Big Pharma has displaced the healer, the shaman and the medicine man in modern society, but 25-year-old Deanna Rose is helping to revive the art of the apothecary in a step toward helping people reclaim control of their own health.
In recent months the creator of Indigo Elixirs has brought her traveling shop to Art+Flea, the Honolulu Night Market and farmers markets, offering skin lotions, custom scents utilizing essential oils and Solve All Salve, made entirely with Hawaii-sourced oils and herbs. The salve won top honors this summer in the medicinal salve competition at the 11th International Herb Symposium in Massachusetts.
The salve ($6) is formulated with virgin cold-pressed oils of coconut, macadamia nut, kukui, kamani and neem, infused with aloe vera and several other natural plant chemicals to help soothe wounds, burns, rashes and other irritated or itchy conditions. Other Indigo Elixir products include a headache relieving Head Tonic ($5) of lavender, rosemary and peppermint essential oils, and Chocolate Mud body scrub ($8/$15) of coffee, cacao powder, coconut flour, raw agave and more.
In the Middle Ages the apothecary dispensed "materia medica," or healing substances derived from plants and minerals. Today that role is filled by doctors and pharmacists, but Rose believes much has been lost in the transition. For instance, aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, is a derivative of salicylate found in willow trees. Stomach bleeding and pain are side effects of taking aspirin, and Rose believes that by extracting one working ingredient, modern medicine loses other essential elements.
"People might be better off brewing white willow bark tea, which has natural tannins that protect your stomach," she said. "With herbalism the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When you take a single extract out of a plant, you lose its natural checks and balances."
Rose started simply, not as a crusader, but as a young woman who had battled dry skin and dry hair all her life while growing up in Massachusetts. Her eureka moment came during a trip to Europe, where naturally derived skin care products are prized and she had access to farmers markets. Pretty soon she was in her kitchen whipping up avocado hair masks, skin oils and body butters, and when friends and family members saw her results, they started asking for batches.
"At some point I realized I could sell it," said Rose, who had grown up working in an uncle’s health food store.
Although she enrolled at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., with the intention of majoring in international studies, she changed direction, entering an herbal apprenticeship program at the Misty Meadows Farm and Herbal Center in New Hampshire. There students were sent out to gather and catalog their own materia medica comprising 100 useful plants, many of which "people consider to be weeds," she said, such as gotu kola and dandelion.
She also started studying ayurvedic (traditional medicine of India) and holistic medicine, and moved to Hawaii after learning about the University of Hawaii’s ethnobotany program. Here she became immersed in Hawaiian flora.
"I immediately fell in love with a place where plants grow all year-round. In Massachusetts it took more planning to make sure I had enough to last through winter. I’d been making products for four years, but here the emphasis on local takes on a whole new meaning. If we’re trying to eat locally, we might as well have local medicines and local skin care. My goal is to have everything Hawaii-sourced.
"When you’re working with plants fresh from your garden, you know there’s still life in them, there’s still mana."
She grows many of her plants at her Manoa home and works closely with other growers and providers, including friends who make cold-pressed olive oil, so she can vouch for the organic nature of her ingredients. She enjoys customizing her products based on a buyer’s needs and preferences, working with 60 to 70 herbs and 30 to 40 essential oils.
ROSE’S TIMING could not be better. Over the past few years, cosmetics consumers have become more aware of daily contact with chemicals that are potentially hazardous with long-term exposure. The skin is the largest organ and serves as a portal for outside elements to enter the body.
"Just as you can buy a frozen dinner, it’s not the same as buying a bunch of vegetables and cooking it yourself; you have to be aware of putting nutritious things on your skin," she said. "Plants are very healing, and most cosmetic products are petroleum-derived, which is not healing at all. Fragrances are my No. 1 pet peeve. … They’re mostly artificially made, and you don’t know what’s in them."
She hopes more people will apply the same types of questions asked about the food supply to cosmetics and medicine.
Her goal is to open a shop where she will be able to create custom perfumes, lotions, tinctures and teas on the spot.
"In the history of different cultures, there’s always been a medicinal plant that healers and shaman have cultivated, passing down their knowledge through the generations. I want to uphold that tradition," Rose said. "It’s a lot of fun, and I can feel good about sharing something with people that is really healthy."
Toward that end she will teach two free classes on starting a medicine garden, at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Oct. 12 at Geobunga, 4299 Lawehana St. Next year she will offer a five-month herbal apprenticeship with David Bruce Leonard, founder of the Earth Medicine Institute.
Last year she launched a campaign to send some of her products, eye drops, toothpaste and insect repellent to an orphanage at Siem Reap, Cambodia.
And what she’s working on now is a plant-derived sunscreen that doesn’t block vitamin D, which protects against skin cancer.
