| In the rest of this chapter, I'm going to discuss herbal treatments for existing hemorrhoids. As you'll see, herbal medicine offers many options for relief.
WITCH HAZEL (HAMAMEUS VIRGINIANA). You Can spend a lot of money for Tucks Pads, which are mostly witch hazel. Or you can make your own version by buying witch hazel water, a commercial extract sold in drugstores, and applying it to your hemorrhoids with tissues or cotton balls.
Witch hazel is just what the herbalist ordered for hemorrhoids. The herb is rich in astringent compounds called tannins. |
Nicola Reavley
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 Many patients have also used traditional Chinese herbal treatments. See page 384 for more information on these herbs and the precautions that may be necessary.
Hypertension is when blood pressure, the blood's force against the walls of the arteries, is consistently abnormally high in relation to age. It is a major public health problem that often requires long-term medication. More than one in four American adults have high blood pressure and more than 50 per cent of Americans over the age of 65 may be affected. |
Gary Null
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 One part of herbal treatments is taking antibiotic and antiinflammatory herbs, like dandelion, a cleansing agent that keeps us cool. It can be put in salads, soups and found in the health food stores as capsules.
Honeysuckle flower grows outside in the garden. Boiled as tea, it will eliminate a sore throat and fever as well as kill pneumonia, staph, and strep germs.
There are three types of ginseng: American, Chinese, and false. The American type provides more moisture, more saliva and is good after a fever. Chinese ginseng, called Ren Shen, gives us energy. |
James A. Duke, Ph.D.
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 Most of these folks could manage their conditions just fine with lifestyle changes and herbal treatments alone.
Ditch Points with the DASH Diet
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke. In chapter 13,1 outline a number of strategies for lowering your chances of heart attack and stroke. All of those measures can help prevent high blood pressure, too. In this chapter, I'm going to focus on your treatment options.
Lucky for me, I've never had to deal with high blood pressure. I suspect that my diet has a lot to do with it. |
Gary Null
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| Just as doctors have traditionally been men, and midwifes and nurses traditionally women, women are still mostly excluded from the highest levels of the medical establishment—where the decisions are made as to which types of treatments to favor (typically those that rely on expensive drugs or even more expensive machines and procedures) and which to ignore (typically those involving substances that are not patent-protected, like vitamin C, or techniques that could be practiced by unlicensed, and hence uncontrollable, practitioners, including massage and herbal treatments). |
James A. Duke, Ph.D.
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| As I mentioned earlier, vaginal dryness can be triggered by various pharmaceutical and herbal treatments for vaginitis. It is also among several common signs of a dwindling supply of the female hormone estrogen. (Others include absence of menstruation, cramping during menstruation, heavy periods, spotting between periods, and osteoporosis.) Low estrogen levels often indicate the onset of menopause, which is why vaginal dryness is particularly problematic among older women. |
Cynthia A. Foster, M.D.
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 I knew that the successful natural herbal treatments, the ones that were successful, involved strengthening and boosting the immune system. I knew my friend Charlene who had lupus had healed so well because her immune system was getting stronger.
It was as if the medical school professors had taught it so rapidly that no one had time to sit down and think about all of the contradiction. Otherwise, the professors may also have learned it so rapidly that they never had time to actually think about it, either. They were repeating it exactly the way they had learned it. |
Bill Gottlieb
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 Bruises, swelling, sprains, cuts, colds, fevers, minor burns and rashes respond well to herbal treatments, says Cynthia Mervis Watson, M.D., a physician who specializes in homeopathic and herbal therapies in her family practice in Santa Monica, California. There are also effective herbal therapies for women's reproductive problems, including premenstrual syndrome, infertility, irregular periods, menstrual cramps, menopausal symptoms and vaginal infections, she says.
Herbal remedies form a strong first line of defense against colds, flus and other infectious diseases. |
Dr. Gary Null
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 It has been established that herbal treatments, especially with artemisia and citrus seed extract, are very effective. There are a lot of herbal combinations, some developed by leading protozotologists Dr. Buena and Dr. Parish, which have excellent results."
The following herbs should be considered in parasite-prevention or treatment programs:
Garlic. Garlic has the ability to kill most types of parasites, as well as fungi, microbacteria, and viruses. Eat raw garlic daily, or buy an odorless supplement in the health food store. |
Ronald L. Hoffman, M.D.
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 Other remedies for constipation include
• herbal treatments. For occasional relief of constipation, take a tablespoon of goldenseal, buckthorn bark, flaxseed, or linseed in a glass of water. (But be careful — certain herbal laxatives can be habit-forming, too!)
• Prunes (the old standby) or Rhubarb. Fresh rhubarb stalks work wonders for constipation.
• Colonics. Enemas have been used since ancient times as a cure for constipation. Colonics are thorough enemas that gently cleanse the entire colon.
• Magnesium can be helpful in two ways. |
Michael Tierra
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 HERBAL THERAPIES
There are a number of ways in which the body responds to herbal treatments, and these have traditionally been divided up to produce a basis for eight general methods of therapy. These methods are:
1. stimulation
2. tranquilization
3. blood purification
4. tonification
5. diuresis (control of fluid balance)
6. sweating
7. emesis (vomiting)
8. purging
Each therapeutic method is suitable for particular kinds of diseases, and it is often appropriate to combine several methods for the most effective treatment. |
| When undertaking a program of herbal treatments, one may need to consider the amount of water taken as tea, and if this is too much, use other methods of preparation such as tinctures.
Kidney weakness is also treated by the use of diuretics. The weakened kidneys may be further burdened by excessive water intake. A clear physical sign of waterlogged kidneys is bagginess or darkness under the eyes.
Sweating is used to treat externally caused diseases such as cold, flu and fever. |
Gary Null
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| Again, we can only skim the surface in mentioning some herbal treatments that have shown themselves as powerful agents in working against AIDS.
Vital work has been done in the area of herbal therapies by The Institute for Traditional Medicine in Pordand, Oregon, in looking at how Chinese herbs can be used in treating AIDS. The founder of the institute has developed a specific herbal combination, which combines strong tonic herbs with those that fight inflammation and infection. |
Michael Lerner
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 The author commented that the herbal treatments may work by activating an immunological rejection mechanism, while the chemotherapy may diminish the immunological response of the host without obviously damaging the cancer tissue.36
Another 1989 Chinese study (not a controlled trial) assessed combining conventional and herbal therapies for small cell lung cancer and reported extended survival, apparently in comparison with published survival statistics. |
Michael Castleman
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 SKapfer 15
Herbal Healing
Using the "Roots" of Modern Medicine cUt's amazing where you can run into herbal treatments these days.
Recently, a 39-year-old woman who'd just had surgery to remove a cancerous breast tumor met with radiation oncologist Jerold Green, M.D., at California Pacific Medical Center's gleaming, high-tech radiation oncology unit in San Francisco. Dr. Green explained how he planned to treat her breast with x-rays to kill any cancer cells the surgery had missed. |
| German oncologists often combine Western medicine with herbal treatments. Japanese oncologists often combine Western cancer treatments with dietary approaches, acupuncture and other traditional Asian healing arts.
Sometimes, of course, aggressive treatment is life-saving. But other times it may be unnecessarily disfiguring. Consider breast cancer-. The first treatment was radical mastectomy, introduced about 100 years ago by the American surgeon William Halstead. It was a major improvement over no treatment, but it was also very aggressive. |
Mark Stengler, N.D.
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 FEVERFEW
• "Otherwise, as one study has shown, the migraines may recur as soon as the herbal treatments are discontinued." Johnson ES, Kadam NP, Hylands DM, et al., Efficacy of feverfew as a prophylactic treatment of migraine. British Medical Journal 1985; 291:569-573.
• "... A 1998 study looked at 59 people who suffered migraine headaches." Murphy JJ, Heptinstall S, Mitchell IRA, Randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial of feverfew in migraine prevention. The Lancet July 23,1988; 189-192.
FIBER
• "... Table 4 . . ." Marlett J, Cheung T. |
| In Germany, where doctors routinely prescribe herbal treatments, it's one of the favored treatments for liver problems. That may be news to many people in the United States, but even here, it's getting increasing attention among health practitioners and the general public.
The "milk" in the name refers to the white sap that leave markings on the leaf—but it also has the prickly, spiny appearance of a typical thistle. It grows wild
Milk
SIZING UP THISTLE in parts of Europe, Russia, Asia, and North Africa. English colonists brought it to North America. |
| Otherwise, as one study has shown, the migraines may recur as soon as the herbal treatments are discontinued.
The effectiveness of feverfew is supported by some good clinical data. A 1998 study looked at 59 people who suffered migraine headaches. For the first four months of the study, subjects took a daily, regulated dose of feverfew in capsule form. (As usual in such studies, there was a control group for comparison.) Researchers found that daily treatment with feverfew lead to a 24 percent reduction in the number and severity of migraine headaches. |
Dr. Mary Dan Eades
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 Alert your physician of your intention to use herbs. Some herbal treatments cannot be used in combination with conventional pharmaceuticals.
- Herpes Simplex -
What is it?
The virus herpes simplex rose to national prominence as a cause of the sexually transmitted disease known as "herpes" in the mid-1970s and, in the pre-AIDS era, became the scourge of the burgeoning sexual revolution in America. |
James A. Duke, Ph.D.
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 Green Pharmacy for Burns
For first-degree and smaller second-degree burns, there are a number of herbal treatments that can soothe the burn and help bring relief. W%, Aloe (Aloe vera). Aloe has been used to treat burns and other wounds since ancient times. But it's not just a folk remedy. Many studies have shown that the gel obtained by slitting open the succulent's fat, leathery leaves relieves burns, including burns caused by radiation treatments for cancer.
My friend Varro Tyler, Ph.D. |
Michael Lerner
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| One participant after another described how beneficial the acupuncture and herbal treatments were. They stressed particularly the value of Chinese medicine in coping with the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.
I have suggested previously that spiritual, psychological, nutritional, and physical approaches to cancer represent a quartet of intrinsically open and ethical approaches to intensive health promotion in the face of cancer. Now I would like to add a fifth key approach to cancer. |
| Pau D'Arco tea from South America, the Hoxsey herbs from the United States and Mexico, the Canadian treatment Essiac, and the herbal remedies used in traditional Chinese medicine are a few of the best-known herbal treatments. Fortunately, a respected scientific literature is available on laboratory tests of the anticancer effects of herbal remedies that patients, physicians, and researchers can consult. However, there are few rigorous studies for most of these remedies as actual treatments for human cancer. |
Thomas Bartram
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 They feel "that an absence of scientific proof should not prevent continued use by the public of herbal treatments they have come to rely on".
The Licensing Authority will accept evidence of efficacy when based on appropriate bibliographies and traditional use. No advertisement or representation of the product shall state or imply that efficacy is based on evidence other than those bibliographies and traditional use.
The Department needs to be convinced that a remedy or combination of remedies is safe. Evidence of safety will be required. |
| Infected bone areas are not well supplied with blood, so oral antibiotics may not reach them; this is where topical herbal treatments can assist. Anti-bacterial drinks are available in the absence of conventional antibiotics.
To promote cell proliferation and callous formation: Comfrey root, Marigold, St John's Wort, Arnica. (Madaus)
To stimulate connective tissue: Thuja. Comfrey root. Potential benefit outweighs possible risk.
Teas. Nettles. Plantain. Silverweed, Yarrow. Boneset. Marigold petals. St John's Wort. Comfrey leaves. Singly or in combination. Abundant drinks during the day. |
Dr. Mary Dan Eades
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| Alert your physician of your intention to use herbs. Some herbal treatments cannot be used in combination with conventional pharmaceuticals.
What makes it worse?
• Drinking alcohol in more than very modest amounts causes an elevation in blood pressure. When you stop drinking, your blood pressure falls rapidly, usually within a week, sometimes as quickly as within 24 hours. Recommendation: Sharply curtail your alcohol intake to no more than % ounce of distilled spirits, 4 ounces of wine, or 1 "lite" beer per day. |
Kathi Keville
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 Of course, testosterone, genes and poor circulation are not the only factors that cause men to lose their locks. Unlike the man who sprouts it, the body considers hair one of its least important assets. It is one of the first things to go when a serious illness, nervous-system disease or advancing years demand their share of limited nutrients. Some drug treatments, especially ones for arthritis, gout, depression, high blood pressure and heart problems, can also shut down hair growth. So can radiation therapy and the various scalp problems that fall under the umbrella of dermatitis. |
John Boik
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 In general, the studies contained in this book do not prove or disprove that complementary therapies work. The primary reason for this is that there are a multitude of complementary therapies, and each may be used singularly or in combination to assist the cancer patient. Each treatment protocol must be judged on its own merits on well-defined patient groups. To date, very little clinical research has been conducted on the majority of complementary therapies, and it is simply too early to make many judgments. |
Kathi Keville
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| Baths are also useful in treating certain skin problems, and the steam that rises off a bath containing essential oils can be a treatment in itself for various breathing and circulation problems.
A variation on a full body bath is a foot or hand bath, popularized by the French herbalist Maurice Messegue and the French aromatherapist Marguerite Maury. In his book Of People and Plants, Messegue reports some amazing cures for serious problems using only herbal foot and hand baths. |
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