Bees have been in this planet for nearly 100 million, churning out important health foods like honey and royal jelly. Although honey is perhaps the most famous bee product of interest to human beings, beehives also contain propolis, another unknown little substance that humans have used for thousands of years. Recently, there have been interests by the public in this substance after several studies link propolis to curing terminal diseases like cancer.
Propolis is actually a resinous like substance that originates from trees and plants. Also known as bee glue, it is collected by bees to patch the hives, much like what we do with cement in our homes. (more…)
The healthiest oils are made of olives, flax seeds, walnuts and cedar nuts. Peanut oil and corn oil may provoke an allergic reaction in some people. Nevertheless, all vegetable oils can treat many disorders.
Vegetable oils have the ability to increase the HDL (good) cholesterol that your body needs and this will help to cleanse the blood vessels from the deposits. Also, vegetable oils will lower the LDL (bad) cholesterol. It will prevent atherosclerosis.
Rapeseed oil, wheat seed oil, flaxseed and walnut oil are very rich in alpha-linoleic acid (ALA or Omega 3), a polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is very important for the biochemical processes in your nervous system. Lack of alpha-linoleic acid will lead to a decreased ability to learn, nerve signal’s deflection, an increased risk of thrombosis and it will decrease your body’s ability to resist alcohol. You can get your daily dose of alpha-linoleic acid, if you take 1 table spoon of rapeseed oil or eat 4-6 walnuts a day.
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If you’re thinking of trying herbal supplements, understand that they aren’t right for everyone. Here’s what you should know before you set out to make that purchase.
Herbal supplements may be popular, but are they for you? That depends on the herb, your current health and your medical history. Herbal supplements have active ingredients that can affect how your body functions, just as over-the-counter and prescription drugs do. Herbal supplements may be particularly risky for certain individuals, and their labels are often vague, confusing and of little help when it comes to making a selection. If you’re considering herbal supplements, educate yourself about any products you intend to use before purchasing them, and talk to your doctor about any herbal supplements you’re considering taking.
Are herbal supplements safe? (more…)
By helping to maintain health, to treat spinal-cord-dysfunction (SCD) aggravated ailments, and to reduce exposure to drug side effects, people with SCD can benefit greatly from herbal medicine. Furthermore, the use of infection-fighting herbal remedies that enhance the body’s inherent healing potential will help preserve the effectiveness of life-saving antibiotics over time. A sampling of the more popular remedies is highlighted in the attached table.
Many herbs specifically support and nourish the nervous system, and, in turn, some of then may be especially relevant to spinal cord dysfunction. For example, studies suggest that the popular ginkgo biloba may alleviate multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms by interfering with the disease’s inflammatory process.
In another example, the Ayurvedic herb Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) has been shown to promote neuronal regeneration in animal studies and may benefit some people with spinal cord dysfunction as indicated by a small pilot study carried out by the author.
In addition, Feather Jones, Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies (Boulder, Colo.) director has suggested that several other nerve-nourishing herbs may potentially help in spinal cord dysfunction. For example, she has indicated that a fresh plant extract of skullcap (a member of the mint family) reduces nerve inflammation; a tincture of milky oats (i.e., immature oat seeds) can rebuild the neuronal myelin sheath that is often damaged in both multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury; an external liniment of Cow Parsnip, (a common weed that is a member of the parsley family) is a traditional Southwestern Hispanic remedy for treating injured nerves and stimulating regeneration; external application of St. John’s Wort can treat neural inflammation; and hawthorn helps to hold collagen fibers in place along the spinal cord.
Given such effects, the potential for these remedies to treat people in the acute phase of spinal cord injury seems especially intriguing and deserving of further research.
When prepared with good quality control, most herbal remedies are gentle and unlikely to cause serious side effects. Nevertheless, because they, like drugs, contain physiologically active agents, such side effects can occur. In practice, however, the most common are allergic reactions, throat irritations, gastrointestinal upsets, and headaches.
When more serious side effects do occur, the medical establishment frequently touts them as a reason why people should stay away from herbal remedies. Because the documented incidence of serious reactions to herbal remedies is much less than that to pharmaceutics, this self-serving criticism is a double standard. In fact, studies suggest that adverse drug reactions account for over a quarter of all hospitalizations and are a major cause of death in this country.
Given such statistics, people with physical disabilities, who often face a heavy medication burden, may be better off using herbal medicine for routine ailments and saving the heavy pharmaceutical artillery for the more serious conditions.
Biological activity can vary substantially between herbal preparations. For example, it depends on the parts harvested (i.e., leaves, roots, flowers, stems, etc.), plant maturity, soil and environmental conditions, and appropriate preparation and storage.
It is truly a healing art, which at times has confounded ethnobiologists, who have been provided exciting new medicinal plants by shamanic medicine men but who could not later duplicate their initial success when they harvested the plants themselves.
The variability in activity among supposedly comparable products is a major criticism of herbal medicine and inhibits its acceptance by doctors, who understandably are more confident prescribing medicines at truly defined doses. Some herbal products have been prepared without good quality control and lack standardization. There have been cases, independent of price or brand name, of products that contain little biologically active agent.
Although many companies now attempt to standardize their products, this process can also be controversial. For example, if a given herbal preparation lacks sufficient activity, it may be spiked with additional active ingredient. Such spiking, however, creates a chemical imbalance that diminishes the natural synergy of plant components, violating herbal medicine’s supposed philosophical foundation.
More than 30% of modern medicine’s drugs have botanical origins. For example, willow tree bark contains salicylic acid, aspirin’s active agent; cinchona bark has malaria-fighting quinine; foxglove digitalis treats congestive heart failure; rosy periwinkle has leukemia-fighting chemicals; and the evergreen ephedra is commonly used in decongestants. Even life-saving penicillin that revolutionized spinal cord injury healthcare was isolated from molds used as folk remedies.
Given such a botanical basis, why does modern medicine struggle so much with herbal remedies? After all, pharmaceutics and herbs mediate their action through physiologically active molecules. Part of the answer is that the acceptance of herbal healing would challenge modern medicine’s belief that it is a scientifically driven instead of an empirically based discipline.
Specifically, modern medicine’s drug use is based on rigorously designed clinical trials, while herbal use is based on centuries’ of experience. Because the pharmaceutical approach focuses on only one molecularly defined drug, scientists can more readily evaluate cause and effect, determine mechanisms of action, and define appropriate dosing. Such assessments are difficult for complex herbal remedies possessing a multitude of biologically active components.
As such, scientists prefer to initially isolate a remedy’s active agents believing that overall activity will be the sum of the component parts. This reductionistic view, however, is rarely true because the plant components act more in concert than individually to create the overall healing effect. In many cases, scientists have been disappointed to discover that the isolated agent had less activity than the crude herb.
Although Americans have ready access to herbal remedies, few are officially used as medicines. In 1994, to protect consumer access to these remedies from FDA regulatory zeal, Congress adopted legislation classifying them as dietary supplements, provided they only claim to affect the body’s structure and function.
However, if an herbal product claims it can treat or cure an ailment, it is now a drug, and, hence, subjected to the arduous, expensive, FDA drug regulatory process. Because herbs cannot be patented, no financial incentives exist for profit-making companies to seek such a drug designation. Under this regulatory approach, semantics become important. For example, if an herbal product claims to cure UTI’s instead of just promoting urinary tract health, it becomes a drug.
History
Medicinal plants have been always a part of mankind’s healing armamentarium. They even have been found in Neanderthal burial sites. Ancient cultures, such as the Sumerians and Egyptians in our “cradle of civilization” and the Aztecs and Mayans in the Western Hemisphere relied on plants for medicines.
Herbal medicine is the cornerstone of age-old Eastern healing disciplines that live on today. Some of these include Traditional Chinese Medicine and India’s Ayurvedic medicine, which have both become increasingly popular recently in the West.
Indigenous healing traditions also emphasized medicinal plants, and many became incorporated into Western medicine. For example, over 200 Native American herbal medicines have been listed at one time in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. Ironically, the most powerful and sacred Native American medicinal plant, tobacco, has become our substance of greatest abuse. (more…)
By helping to maintain health, to treat disability aggravated ailments, and to reduce exposure to drug side effects, people with physical disabilities, such as spinal cord injury (SCI) or multiple sclerosis (MS), can benefit greatly from herbal medicine. Many herbs have become so popular that they should no longer be considered alternative medicine.
Years ago, a friend shared with me his herbal health regimen in which he prevented spinal cord injury (SCI) related urinary tract infections (UTI’s) by taking cranberry extract. If he started to get the flu or catch a cold, he took echinacea, and when he had the blues, he consumed St. John’s Wort. At that time, my inclinations as a scientist kept me from embracing such remedies because they were based in tradition not modern science. (more…)