When it comes to cold prevention, no herbal product has a more established history as that of Echinacea.  People have been swearing by the cold prevention powers of the Echinacea plant for many generations.  In fact, it was widely used by Native Americans to treat colds, coughs, sore throats, toothaches, and even snakebites.

It was believed that Echinacea could fight the onset of colds and the flu by giving a boost to the users’ immune system but recent studies are casting doubt on that claim.  However, many experts are in agreement that the use of Echinacea is effective in the treatment of the early stages of upper respiratory infections.  And again, there is no evidence that it will help prevent those infections.

As you may well know, the cold and flu industry generates over a $100 Billion each year and you can be certain some of that money is being spent to disrepute competition.

What are the Side Effects?

The reported side effects from taking Echinacea are mostly allergy related.  Abdominal pain, nausea, and dizziness have also been reported.

It’s important to consult your doctor before taking any herbal products because they can and do interact with other prescribed medications.  Echinacea contains properties that have an affect on the immune system so only take products that have been tried and tested or come from well experienced herbalists.

Other uses of Echinacea

Echinacea, also called the purple cone flower, is a part of the daisy family.  The plant has a very colorful flower and is widely used as an ornamental plant in gardens.  The plant can grow to between 2’ and 4’.  They reseed and grow in clusters. This plant is mostly found through out central US but can survive in more humid climates of the South East US.

Tea is known for its wondrous ability to help reduce stress and decrease a person’s chance for heart disease, but can it help us lose weight? Actually, studies show that it can help us shed some of those unwanted pounds.

Tea is a natural way to boost your energy without the need for any harmful medications or supplemental drugs. Your energy level goes up, enabling you to exercise more, which in turn enables you to burn off those fat calories.

Tea has also been shown to increase the metabolic rate at which the body naturally burns off the fat calories to shed extra pounds. Studies show that tea can burn off about 80 calories a day in addition to a good exercise regimen.

Green tea is thought to contain flavonoids, which enhance the body’s use of a hormone called norepinephrine. It’s though that the hormone encourages the body’s metabolic rate for burning of the fat calories.

Studies also show that green tea contains an extract that enhances fat oxidation speed. These tests results are based on an average consumption of 3-5 cups of green tea a day.

This was compared to a group that received a placebo product, which didn’t report any difference in increased energy. Adding tea to your diet program is an excellent choice for those who want to lose weight but fear the harmful effects that diet pills and powders are known for.

Tea provides them with increased energy without needing a steroidal product.
You’re providing your body with much more than just increased energy by drinking tea. Tea also provides you with a strengthened immune system, it helps alleviate some arthritis symptoms and can even decrease your chances of developing cancer.

Your body also gets the water it needs – all by just drinking a few cups of tea a day. It isn’t recommended that you drink too much tea with caffeine, though. A little doesn’t normally hurt, but if caffeine isn’t on your diet plan or you just don’t want to put your body at risk with caffeine, and then just use decaffeinated tea.

Tea is an all-natural way to shed those few extra pounds without causing any harm to your body with diet pills, which don’t always work anyway. Some of those pills have been linked to addictions and heart problems, but tea has been proven to be safe for use in any diet program.

Give it a try the next time you want to lose a few pounds. Challenge yourself to do it safely and naturally and see just how much weight you can shed by adding a few cups of tea to your diet instead of sodas and other high-calorie drinks.

The polyphenols are found in the camellia sinensis plants, which are crushed and then fermented into common teas, such as green tea, black tea and the oolong tea. These polyphenols have been extensively studied to determine the extent of their benefits.

The studies showed that they contain about 10 times the amount of antioxidants than what are found in our fruits and vegetables. The antioxidants are a powerful ally in the fight against ailments like cancer.

The ones found in the green and black teas are different than the antioxidants that are found in fruits and vegetables. Green and black teas contain flavonoids, such as the catechins, that can seek out and destroy chemicals that damage a body’s cells, and cause cancers to form.

Tea is also thought to defend against toxic chemicals that we see with inhaling tobacco smoke. They protect cells from these nasty enemies and prevent them from damaging our body’s cells.

Tea can defend against other ailments like blood clot formations, high cholesterol and it can possibly delay the onset of diseases like diabetes. Polyphenols are also known for their aid in weight loss programs and in the defense against halitosis and dental problems.

They can also improve skin conditions and they are possibly linked to aiding in the delay of Parkinson symptoms. The benefits don’t stop there, though. It’s reported that tea can help reduce your chances for skin cancer – and in some cases, by using the tea extract in lotion form, you may be able to block the damage from the sun.

Tea is known to slow the growth of already-formed tumors, it protects your bones from frailty, and even boosts your immune system so you can lessen your chances for colds, throat infections and flu symptoms.

With the results of these studies on the polyphenols, it’s recommended that you drink about 8-10 cups of green or black tea daily in order to reap from their health benefits.

Balance the cups with caffeinated and decaffeinated teas to prevent the side effects of caffeine. Some experts are considering these teas with powerful antioxidants to be healthier than drinking water.

Water doesn’t provide you with the polyphenols that the teas do, which offer us tons of health benefits as well as nutrients. By adding these teas to your health regimen daily, you can increase your chances of a healthier lifestyle and decrease your chances for contracting diseases, ailments and some types of modern-day cancers.

More and more consumers are taking their health into their own hands and using naturopathic medicine to treat what ails them. Taking a natural approach, using herbs and other non-synthetic treatments, gives the consumer a whole body healing approach, rather than the dominant single-symptom treatments doctors seem so fond of in modern medicine.

Naturopathy allows you to treat your entire body to put it back on track to good health. It combines the mind, body, and spirit in all treatments so that your internal and mental state gets back in balance and has a stronger ability to stave off infection and heal faster than usual.

For thousands of years, our ancestors have practiced naturopathic medicine because it’s all they knew and had on hand before the culmination of man-made prescriptions took root.

Herbs today are being used in conjunction with spiritual rituals to treat hundreds of human illnesses. Your body was designed to be able to heal itself, as is evident with the natural antibodies you produce when infection strikes. But sometimes you need a boost, and herbs deliver what the body sometimes can’t.

Naturopathy uses herbs to help the body heal faster by boosting its natural abilities, not introducing foreign substances into the body that you eventually build up an immunity to over time.

You’ll notice that if you follow the teachings of naturopathic medicine, you won’t be sent on your way with an herb or two in your pocket to take care of the problem. Instead, you’ll be encouraged to live a better life spiritually and mentally, as well as take care of your physical health in all areas, such as diet and exercise.

Herbs can only do so much healing. If a consumer isn’t willing to take the necessary steps to eliminate bad things from their diet, or implement a positive outlook on life, then the disabilities ailing them will continue to return time and time again.

Those who use herbs to continue on a path to naturopathic treatments are people who believe in non-toxic therapies. Synthetic prescriptions are not natural to the body, and can sometimes produce disabling side effects on their own.

As the medicinal form of naturopathy develops even further over the coming years, you’ll see an increase in the number of other treatment paths who use a whole body approach and believe in treating the person, not the prognosis.

Tea starts its debut in the medicinal sense in the ancient times of China and Japan. Tea was popular – not only for the delightful taste it provided – but for offering health benefits as well.

It was commonly used for ailments such as headaches, depression-like symptoms, boosting energy for those who were fatigued, and even to aid in improving eyesight.
As the story goes, an emperor was presented with a cup of hot water that had turned brown from a leaf that had dropped into a pot of boiling water.

He was pleased with the taste of it and from that point on, tea was born. It was also ground into a paste-like substance and was applied to reduce pain and inflammation as seen in rheumatoid arthritis.

It became popular with Buddhists as a means to stay awake for long periods of meditation. As the centuries came and went, tea evolved, but kept its medicinal purposes. Instead of drinking the tea to rid themselves of their ailments, our ancestors started to ground up the leaves and boiled them with food such as rice, ginger and milk.

Tea is also reported to have been used for things like normal aches and pains, digestion problems and as a means of boosting a body’s immune system to defend against any foreign bodies that enter our bodies.

It was an historic belief that tea also held religious properties that enabled those who drank it to elongate their life expectancy. Tea traveled to many different countries and its medicinal benefits came along with it.

Tea was used for everything from skin problems to joint pain to mood enhancers. It became the choice of treatment for the strange diseases and ailments that plagued citizens around the world.

In many cases, the tea helped decrease one’s chances of contracting these diseases and lessened their suffering once the disease took hold of their lives. Tea became popular and was used throughout medical history.

Its uses expanded to include spiritual healing. One would drink the tea for the purpose of obtaining peace and serenity for the mind to balance it with the body and achieve oneness with nature as they saw it.

Over the years, tea has found its way through many more countries and its uses became more apparent. It was used in the high societies as a sign of a distinguished person and people drank it for sheer enjoyment.

In recent years, the medicinal purposes have come more to light. Tea been linked to help decrease our chances for diseases and eliminate some problems like pain and bad breath.

Tea has been around for many centuries and its medicinal purposes have withstood the test of time as they continue to be used today. This shows how insightful our ancestors were centuries ago by the fact that today’s researchers can use advanced science to test theories that have long prevailed.

For women suffering from hot flashes during menopause and perimenopause, finding a cure is often a long process. But amid all of the synthetic treatments on the market, none compare to natural herbal treatments that have been used for centuries by women in the know.

Hot flashes, which are noted by increased heat and flushing in the face, is common among women approaching menopausal age, and some are afflicted by severe symptoms. Finding relief in the form of natural herbs helps eliminate stress that accompanies the problem.

While hormone therapy is used by many women, others prefer the natural route, taking doses of Vitamin E and Vitamin B to aid in the easing of symptoms. But herbs play an important role in natural hot flash therapy.

Flaxseed, also known as linseed, is used in whole seed and oil form to help ease hot flash symptoms. While there is no hard scientific evidence to back up the support of this claim, women have used it successfully for years.

Evening primrose oil is another herb commonly used to treat hot flashes during menopause. However, this botanical is sometimes accompanied by side effects such as diarrhea and nausea. It’s important to talk to your doctor before combining evening primrose with other medications, such as blood thinning drugs, because it could cause adverse reactions.

Soy products such as plant estrogen, which is found in isoflavones, contribute an estrogen-similar effect to the body to weaken hot flash symptoms. Many women concentrate on using soy-based food products to treat hot flashes, not soy supplements.

Another herbal remedy for hot flash symptoms during menopause and perimenopause is the use of black cohosh. As a short-term remedy, it works well. But side effects can include an upset stomach, so it needs to be used carefully.

With so much controversy in the news about hormone replacement therapy, it’s important that women find reliable natural ingredients they can use to treat various symptoms associated with menopause.

The herbs mentioned here only serve as a small reminder of natural cures you can find to treat a single symptom – hot flashes. There are dozens of other herbs that can help alleviate the other menopausal symptoms women have to endure over the years.

More and more consumers are approaching their doctors about getting natural herbal advice for their depression rather than being placed on synthetic anti-depressants. The most common herbal remedy is St. John’s Wort.

The best thing about using an herb in place of a prescribed anti-depressant is that the side effects are fewer in number and severity. You can’t take St. John’s Wort in conjunction with another anti-depressant or with certain other medications, so make sure you consult your doctor if you’re taking anything else before you add St. John’s Wort to the mix.

The NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) is helping consumers get educated about the use of St. John’s Wort to treat depression. They believe it’s best used to treat mild to moderate (but not severe) forms of depression.

What’s not yet known is exactly how St. John’s Wort works to treat depression. It’s believed that it might prevent nerve cells from reabsorbing serotonin, which is the chemical messenger in the body.

It’s been used and studied by scientists in treating mental disorders for centuries, but still remains somewhat of a mystery, even though its effectiveness in treating symptoms of depression such as mood swings, loss of appetite and energy, and sadness has been largely documented.

The reason consumers are turning to herbal remedies such as St. John’s Wort is because synthetic drugs have a high incidence of side effects, such as dry mouth, headaches, sexual dysfunction and insomnia. It’s also a less costly treatment than high-priced prescription medications.

You can buy St. John’s Wort in capsule form, as a tea, or as an extract. You have to be careful about the quantities you use in taking St. John’s Wort, because high level doses can impede the treatment process by causing dizziness, upset stomach, and a sensitivity to sunlight.

St. John’s Wort isn’t the only herb being used to treat depression. Damiana, Ginseng, and Valerian root are also used to improve depression symptoms such as insomnia and stress.

Regardless of which herbal remedy you wish to try in treatment for your depression symptoms, it’s important to get the guidance of a doctor skilled in herbal remedies to ensure you’re ingesting the correct amount and type of herb for your personal needs.

Its name originated out of the fact that some believe its leaves resembled the tooth of a lion, but for years the Dandelion has done more than just help bees make honey. While its juices are bitter, many animals consume the plant for various reasons, including its ability to stimulate milk production.

For humans, the benefits derived from the Dandelion are quite different. Some people do blanche the leaves and use them in salads, or eat them on sandwiches and in soups, but the plant also serves some medicinal needs.

Both the root and leaves of the Dandelion are used as an alternative to man-made prescriptions. The most powerful portion of the Dandelion is the milky white juice found within the root itself.

Dandelion has been harvested for centuries and is often most effective when the weed is in its infancy. It was first used as a medicinal treatment in the tenth century, when it was first used to treat liver ailments. Dandelion’s used to stimulate the entire system, but primarily focuses on the needs of the urinary tract.

Aside from the liver, Dandelion is also consumed for kidney disorders. While it can be taken in straight high doses without being poisonous, Dandelion is usually mixed with other agents in patent medicines and herbal treatments alike.

People who have chronic liver complaints over time often find relief in taking a soup made from Dandelion roots harvested at a young age. It’s said to provide a slight laxative effect and helps aid digestion when you have an upset stomach.

Dandelion has been used successfully in the treatment of gallstones and has also been found safe to give to children. The weed is given to those suffering eczema and other topical diseases and has even been known to remove warts when the juice of the stalk is applied as a topical treatment to the affected area.

A Dandelion tea is used to treat various urinary ailments. A single ounce of the juice is mixed with boiling water and then sweetened with honey before being served. The frequency and doses of how much Dandelion is consumed depends on the type of disease you’re treating.

For instance, to treat piles, you would take three wine glassfuls of Dandelion concoction per day, but for a liver and kidney treatment, you would only need to take 1 teaspoonful of a concoction three times a day.

Using Dandelion to resolve your medical issues is a great alternative to depending on high-priced prescriptions, but it’s always best to check with your doctor and make sure it’s suitable for your needs.