CAM
February 14th, 2010 at 03:45pm
Under CAM+ Food & Nutrition
Tom Sawyer declared to Huck Finn that warts could be cured by spunk (stump) water and a magic chant during the dark of the moon … Huck maintained it was better to use a dead cat.
While we might laugh at such notions today, the fact is, many “old time” remedies should share a place alongside more conventional treatments in our home medicine cabinet. For example, soaking with ordinary vinegar over a few days time will indeed remove a wart, if you don’t mind smelling like a salad.
Grandma didn’t know exactly how or why, she only knew that they worked. Many time-tested, common cures and traditional or folk-lore treatments are now being seriously investigated under laboratory conditions, with some interesting results.
One of the most useful items that might be found in our kitchen cupboard is the humble honey jar. We might expect honey to be helpful for soothing a sore throat when added to hot herbal tea or lemon juice, but consider its other medicinal uses:
For example, ingesting honey and the pollen from local hives will also assist your body’s immune system, helping you to build antibodies against allergies.
Due to its wound-healing properties, it was used extensively during the Civil War; doctors in both field hospitals and on the battlefield used honey for an immediate dressing and for post-surgical treatments. As well as needing no refrigeration, honey also had the field advantage of being readily available (a “honey tree” could usually be located by scouting the surrounding countryside), and it could be put into jars or oilcloth packets and easily transported.
The notion of “germs” and other medical knowledge was still rather vague in those days … they only knew honey was useful stuff. They couldn’t have known of its natural anti-bacterial, antibiotic, and anti-inflammatory properties, or that it contains helpful enzymes in so-called “bee spit”: that magical concoction produced by the bees and exchanged in a sort of bee version of a French kiss, in order to convert nectar into honey.
But it’s important to note that these helpful enzymes and anti-bacterial elements are only found in raw, unheated honey … heat and over-processing destroys them. Visit your local beekeeper to get the best and most gently-handled honey.
According to a blurb in the Health section of the New York Times*, scientists have also found that honey may be a quick and easy treatment to soothe and promote healing of minor burns. One study found that small, non-serious burns healed faster when treated with gauze and a dash of honey, on average, than those treated with antibiotic creams and other dressings. A separate report published earlier found similar results. The reason? Air circulation is needed to assist skin tissue in healing … and honey “breathes”.
So take the honey jar along on your next camping trip … you might find it comes in handy.
Yours in health …
* “Honey Can Soothe a Burn” by Anahad O’Connor; NYTimes, Feb 19, 2008
By admin
March 2nd, 2008 at 05:13pm
Under CAM+ Food & Nutrition
Once upon a time, your family doctor would come to your house no matter what hour, then prescribe medications compounded by a pharmacist who not only knew you by name but also sold penny candy and cherry phosphate sodas at his own drugstore. Those days are long gone.
For many of us, basic medical care today means either a public clinic or one provided by our HMO. Unfortunately, that “care” is often one-size-fits-all and limited to 15-minute sound bytes, not enough time to ask specific questions or make difficult decisions. And what if we’re elderly, or even know what questions to ask? Or perhaps what’s needed is a second opinion in order to make the most informed decisions. Whatever our situation, we hope we will be “heard”. If a doctor is alienated during that process, perhaps it is time to change providers … but what if we can’t? And even more common these days, what if we have no provider at all?
To blindly place our trust solely within the realm of conventional medicine is often a poor choice … we all know of unfortunate results from not exploring alternative options. But neither should we trust only in alternative methods … delaying proven treatments have also earned serious consequences. It’s clear there is room for both conventional and alternative treatments within our current (and future) health care system.
While conventional medicine certainly has its place (when I needed surgery a couple of years ago, I was very thankful for a competent surgeon), most doctors openly admit to treating disease or illness symptomatically rather than holistically. It’s not their fault … it’s how they are trained by the medical schools. They treat the effects, not the cause.
“What’s wrong with that?” you ask. Well, nothing on the face of it … an illness can usually be identified by symptoms. The doctor will hand you a prescription for a best-guess medication and tell you to come back in two weeks if you don’t improve. And if that drug doesn’t work, they’ll prescribe another. So they are basically telling you to get sicker before they can help you! Am I the only one who sees the flaws in this approach?
Diagnosing certainly has its place, but if you’re invested solely in treating symptoms, then you aren’t really looking for a cause and/or prevention. The healthcare system (at least here in the U.S.) may give lip service to prevention of illness and disease, but in reality they’re just following a set of protocols. You’re supposed to trust them to eventually figure it out, and if they can’t figure it out, they may deny you have an issue and say it’s all in your head. In the meantime, you are only the patient. As a result, while they plod through their checklists with you as their guinea pig, you may get worse before you get better. This is how folks end up taking a whole sack full of prescription drugs.
Take, for example, high blood pressure. Wouldn’t it make better sense as a first choice to look at the possible causes as to why a particular individual has developed high blood pressure in the first place? These things seldom happen overnight and are not going to be fixed overnight.
Once the cause(s) are understood, rather than a knee-jerk grab for the prescription pad, it seems the first and best choice should be to explore avenues like changing diet and lifestyle. Along with that, add some supplements for a more natural way to keep arteries strong and healthy. According to the latest research, there is increasing empirical evidence for supplements such as Omega-3 providing major benefits for heart health.
My feeling is the worst choice would be to jump directly to drugs, some of which have pretty nasty side effects. If other protocols don’t provide complete relief, then at the very least it might mean that if you do have to resort to prescription drugs, you might require a lower dose.
I believe, as the old saying goes, that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, so it’s important to provide ways to help our body take care of itself. Given the chance, it has a remarkable capacity for healing and regeneration, and that doesn’t always come in the form of a prescription drug with a myriad of negative side effects (and a high price tag).
But then the medical establishment (and the drug companies) couldn’t keep pushing more and more drugs, could they? And isn’t that the real name of the game?
Yours in health …
By admin
February 19th, 2008 at 01:21am
Under CAM+ Eco-Solutions
Both Grandma’s home remedies and native peoples’ healing materials appear to have curative values that science is only now proving through sophisticated technology and research.
We are beginning to see articles in magazines, on newsstands, and through mainstream media about everything from the health benefits of honey to recent studies touting the potential of rice bran as a treatment for diabetes.
The basis of many modern medicines are often rooted, so to speak, in common plants or their components, and are now beginning to be at long last recognized and studied. This is certainly gratifying, but altruistic aspects aside, there is also money to be made as a result. Big money.
According to an article in the New York Times, a study by the European Commission showed that products derived from plant substances generate more than $75 billion in sales each year for the pharmaceutical industry, $20 billion in herbal supplement sales, and around $3 billion in cosmetics sales. The article states, “Although the efficacy of some of the herbal ingredients is hotly debated, their popularity is not in doubt,” and it is estimated that thirty-six percent of adults in the United States use some form of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
Indigenous “medicines” are showing great potential in eventually leading to cures for our most devastating diseases … what company wouldn’t like be the one to find a cure for cancer or any of the other Holy Grails of the world of medicine in a commonly found plant? This is exciting and heady stuff, but at what eventual cost? Big Business and Big Pharm are joining hands and beating a path to remote areas as diverse as the Amazon rain forests and the Andes in Peru, creating a new economy for the locals but sometimes leaving a trail of ecological devastation in their wake. It’s telling that the aforementioned article was found not in the Travel or even in the Health sections, but in the Business section of the New York Times.*
Whether the indigenous peoples (and their fragile environments) will benefit or be on the losing end, both are often victims of the so-called “bio-pirates”, those who steal traditional knowledge and then don’t give back to the local community. Meantime, the drug companies are investing large sums in the hope of lucrative profits.
* “On a Remote Path to Cures”; New York Times; Jan.1, 2008
By admin