Today, herbal treatments and remedies are all the rage. People are increasingly turning to natural herbal remedies to fix what ails them. Many people have become fearful of the side effects of pharmaceutical medicines and have begun to investigate what nature has to offer as an alternative.
Herbs have been used as medicine for thousands of years, in every culture around the world. Many ancient uses of herbs stand today as effective treatments. In the Bible, it is said that God gave the people herbs to serve as medicine. Many people find that hard to argue!
Although natural herbal remedies have now attained almost a “fad” status, being a trendy topic in our society, there's more to this than meets the eye. The study of natural herbal remedies is a fascinating subject when you consider that individual societies, thousands of miles apart, have found the same plant to be an effective treatment for the same condition, hundreds of years apart and with no communication between the cultures. This observation alone leads you to conclude, there must be something to this!
Another interesting facet to the study of natural herbal remedies is that of plants indigenous to a certain region addressing conditions inherent to the particular environment. For example, in tropical regions, malaria is rampant. Coincidentally, Cinchona, a tree native to Peru and Ecuador, yields a medicinal dose of quinine in the bark of the tree sufficient to cure malaria.
Another example of these natural herbal remedies is Hoodia. Hoodia is currently a weight loss ingredient in tablets touted to burn the fat off a toad. Hoodia is naturally occurring in the Australian outback, where indigenous peoples have used this herb for centuries to quell their hunger while on long hunting trips.
Chapparal, also known as “creosote bush” has been known as a treatment for certain types of cancer by Native Americans in the American southwest. Anecdotal reports of skin cancer cures are still appearing in news stories, credited to a tea prepared from the leaves of Chapparal.
There are many outstanding natural herbal remedies which effectively treat some fairly horrendous terminal illnesses. There is the famous Essiac cancer cure, a combination of a number of herbs developed by a 19th century Canadian nurse, gleaned from native sources. Dandelion root has cured people of liver cancer.
The main obstacle to general acceptance of natural herbal remedies lies in the culture of major pharmaceutical companies. Herbs cannot be patented, so these natural herbal remedies are not profitable enough to support millions of dollars of research money spent to produce these magic pills. Instead, pharmaceutical companies extract individual components of herbs and combine them with synthetic ingredients to produce a chemical wonder that may be patented, and sold at a high price.
It's indeed a sad commentary on our society's values when good medicine is cast aside and maligned, motivated by simple greed. Natural herbal remedies deserve a closer look.
Showing posts with label herbal treatments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label herbal treatments. Show all posts
Monday, March 10, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
General Herbal Treatments - The Trendy Way
Herbal diet pills are very popular these days as an alternative to more traditional methods of weight loss like diet and exercise. Herbal treatments in general are very trendy today, which I find a little worrisome for several reasons.
First of all, just about anything can be in an herbal diet pill. ‘Herbs’ are a kind of loophole in the FDA system, as they are not classified as drugs and therefore don’t have the rigorous standards for testing and safety that drugs normally get. Make no mistake about it though, herbs can be every bit as potent and harmful as drugs. The difference between medicinal herbs and drugs is really quite vague anyway, as most drugs themselves come from a kind of plant or herb.
Most of the time the ‘herbal’ classification doesn’t last very long; the FDA eventually calls it a drug and brings in the scientists. When that happens herbal diet pills often either become available only by prescription or are banned completely. Snooping around a little from site to site selling herbal diet pills, it is clear that the makers of these things are all too familiar with the FDA. Many sites even use it to their advantage saying things to the effect of ‘buy it now before the FDA bans it!’. You have to ask yourself, if the FDA is likely going to ban an herbal diet pill you’re interested in, should you be taking it at all?
I took a few herbal diet pills in college once on a whim, and I didn’t eat anything for nearly two days afterwards. I also didn’t really get much sleep either. Anything that makes you wired like that and kills your appetite so completely just isn’t good for you. While they were ‘ephedra free’ and were supposedly totally natural and safe, I don’t think I’d ever felt so polluted and ill in my life. A year later I discovered that the FDA had banned the same herbal diet pills I had taken, and I have to wonder what it was I had put in my body.
Anyway, just don’t be fooled by the word ‘herbal’ in an herbal diet pill. I would actually trust a regular diet pill that is FDA approved a lot more than some herbal diet pill concoction that has who knows what in it. The words herbal and natural are marketing ploys and should never be confused with the word safe unless there’s been some testing to prove it.
First of all, just about anything can be in an herbal diet pill. ‘Herbs’ are a kind of loophole in the FDA system, as they are not classified as drugs and therefore don’t have the rigorous standards for testing and safety that drugs normally get. Make no mistake about it though, herbs can be every bit as potent and harmful as drugs. The difference between medicinal herbs and drugs is really quite vague anyway, as most drugs themselves come from a kind of plant or herb.
Most of the time the ‘herbal’ classification doesn’t last very long; the FDA eventually calls it a drug and brings in the scientists. When that happens herbal diet pills often either become available only by prescription or are banned completely. Snooping around a little from site to site selling herbal diet pills, it is clear that the makers of these things are all too familiar with the FDA. Many sites even use it to their advantage saying things to the effect of ‘buy it now before the FDA bans it!’. You have to ask yourself, if the FDA is likely going to ban an herbal diet pill you’re interested in, should you be taking it at all?
I took a few herbal diet pills in college once on a whim, and I didn’t eat anything for nearly two days afterwards. I also didn’t really get much sleep either. Anything that makes you wired like that and kills your appetite so completely just isn’t good for you. While they were ‘ephedra free’ and were supposedly totally natural and safe, I don’t think I’d ever felt so polluted and ill in my life. A year later I discovered that the FDA had banned the same herbal diet pills I had taken, and I have to wonder what it was I had put in my body.
Anyway, just don’t be fooled by the word ‘herbal’ in an herbal diet pill. I would actually trust a regular diet pill that is FDA approved a lot more than some herbal diet pill concoction that has who knows what in it. The words herbal and natural are marketing ploys and should never be confused with the word safe unless there’s been some testing to prove it.
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