Herbs have been used for thousands of years to heal ailments, soothe wounds, scalds and burns, relieve the pain of insect bites and even keep the insects away. They are also very useful in the kitchen, but that is only a small part of their collective worth.
Living in a hot climate like southern Spain, I’ve found that one of the most versatile healing balms has to be aloe vera. This is a plant that I grow in abundance and use regularly for all manner of skin related problems, from relieving sunburn to healing cuts, abrasions and scalds. It make a great soothing aftershave and helps with dry skin and itching insect bites.
Camomile grows wild in the countryside in spring and I always gather a good supply of the flowers to dry and keep for making the soothing tea throughout the year,
Rosemary, thyme and sage are my favourite of the culinary herbs that have multiple uses, such as treating sore throats, coughs and colds as well as making a really refreshing tonic tea.
Ginger is another great treatment for colds and sinus problems as it opens up the airways every bit as well as propriety sprays and decongestants and is considerably better for you.
Garlic is the blood cleanser and purifier king and also boosts the immune system to help fight off colds and flu. It’s a natural anti-viral and anti-bacterial agent and is much better than taking antibiotics anything other than infections. Even then, personally I’d use aloe vera to deal with any infected wound.
Basil is a great culinary companion to the tomato, but how many peope know it make a good insect repellent? Keep a big pot of basil by open door and windows and it’ll keep all but the most persistent flies out of your house!
Lavender is another great insect repellent. Crush and rub leaves and/or flowers onto your skin in the evening and you won’t be bothered by mosquitoes!
Ok, that’s just a basic appetite whetter as to the incredible and often underrated abilities of common herbs and a lead in to a great squidoo lens that I also author on this very subject, called Plants For Health.
Please visit and if you like it, leave a comment and shower it with stars and help it to grow in popularity as it grows in information-rich content.
I’ve added another lens to my squidoo menagerie that deals with food additives and their dangers. This one will start with some of the nastiest additives the food industry could have ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public, namely Monosodium Glutamate and Aspartame.
If you thought these additives were safe, you’d better head over to that lens of mine and read some of the evidence to the contrary. Here’s the link:
I truly believe that consuming an excess of Monosodium Glutamate in his last years were the cause of the death of my father from stomach cancer nearly 4 years ago. This is not a common cancer in the West, yet, but is quite common in the far East, especially Thailand and China, so if you like Chinese and Thai food - make sure you demand that the restaurant can prove they DO NOT use monosodium glutamate in their food. I bet you end up walking out of a lot of them, because they nearly ALL use this so-called flavour enhancer in their cooking… and in bucket loads.
You have been warned!
The above lens will give you much more information on this and that other modern scourge of our times, aspartame. If you’re letting your kids eat sugar free food and drink sugar free drinks, chances are you are feeding them an unhealthy future potentially ruined by this chemical sweetener.
Ok, this is not a happy blog post, in fact it’s bordering on a rant, so I think it’s time to stop and go do something else…
See you again soon (if you haven’t been scared away by the tone of this one…!)
The whole ethos of alternative cures and health that this blog and it’s host site Alternative Cures encompasses has expanded into the realm of the Squidoo lens.
Actually, seven different lenses to be precise.
Squidoo lenses are a great way of spreading the knowledge about to more people who would not otherwise know about this site and I must say I’m getting a very good response from over there. If you would line to have a look at the my alternative lenses, here are their names:
I haven’t added links as I’m experimenting with one-way back-links from them. Just copy and past into your browser’s search window. Enjoy them all if you have time - and they will also be changing constantly as I add new content to each of them over the coming weeks!
Around one billion Chinese people cannot be wrong!
The Chinese have been drinking green tea for as long as records go back - for possibly around four thousand years. They’ve known for millennia that green tea is an important aspect of daily life. Strange then that it is only recently the West has cottoned on to the importance of this incredible health giving beverage.
The health benefits gained from regularly drinking green tea are numerous thanks to its high proportion of some of the most powerful antioxidants currently known.
For those of you who have been holidaying on Mars for the last few years, antioxidants are special properties contained in certain foods that mop up substances known as free radicals. Free radicals are known to cause damage to cell structure and can lead to many debilitating illnesses, including cancer.
But it is not only the powerful cancer fighting properties of green tea that make it such an important addition to our daily diet.
Green tea also contains anti-bacterial agents that can help fight against the often dangerous bacteria that cause everything from food poisoning to tooth decay caused by the build-up of dental plaque.
Green tea is also an aid to slimming! It contains caffeine just like coffee and black tea, but although the levels are much lower than theses popular beverages, the combination of caffeine and other unique properties work together to boost the body’s metabolism and aid digestion thereby causing the food we eat to be more efficiently digested and less fat to be stored in the body as a result. This, of course leads to slow, safe and natural weight loss making green tea an excellent part of a calorie controlled diet.
What’s more, green tea has also been found to balance cholesterol levels in the bloodstream. That means reducing harmful levels of LDL, or bad cholesterol and boosting healthy levels of HDL, or good cholesterol. This has the additional benefit of reducing the potential for abnormal blood clots to form, which are the cause of problems from thrombosis to strokes and even heart attacks.
Finally, as if all the above weren’t enough, green tea is also a great stress reducer. A calming cup of green tea relaxes you after a hard day’s work, whether it be physical or mental or a combination of both, helping you to wind down and bring all of your body’s functions back to a restful state, helping you to enjoy a more peaceful and relaxed sleep at the end of the day.
So all in all, a daily cup or two of healthy, refreshing green tea could go a long way to ensuring you enjoy good health, longer life and a better quality of life overall.
Terry Didcott is a qualified hypnotherapist and web designer among other things, but what truly inspired him to create this website was his life changing experience about thirteen years ago. Read the full article HERE
