tree that quinine was originally derived from. So I drove over to Carson City and toured their warehouse and ordering facility and determined that I would buy a kilo of the powered tree bark as a backup to my ongoing efforts to protect my supply of quinine. Now I have transported said kilo across state lines probably in violation of some ICC/ drug law somewhere.
I give praise to the good people at Raintree Nutrition for their efforts to thwart the FDA unprecedented attack upon the good people who have passed out quinine for these past 500 years or so.
Now you must excuse me while I go and eat some tree bark. |
