Indigenous Method of Curing Pulmonary Disorders Using Mangrove Fruit by the Lodha Peoples

The Lodha people reside in the Indian Sundarban islands. They are mainly engaged in fishing activities. They live very close to the river embankments and their major occupation orients around fishery-related livelihoods like deep sea fishing, fish drying, fish feed preparation, etc. Despite spending maximum hours in saline water and extreme humid environments, they hardly suffer from any kind of pulmonary disorders. This may be attributed to the regular intake of a specific fruit of a mangrove species named Sonneratia apetala. This species prefers freshwater habitats. This fruit is rich in Vitamin C as evidenced from our analysis and may be one of the important reasons to boost up their immune system. However, the present species is under threat due to rise in sea level and subsequent increase of salinity since the last 30 years (1984–2014). This paper is mainly a study on the Lodha tribe who resides in Indian Sundarbans, and their way to cure pulmonary disorder through old traditional methods. In the present study, the Lodha tribe was treated as the experimental population sample (n = 125) compared to the control population sample (n = 325), who were mainly the agriculturists, honey collectors and involved in animal husbandry.