Natural Herbal Remedies

Today, herbal treatments and remedies are all the rage. People are increasingly turning to natural herbal remedies to fix what ails them. Many people have become fearful of the side effects of pharmaceutical medicines and have begun to investigate what nature has to offer as an alternative.

Herbs have been used as medicine for thousands of years, in every culture around the world. Many ancient uses of herbs stand today as effective treatments. In the Bible, it is said that God gave the people herbs to serve as medicine. Many people find that hard to argue!

Although natural herbal remedies have now attained almost a “fad” status, being a trendy topic in our society, there's more to this than meets the eye. The study of natural herbal remedies is a fascinating subject when you consider that individual societies, thousands of miles apart, have found the same plant to be an effective treatment for the same condition, hundreds of years apart and with no communication between the cultures. This observation alone leads you to conclude, there must be something to this!

Another interesting facet to the study of natural herbal remedies is that of plants indigenous to a certain region addressing conditions inherent to the particular environment. For example, in tropical regions, malaria is rampant. Coincidentally, Cinchona, a tree native to Peru and Ecuador, yields a medicinal dose of quinine in the bark of the tree sufficient to cure malaria.

Another example of these natural herbal remedies is Hoodia. Hoodia is currently a weight loss ingredient in tablets touted to burn the fat off a toad. Hoodia is naturally occurring in the Australian outback, where indigenous peoples have used this herb for centuries to quell their hunger while on long hunting trips.

Chapparal, also known as “creosote bush” has been known as a treatment for certain types of cancer by Native Americans in the American southwest. Anecdotal reports of skin cancer cures are still appearing in news stories, credited to a tea prepared from the leaves of Chapparal.

There are many outstanding natural herbal remedies which effectively treat some fairly horrendous terminal illnesses. There is the famous Essiac cancer cure, a combination of a number of herbs developed by a 19th century Canadian nurse, gleaned from native sources. Dandelion root has cured people of liver cancer.

The main obstacle to general acceptance of natural herbal remedies lies in the culture of major pharmaceutical companies. Herbs cannot be patented, so these natural herbal remedies are not profitable enough to support millions of dollars of research money spent to produce these magic pills. Instead, pharmaceutical companies extract individual components of herbs and combine them with synthetic ingredients to produce a chemical wonder that may be patented, and sold at a high price.

It's indeed a sad commentary on our society's values when good medicine is cast aside and maligned, motivated by simple greed. Natural herbal remedies deserve a closer look.

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