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Herbs & Healing
Herbs & Healing
We all know we need to eat well to maintain a healthy body & mind. It takes education and wisdom to discern what it truly means "to eat well." So many people, including so-called "food-gurus" expound on the benefits of vegetarianism, or high-protein diets, low-carb diets, vegan diet, eating only raw foods, eating no white food, dehydrating food, doing "cleanses", eating organic, eliminating wheat, dairy, all sugar, getting lots of fiber, subsisting on "green drinks" or juicing, or an all-liquid diet. There's "Eating for Your Blood Type", "Atkins", "South Beach", "Diet For a Small Planet", "The Mediterranean Diet", & thousands more. Following any of these diets or precepts will not guarantee you will never be sick, or you will live forever. Research on the "Longevity Diet", which is a very low-calorie diet, showed that people did live slightly longer, but they had no energy to do anything or enjoy life! That's no way to live!
And if you really read the research on fats, cholesterol and heart-health, you would have learned that a high blood cholesterol has no correlation at all to heart attack! Yet the side effects of statins have been devastating to an unaware & uneducated population. (The problem is more in the food itself: eating grass-fed beef contains more heart-healthy Omega-3s than fish oil!) But grass-fed beef is not what's available in your big-grocery-store chain anymore. CAFO beef (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) is harmful in many ways: what it does to the environment as well as your body.
Surely, we are all aware that the industrialized farming methods of the last 50 years have depleted the soil, and is now based on more & more chemicals and pesticides being used in conventional farming. Most common grocery-store foods lack either taste or the nutritional value of organically-grown food & home-grown food. People across the US grow their own tomatoes every summer, if nothing else, just for the incredible taste. Something hybridized and genetically manipulated to be shipped in trucks holding thousands of tons and not get crushed, and then have a shelf-life of 2 weeks cannot compare to the tomato you pick in your garden and walk into the kitchen to slice & serve with dinner. The "weak" conventional foods may sustain life, but that's "existing," not "thriving." It is necessary to add exceptional foods to your diet, to strengthen the body and protect life. One of the best ways to do this is with herbs. Indigeneous peoples all over the globe have always known this and used herbs. Chinese medicene is based on acupuncture and the use of herbs, and was more effective than 'Western medicine" for thousands of years.
Herbs contain nutrients in great concentration, more so than conventional fruits & vegetables. Sometimes they provide health-giving nutrients not found in food. Recently, many of these foods are being dubbed "super-foods" and good marketing foists them on humans who are sick, tired, overweight & aging rapidly, looking for a quick fix. Many companies selling these drinks, juices, concoctions & pills have been sued for false advertising, and some products have been removed from the marketplace. Yet herbs remain here on earth, since the beginning of time, for your use.
Don't misunderstand me--I am not a fan of the FDA. They have consistently targeted the supplement industry, accusing them of selling potentially harmful vitamins & minerals, while approving pharmaceutical drugs with a litany of harmful side-effects, including heart-attacks & death! They have approved drugs that have killed hundreds of people before later removing them from the marketplace. Your doctor knows & prescribes these drugs, because he is "sold" them, by attractive, young, smart college grads, right in their offices. They receive expensive dinners at the finest restaurants, tickets to the theater & opera, and cartons of free samples, to push on their patients, like guinea pigs. The psychiatrists are the worst of all, for they have become nothing but pill-pushers. Yet in 12 years of medical school, they learn nothing of nutrition, herbs & healing with both.
Herbs can tonify the body, and purify it too. Herbs can energize, lower blood sugar levels and high blood pressure, eliminate toxins, help you sleep, calm children with ADD, build healthy bones, kill parasites, calm the nerves, have antibiotic qualities (as well as be probiotic), strengthen the immune system, keep your gums healthy, increase sexual energy, build red blood cells and create an internal environment that will not support cancer-cell growth.
One of the greatest herbs, known for its healing properties for thousands of years, is ginseng. It contains many well-known nutrients such as B Vitamins, calcium & other minerals, and amino acids. It also provides compounds that were unknown & unnamed until recently: Panax Sapagenol & Panaquilon, to name 2 out of the many (6 I know of.) These are concentrated compounds, easily assimilable. Some herbs contain more than 20 times the amount of Vitamin A & D found in cod-liver oil; others have B-12, amino acids and minerals in high concentrations to reverse deficiencies. These effective properties of herbs are unique and easily used by the average person, if you have the knowledge.
Soothing your stomach with mint tea or aiding digestion with ginger tea has become well-known & widely accepted in the last 45 years since I first learned about & started experimenting with herb teas. Some herb teas and blends have become popular over the years and are marketed by giant companies. I will teach you some good blends for specific conditions to make on your own. I will write about those herbs you can use to improve your health now, and how you can grow them as well.
The first one to know about is ginseng. Not only does it contain the vitamins and compounds I named above, it also contains Panaxin, Panacin, Amylase & Ginsenin. Studies in which adrenalin was shot into the human body resulted in elevated blood sugar levels. This happens to us all the time when we are under stress. The blood sugar level returned to normal as soon as ginseng was administered. this is just one example of super-nutritional healing, found in herbs. It is almost impossible to obtain these healing components in every-day food, which provides our basic nutrients.
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