Natural Health and Herbal Remedies Blog – information on herbal medicine

In the years before modern medicine, “witch doctors” in England gave their clients a preparation made from the leaves of the foxglove plant to aid their failing hearts. Doctors of the day scorned the practice, but today we know that foxglove is the natural source of the drug digitalis, long a mainstay in the treatment [...]

This classification of drugs includes two brands which are listed in the charts at the end of this chapter. These drugs are prescribed for patients with hypertension and heart failure. They work by inhibiting the production of an enzyme (angiotensin-converting enzyme) involved in the increase of blood pressure. Without as much of the enzyme released [...]

GEOGRAPHIC TONGUE If your child’s tongue has a patchy appearance which resembles a map, he has what is known as a geographic tongue. This is a condition of unknown cause, in which the tongue has an uneven pattern of blotchy red areas interspersed with smooth patches. It is not painful and does not interfere with [...]

This will vary according to the cause and severity of the jaundice. Babies who develop jaundice several days after birth usually just require careful monitoring, sometimes with heel prick blood tests checking for bilirubin levels in the blood. If these are high, the hospital staff may recommend a few days treatment with phototherapy. This technique [...]

    ”Fantasizing me having sex with another man is really sick, isn’t it? I mean, I’m his wife, for God’s sake.” ANSWER: Fantasies are the most intimate and personal of sexual issues in couples, even more so than actual behaviors. What we think we might like to do or dream about doing seems to threaten spouses [...]

We should also avoid eating animal flesh. Comprehensive analysis of this topic could easily be a subject of a separate book, so below I give only a summary of the reasons taken from a single point of view: the poisoning of our body. Animals consume large amounts of food, before they become killed for meat. [...]

The elderly, the very young and those with heart or lung disease are particularly at risk of succumbing to influenza and of developing complications. Because influenza may be a serious illness for an individual and an epidemic can cause many deaths and considerable illness with loss of time from work, some form of prevention may [...]

In herbivorous animals, those that eat grass, there is a large extension of the caecum where many bacteria break down and digest the insoluble cellulose which forms the bulk of plants. The appendix may be a left-over organ in the process of evolution. Appendicitis was a rare condition until the end of the 19th Century. [...]

‘What are the chances of my passing this disease on to a daughter?’ a patient asks his doctor. At thirty-eight years old, Terri is pregnant for the first time after successfully battling endometriosis. A routine test— amniocentesis—has indicated she is carrying a girl. Terri fears that her child will suffer from the disease as she [...]

Herpes simplex—’cold sores’—is a common, blistering condition caused by the Herpes Hominis virus. There are two distinct strains of this virus. Type I is responsible for the more common lip or eye disease, while type II is responsible for the genital disease. The initial type I infection occurs mainly in infancy and childhood, when it [...]