The Alternative Health Gazette

Using Medicinal Herbs Part 1

Many people are looking at alternative and herbal remedies today, as a way to fight the high costs of prescription medications. Some may not have health insurance, and others may be afraid of the severe side effects so many of the synthetic drugs seem to carry these days. Whatever the reason for your increased interest, there are alternative and herbal options for almost any malady you may have.

Not all herbal remedies work the same for everyone though. Sometimes this is just due to differences in body chemisty. Just as you can be allergic to some types of food and prescription medications while others are not, you can have or not have a response to herbs that others do not.

Often though, the primary problem encountered when trying to use herbal remedies for health problems, is wrong uses. Many people for instance, will buy herbs and supplements based on savvy product packaging, advertising and marketing. Many hard pill tablets for instance, will have some herbs in them, but that’s not all. Those pills often have many other misc ingredients in them which can counter-effect the herbs. And in many cases, the pills only have a small amount of actual herb in them: Too small an amount to be of any use.

Hard pill tablets don’t dissolve well in water or our bodies, so they’re not able to be mixed up into tea, poultice or salve form. And if they’re too hard to mix into these forms, they’re not likely to be dissolved well inside our bodies either, thus they won’t do us much good when taking them. If the pills also have very little actual herbal content in them, they’re also of little use for medicinal means.

So the first step in learning to use herbal remedies for yourself or your family, is to learn to buy true 100% herbs. The best kind are those which come in gelatin capsules, and have the ground herb inside them. These can be opened up and the herb powder poured out, or simply dropped into a mixture and after a few minutes the gelcap will dissolve, leaving just the powdered herb.

Part of learning how to buy herbs involves becoming adept at reading the labels. There are many products on the market today which appear to be one thing, when closely looking at the label tells you there’s more to the picture.

Reading the labels will also help you understand dosage needs too. Since herbs are sold as food supplements only in the United States, there are no medicinal related dosage instructions on them. Part of learning to use herbs for medical purposes involves learning which dosages work best for which problems.

Herbs can come in many different dosage amounts too. If you’re constipated and decide to take some Alfalfa or Chlorophyll to relieve the problem, you’ll have drastically different results if you’re taking 60mg instead of 600mg. 600mg is very likely to move your bowels within an hour or two of taking it, whereas 60mg or even 100-250mg might not do the trick.

(Continued in part 2…)

Statements made in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and should not be taken as professional medical advice.

Tags: Constipation

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