This is a qualitative study which adopted anthropology and ethnography as its theoretical-methodological reference. It presents of experiences lived by women from a community during the health-disease process. It aims to comprehend the social-cultural and historical causes of popular prevention and care practice adopted by a cultural group through semi-structured interviews. The emerging themes were: the relation between feeding and the health-care process, the relations with the official health care and the health-sickness process, and the supernatural. The data showed that the researched community residents have a peculiar way of explaining the health-sickness process, admitting natural, social and supernatural causes that orientate their therapeutic procedures. We consider that it is the health professionals' rule in their practices, to adopt approaches that consider the individual in its social-cultural and historical dimension, keeping in mind the enormous cultural diversity of our country.
Culture; Cultural anthropology; Traditional medicine