NATUROPATHIC DOCTOR

 NATUROPATHIC DOCTOR In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, NN turned 65 and lost the opportunity to work for the Ministry of Health or the Social Security for Rural Workers, where he had worked until 2017. This was due to his unwavering support for President Rafael Correa in the province of Esmeraldas, where he worked as a doctor for the Social Security for Rural Workers in the Galera San Francisco Reserve, the first marine reserve in South America, practicing general medicine and using medicinal plants. In that year, Lenin Moreno came to power, and a week after assuming power, he confessed to the press that he hated Correa and the Correa supporters, beginning a political persecution that started by imprisoning his vice president, Jorge Glas, and destroying UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, which had its headquarters in Quito, in the parish of San Antonio de Pichincha, where the monument to the Middle of the World is located, built in 1936 to remember the mission of the French geodesists who arrived in 1736 to measure a quadrant of the Earth's surface in order to define the shape and dimensions of the Earth and who invented the measure of the meter, equivalent to one 10 millionth of this quadrant. They proposed that the equator should be located at the point closest to Quito, a city that existed before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, as the second capital of the Inca Empire and which at that time was the seat of the Royal Audiencia of Quito. This Audiencia extended from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast of South America, following the course of the Amazon River, which was also explored by this mission of geodesists. Quito was chosen because it was the closest point to the sun, through which the Equator, which they defined as measuring 40,070 km, passes. It is also located at 2,850 meters above sea level, near the Cayambe Volcano, at 5,790 meters above sea level, through which the Equator also passes. At that time, quinine became the main export product of the Royal Audiencia of Quito. NN had become interested in the medicinal plants of Ecuador, one of the world's megadiverse countries, because he was a medical research associate at the Museum of Medicine of Ecuador. His professor, Dr. Eduardo Estrella, then director of the museum and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, asked him for help investigating the medicinal plants of the Ecuadorian coast, the cloud forest of Pichincha Province, where cinchona bark or quinine is produced (where his father owned property), and the tropical rainforest of Esmeraldas Province, where he practiced rural medicine. After completing his rural medical training, NN began selling sachets of dried Ecuadorian medicinal plants, which he obtained from the markets of Quito and from his father's property. From there, he primarily obtained quinine, which he used as a cardiac tonic, since its use as an antimalarial had been replaced by chloroquine after World War II. He also obtained dragon's blood, a medicine used for gastric ulcers, as a cosmetic, or as a healing agent; the "pedorrera" plant, used to relieve gas in intestinal colic; and, most notably, guaviduca, a plant that was simultaneously a spice, antispasmodic, and expectorant for uterine, intestinal, or renal colic, as well as bronchial spasms. Guaviduca grew abundantly on land his father had given him in the Tandapi area on the Quito-Santo Domingo Highway. He even provided samples of guaviduca to the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Central University for study. In 1981, he was presented with the opportunity to study in Volgograd how to do business in the newly formed Russian Federation. He began taking dried and dehydrated leaves of the plant to see if it could be exported to this new country born from the end of the USSR. From 1985 to 1986, he paid researchers at Lomonosov University, where he had a warehouse selling Ecuadorian roses in Russia, to conduct studies on rats to discover the plant's active ingredients and any undesirable reactions. However, the university researchers defrauded him; they never gave him the results until 1987, when he returned to Ecuador due to the death of his father, the death of his beloved grandmother a year earlier, and the bankruptcy of his company in Russia. This was caused by the so-called "Vodka Effect," a massive wave of business failures resulting from the abrupt devaluation of the ruble, which reduced the purchasing power of Russians. Back in Ecuador, he supported a German Technical Cooperation project called "The Non-Timber Use of the Forest in Ecuador," which offered him the opportunity to study the biochemistry of guaviduca at the University of Munich. However, he was also deceived, despite traveling to Germany to complain about the results. Today, in 2026, he envisions opening a natural products store to sell primarily guaviduca, chocolate, and other medicinal plants from Ecuador.