Jute mallow or mrenda which grows as a weed in Kenyan plots is a wonderfood that provides an all-in-one health booster for Kenyan families feeling the pain of the mounting cost of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease treatment, amid forever-rising living costs.
Falling supplies of nutritious foods and the reawakening of climate change-driven diseases like dengue fever and malaria have only added more health pressure for the country’s farming families.
But a comprehensive review of jute mellow, which scientists identified that it can treat more than 20 diseases. The weed which has been used as a medicine in traditional foods across the globe and has about three times more iron than sukumawiki can fend off cancers, diabetes, heart disease, malaria, mental aging, tumours, ulcers, inflammations, convulsions, excessive bleeding, and antibiotic resistance.
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Today, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease account for half of hospital admissions and 27 per cent of the total deaths in Kenya. They are the most costly diseases to treat with their diagnosis often leaving many indebted or dead. Almost every Kenyan has been a part of a WhatsApp group to donate their money and time to a suffering relative or friend.
Meanwhile, the country’s food prices are rising faster than the rest of Africa, creating one of the lowest levels of nutrition on the continent. A little less than half of our children under one are anemic which limits their physical and mental growth.
Previously ‘destroyed’ diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are also reemerging driven by global temperature rises increasing areas where mosquitoes can live and insecticide overuse which causes mosquitoes to develop resistance. According to the WHO, mosquitoes causing malaria and dengue fever have increased ten-fold in the past 20 years. In Kenya, this is evident in flare-ups of dengue reported over the last few months in Mombasa and Lamu counties as well as the rising cases of malaria burdening an already stretched medical system.
Jute mallow leaves and seeds contain cancer-preventing agents that kill cancer cells found along the organs in which food travels (oesophagus, stomach, and intestines). They also prevent them from being repaired. Cancer has risen to become the third leading cause of death in Kenya with oesophageal cancer killing 4,354 people annually– the third major cause of cancer deaths after cervical and breast cancers.
While its leaves are high in antioxidants that reduce the risk of cancers and heart disease, incorporating the wondrous crop into your diet helps keep heart diseases at bay. Heart diseases have risen at an alarming rate in Kenya over the last decade to become the leading cause of premature deaths (people under the age of 70) in Kenya. This is because jute seeds have similar heart-strengthening capabilities as Digitalis, a well-known heart medication.
The crop has also been used in traditional medicine to treat insulin resistance which is the main cause of type 2 diabetes. Between 2009–2019, diabetes-related deaths in Nairobi County rose 65 per cent. The chronic disease costs patients on average Sh77,081 annually to treat– one-third of the country’s average annual income. Plant extracts from jute mellow serve as a natural alternative to synthetic pills used to manage type 2 diabetes.
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When eaten fresh or dried mrenda leaves have more than a third of the daily recommended amount of iron. Incorporating it into children’s diets makes the weed a perfectly simple solution to sub-Saharan Africa’s child anemia/ iron deficiency problem.
Jute leaves were also found to be an over 96 per cent effective organic solution for malaria and dengue fever. In experiments the leaf extracts of jute mellow also kill harmful bacteria that cause infections and diseases such as cholera, e.coli, pneumonia salmonella, typhoid fever, and skin infections, which pose some of the most significant public health headaches due to their high resistance to antibiotics.