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When You Begin Using Herbs

A smile on her face, Helen just left my store, to go out to enjoy this lovely fall day. She had stopped in to tell me how well she was progressing with the herbal protocols I had given her......When Helen first came to see me, the doctor had given her the antibiotic bioxin which made her continuously throw up. The doctor had told her, "It's all in your mind. And anyway, it will pass." (Bioxin is made from the herbs foxglove, an herb used since medieval times and an emetic.) Finally after two weeks, her tongue broke out in red bumps, her throat swelled up, and she was so nauseous, she could not eat.....Taking the herbs I had given her, she was feeling refreshed now, had lost her desire for sweets (and Helen works in an ice cream store!), and was beginning to think clearly again.

When you begin healing yourself with herbs, you make a conscience choice that you are no longer willing to accept illness as a "given" in your life, are going to be in charge of your body, and you are ready to make choices about your body rather than automatically swallowing the prescription pills the doctor prescribes for you.

Deciding to use herbs means taking back the power of your own health care; you are no longer subject to the dictates of the gargantuan pharmaceutical companies. A recent commercial states, "Then call today to receive this free booklet so that you and your physician can determine if your asthma is really under control." Excuse me? You cannot figure out if you feel better? A person has to read a booklet to determine if his/her health has improved? You must ask your doctor if you are improving? There is another commercial which ends, "So if you decide you are ready to stop smoking, speak to your doctor to find out how." In order to stop a personal habit, you have to ask (get permission?) from your doctor about how to make a decision for yourself? Yet, people would NEVER think of questioning these commercial claims. And the American drug companies are well aware of that too.

In the 1930's, when John D. Rockefellar chose to take his money out of the schools of homeopathy and begin to bankroll pharmaceuticals, there also seems to have begun a real, concerted effort to "reprogram" the thinking of the American public. Concurrent with the well-funded marketing effort of doctor-prescribed pills would also have had to have been a major change in the perception of thousands of years of folk history, a disruption of generation to generation mentoring, and an overturn of the culturally accepted maternal contributions-the woman of the family as healer and grandma's remedies as worthy. These changes were calculated to produce the notion that the average person "was not good enough" to decide how to handle his/her own healthcare. Even today, the American public is assaulted daily with an avalanche of propaganda about the "importance, prestige, and omnipotence" of a doctor with a medical degree. The message is clear: you must rely on doctors to make decisions for you and you do not know what is going on in your own body.

Herbology is as ancient as the hills, as common as salt, as easy as apple pie, and as helpful as your grandma. It is time for people in the West to put aside the conditioning designed to disempower everyone about their own bodies. The cornerstone of our practice at Herbs-on-Hudson is you are good enough to make decisions about your own health care.

Bulk herbs are the leaves, flowers, root, twigs, bark, berries, and seeds themselves used to make teas and poultices. Wildcrafted means that they were harvested from right where Mother Nature planted them out in wild. (Wildcrafted herbs are the most potent.) Organically grown means some nice alternative gardeners used homemade compost and lunar phases of the moon to glorify the growth of the plant and raise it to its highest level of energy.

Tinctures are liquid concentrates made by an alchemic process to extract the highest concentration of valuable constituents available in each healing herb. The drops can be put under the tongue or mixed in water, cranberry juice, or pineapple juice.

Capsules are the medicinal part of the herbs (the root or the leaves or the flowers or the stems or possibly, a combination of those parts) ground up and encapsulated for digestion. Depending the specific herb, the plant may have to be dried for several months before the grinding process thereby drying up the potent volatile oils and/or losing some of freshness.

Comparisons:

Bulk herbs made into a tea are the most potent source of medicinal constituents you can receive; each time an herb must go through any kind of "process", it does lose some of its potency.

Bulk herbs made into a tea and tinctures get into the system the quickest because they are liquids (about 8-15 minutes) Their effect can last from 1-5 hours.

Capsules take 45-60 minutes to get into the system, but their effects can last longer (4-8 hours).

Tinctures and capsules are portable; you can put them into your pocket and take them to work or when you travel away from home.

Bulk herb teas and tinctures can be varied in potency (amount of tea brewed or number of drops taken); a capsule dose is constant based by the milligram capacity of the capsule.

Liquids will bypass much of the digestive system, thus, remain more potent when entering the bloodstream.

Tea bags are simple to use, portable, and come in many delicious flavors. You may also not be getting the most benefit of a teabag's contents since some of the ingredients should be slow boiled instead of merely steeped. However, tea bags may also be a good introduction to the use of medicinal herbs since they are usually highly flavored and provide a delightful alternative beverage during a modern person's busy day.

Depending on a person's condition, it may occasionally be beneficial to take an herb in more than one form, or to combine different herbs in different forms to effectively heal the body.

Health food store vitamins and herbs are always prepared from nature's best available sources. While supermarkets and pharmacies may have less expensive brands, it is because those supplements are not with synthetics and substitutes, or the herbs are not properly harvested. For example: rather that harvesting the ginseng form a six to eight year old root a one year root is dupe us instead. But remember...your body deserves the best!