Is it a pandemic or just a flare of media attention? We shouldn’t forget the swine flu epidemic in 1976, wherein one man died from the flu while hundreds died from the protective measures that followed.
So far the cases of swine flu diagnosed in the city have been described as “mild” and happily no one has died. What’s alarming about the cases in Mexico is that it seems to be striking folks in the prime of life, when usually we associated deaths from the flu with the elderly and immunocompromised.
Even in acute, infectious diseases like swine flu, natural medicines can help. Certainly if you are seriously ill, you need to go to the emergency room. But if you are interested in avoiding getting ill in the first place, it’s clear having had the flu shot won’t help in this case. Here are some natural medicines that will:
1. Green tea – Gargling with green tea has been shown to dramatically reduce the rates of flu infection (non-garglers were infected eight times more).
2. Elderberry syrup - Elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is a traditional herbal remedy for upper respiratory infections. It’s sold as a syrup and has been shown to reduce the severity and length of flu symptoms. The constituents in Elderberry have a specific action against flu viruses. In one study, almost all participants who took Elderberry - 4 tablespoons of syrup per day, 2 tablespoons for kids -were symptom-free after just 2 days.
3. Vitamin C – Even relatively low amounts, such as 100 milligrams per day, have been shown to cut your risk of contracting the flu by a quarter. Greater protection can be expected with larger doses. I generally recommend 1000 milligrams 3 times per day or more.
4. Take an adaptogen – Adaptogens are herbs that helps our bodies manage stress and higher stress levels make us more prone to infection. Two of the most common are Ginseng and Eleuthero. Ginseng has been shown to reduce the frequency of flu infections.
5. Echinacea – Yes, it works. If you’ve tried Echinacea and haven’t seen results, you’re using the wrong kind of Echinacea. Always use an extract of the root of Echinacea angustifolia (not E. purpurea).
Filed under Conditions, Prevention | Comment (0)
The unlikely skunk cabbage is the true first flower of spring. The first time you see skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), you might not realize it is a flower. In fact, you might not see it at all. During a recent stroll in Ridley Creek State Park, after spotting one it took a few minutes of looking around before it dawned on me that I was surrounded by them. These bizarre flowers look like purple tongues sticking out of the ground and their characteristic color manages to blend in with the leaf cover and drab brown of the late winter forest floor.
Skunk cabbage is decidedly unflowerlike. There are no petals, the purple bit is properly known as a “spathe” or a colored bract. Of course, there is a fragrance and this is the source of the common name, as it smells pretty much like a skunk. Not a popular inclusion in Valentine’s bouquets and, according to a USDA pamphlet from 1907, “it is not likely to suffer extermination at the hand of the enthusiastic gatherer of spring flowers”.
Skunk cabbage grows in moist areas and I harvested mine practically in the water of Crum Creek. The white, worm-like roots are the part usually used medicinally. Though it may be rare to find commercially today, in earlier times skunk cabbage root was a well-known and highly valued antispasmodic with a particular affinity for the respiratory system. It was chiefly used in conditions such as asthma and whooping cough. Its antispasmodic properties earned it a place in formulas for tetanus and dysmenorrhea. It also has nervine properties and in the old books is often indicated for “hysteria”.
In homeopathy, skunk cabbage is known by the older Latin name Ictodes foetida. The homeopathic indications, as brought out in provings, reinforce the traditional usage. Important modalities for Ictodes respiratory symptoms are: worse inhaling any dust and better by stool.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)There are natural remedies for Peyronie’s Disease that have been shown to be effective. This condition, characterized by contracture and deviation of the penis, does not get a lot of press but can certainly cause a lot of discomfort and distress.Conventional medical treatment for Peyronie’s can involve surgery or local injections of corticosteroids or other medications, but natural treatment for Peyronie’s are far less invasive.
An enzyme called superoxide dismutase, which is related to antioxidant activity and naturally produced by your body, can be applied topically to the area. In one study, pain, plaque size and curvature were all reduced in a significant number of patients while progression of the disease was considerably reduced.
Acetyl-L-carnitine is a nutritional supplement that has been used to treat Peyronie’s. Taken orally, it has been shown to reduce pain, inhibit progression and reduce curvature and plaque size. Vitamin E has also been used to treat Peyronie’s disease.
There’s some evidence that increases in the biochemical nitric oxide will reduce the proliferation of the cells responsible for plaque formation and the synthesis of collagen, so agents that increase nitric oxide might help someone with Peyronie’s. L-arginine is an amino acid involved with nitric oxide production and sustained-release L-arginine supplements are readily available, generally marketed for circulatory conditions.
Filed under Conditions | Comment (0)Natural remedies for sarcoidosis exist! Researchers in Florence, Italy did a revealing study on a natural treatment for sarcoidosis. They used melatonin, a hormone your body naturally produces, as a long-term treatment for patients with chronic sarcoidosis. At the end of two years, all of the patients had improved and many were symptom-free. Skin lesions and hylar adenopathy disappeared and pulmonary function tests improved. The best part? No side effects and no relapses. The treatment of sarcoidosis in conventional medicine generally centers around corticosteroids, such as prednisone, which are associated with significant unpleasant side effects. They suppress symptoms and relapse is common. It is great to see that there are safe and effective treatments out there with natural substances and that this is backed up by research. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you there is no scientific evidence to support alternative medicine! It’s just not true.)
Filed under Conditions, Nutrition | Comment (1)Establishing healthy habits and giving up old, unhealthy ones are the focus of many people’s New Year’s resolutions. While there’s no way around quitting smoking or starting an exercise regimen when you’re trying to be healthy, if you’re not quite ready to give up some of the more familiar vices, an easier solution is to make the things you’re already doing a little bit healthier.
Here are a few tips, mini-resolutions if you will, that will help make some not-so-healthy habits a little better for you:
1. Alcohol.
Drink red wine or dark beer instead of white wine, light beer or hard liquor – the former have much higher levels of healthy antioxidants, such as resveratrol.
2. Caffeine.
Drink coffee made with a paper filter, such as regular drip coffee, rather than espresso, lattes, cappuccinos or French press coffees – the paper filter removes cafestol a chemical in coffee beans that happens to be one of the strongest cholesterol-elevating agents known.
3. Sweets.
Eat dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate – chocolate is jam-packed with anti-oxidant polyphenols, but adding milk binds them up, making them unavailable. For best results, get 70% cacao or higher
4. Fatty foods.
Eat organic, grass-fed meats and cheese – pesticides are fat-soluble so fatty foods contain much higher levels. Animal tissues also concentrate pesticides over time, as they continually eat pesticide laden foods. (Of course it’s best to eat all organic, if you can.)
5. Take out
Order whole grain options – after water, the standard American diet is most deficient in fiber, which is removed during processing into white flour or white rice. Whole grain options are now readily available. If you’re getting bagels, choose whole wheat. If you’re getting Chinese food, order brown rice instead of white.
Ask the naturopathic doctor: What are some natural remedies I can use to speed up my recovery from bronchitis?
When recovering from bronchitis, most people experience a stuffy sensation in their chest with a cough and a lot of phlegm. Since phlegm is mostly water, staying properly hydrated will help thin out the mucus. Drink water and herbal teas, but stay away from milk and other dairy products as well as orange juice and sugary drinks as these can contribute to mucus.
One supplement that is very effective at thinning out mucus is N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC). Take 500 mg twice a day while symptoms persist. Our old friend vitamin C is also useful for recovery from bronchitis, take 1000 – 2000 mg three times per day.
The herb I like most in cases of bronchitis is Elecampane (Inula helenium). This herb promotes a deep expectoration that can efficiently clear out all that phlegm, while at the same time soothing the inflamed surfaces of the respiratory tract. Another great herb is Thyme, the common culinary herb. Thyme is well-known for its anti-septic properties and clinical trials have shown that thyme decreases the severity of bronchitis symptoms such as cough while shortening recovery time.
For the more adventurous, an old tradition was to make an onion poultice. Slice and cook a few onions down in a little water and apply them to the chest as hot as can be tolerated. Cover with a thick towel to retain the heat and replace with another batch when the onions cool. Mix in some ground flax seeds to make the poultice even more soothing.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Adequate stomach acid is vital for proper digestion and good health. Acidity is necessary to absorb nutrients and to neutralize invading microorganisms.
The lining of the stomach is designed to withstand the natural acidity of its contents. We only feel heartburn or “overacidity” when the contents of the stomach escape into the esophagus. The lining of the esophagus is not designed to withstand acidity the way the stomach is, and acid in the esophagus causes pain and burning. Heartburn is not due to too much acid but to acid in the wrong place.
The stomach and esophagus are separated by a muscular band, the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). The LES constricts best when the contents of the stomach are more acidic. Acid can only reach the esophagus and cause heartburn when the contents of the stomach are in fact not acidic enough to close the LES, but are acidic enough to irritate the esophagus.
Drugs for acid reflux work by neutralizing acid or preventing you from making it. They eliminate the acid, but not the reflux. They treat the symptom, but not the cause. A better idea is to increase stomach acid by supplementing with acid or using herbs that encourage stomach acid production. This is an approach used successfully by many holistic doctors.
Filed under Conditions | Comment (0)We have our first and second laws of healing: the law of cure and the law of minimum dose. In simple cases, these are enough to guide you and it will be fairly obvious when treatment is successful. The example of sleeplessness reflects a simple case in which evaluation is straightforward. If you fall asleep quickly and remain asleep, treatment is successful. Similarly, our example of a rash being treated with poison ivy is also straightforward. If the rash resolves quickly, rapidly, permanently and without side effects, treatment can be said to be successful.
The third law regards more complex cases in which evaluating progress can be more complicated. Quite often patients have more than one health issue and quite often a health condition changes over time, becoming more severe, more complex or changing in nature. In these complicated cases, treatment is a process that takes time and perhaps several different remedies to resolve. After evaluating a patient’s health history and symptom picture, a single remedy is recommended, following the law of cure. After taking the remedy the patient experiences some changes and the question is: how do we know that these changes are positive, towards health and a resolution of their condition?
The third law of healing, often called Hering’s law, states that healing occurs from above downwards, from within outwards, from a more important organ to a lesser one, and that symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their appearance. This is a powerfully instructive statement and it indicates that cure moves in the opposite direction of chronic disease.
Quite often we see a progression upwards in patients who suffer from arthritis. The pain may begin in the knee, but as time goes on the hip begins to be affected and further along, the back begins to hurt. The natural progression of chronic disease is upward. Your body’s natural healing direction is downward. In measles, rubella or chickenpox, for instance, the rash (your body’s healing response) starts in the head and neck and spreads downward to the chest and then the limbs.
Rheumatic fever is a great example of the movement of disease internally. It begins as a sore throat or skin eruption, but if these are left untreated, these symptoms subside and can be replaced by joint pain. The term rheumatoid arthritis means arthritis resembling this rheumatic arthritis. This joint inflammation can move even further internally to the heart, with the result that many people who had suffered from rheumatic fever have rheumatic valve disease. Lyme disease can have a similar progression with symptoms moving from the skin to the joints to internal organs.
In treating patients we want to see symptoms disappear in the opposite direction that they occur in disease. So in our example of arthritis moving from knee to hip to back, the best outcome would be if the back pain resolved first, as it is higher up and was the last symptom to occur. This regularly happens in acupuncture treatment, even as the treatment is going on. A patient’s subjective experience of pain will move from the shoulder to the elbow to the wrist.
Filed under Homeopathy | Comment (0)In the last post I discussed the first law of healing, the law of cure, which states that a substance which causes certain symptoms in a healthy person will cure those symptoms in a sick person. We all know that a cup of coffee, especially if we aren’t accustomed to drinking it, will make our mind more active and keep us up at night. So, following the law of cure, we can deduce that coffee would be a great remedy for sleeplessness, especially if it is characterized by excessive activity of the mind. And it is a great insomnia remedy, as has been verified repeatedly in the practice of many homeopaths, myself included.
However, does this mean on a sleepless night you should brew yourself a big cup of coffee and expect to snooze away? Well, we all know the answer to that. A venti at bedtime is a sure recipe for even more insomnia. This brings us to the second law of healing: the law of the minimum dose. Healing that is effective, rapid and harmless requires not only the right remedy (we can use the law of cure to guide us here) but also the right dose of that remedy.
What is the right dose? The law of the minimum dose states that the correct dose should be the smallest dose possible that still has a healing effect. A cup of coffee may be too much but what about a drop of coffee? This small amount may surprise some people but I regularly recommend drop doses of herbal tincture or extract with great effect (and if you think about it coffee is an herbal infusion). Homeopaths regularly make much more dilute preparations and often the more dilute the remedy, the more powerful the effect. Keep in mind that this works only if we follow the first law, the law of cure, and the symptoms caused by the remedy are very similar to the symptoms of the patient.
If we don’t follow the second law of healing, the law of the minimum dose, and we use too large a dose, then we risk exaggerating symptoms before relieving them. In other words, if you drink an entire cup of coffee you will be even more sleepless but as the effects of the coffee wear off you will, no doubt, become quite tired and sleepy (probably when it’s time to wake up, prompting another cup of coffee!).
The law of the minimum dose also helps explain the healing effects of many physical therapies and treatments. Acupuncture, for example, uses very thin needles that cause a very minimum of discomfort. The thinness of the needles is analogous to the minimization of a dose of medication. A much larger “needle” such as a nail or spike, would cause an exorbitant amount of pain in the spot it was inserted. It is no accident that acupuncture is such a superlative treatment for pain. It is a minimum dose of something that causes similar pain.
Similarly, chiropractic adjustments are minimized versions of maneuvers that would cause symptoms similar to what they treat. Chiropractic adjustments are referred to as high-velocity/ low-amplitude, meaning they move very quickly but use little force. If they were to move slower but use much more force, they would certainly cause neck pain or back pain. Instead they minimize the dose by reducing the force but increasing the speed, thereby creating an effective treatment for neck or back pain.
See my post on the treatment of burns for another example.
Natural medicine is not natural simply because it employs herbs or other healing agents from nature. A medical system or therapy is deemed natural when it follows the natural laws of healing.
Though it may surprise people that there are natural laws to healing, these laws are as constant as the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. The law of cure states that a substance which causes symptoms in a healthy person will cure those symptoms in a sick person. This is the foundation of the alternative medical system called homeopathy.
To give an example, those of us who are unfortunate enough to be sensitive to poison ivy can attest to the kind of symptoms it causes: the rash is red, insanely itchy and looks like little bubbles on the skin. Now, should a person develop this kind of skin condition without being exposed to poison ivy, they can be quickly healed by actually taking a very dilute amount of poison ivy. This is true no matter what the diagnosis of the skin condition may be (contact dermatitis, eczema, etc.) as long as the symptoms agree. Other skin conditions may have different symptoms (perhaps dry and scaly, for instance) and in those cases poison ivy won’t help. But when the symptoms agree, it will always work. I have seen cases exactly like this several times.
This law is widely accepted amongst practitioners of homeopathy, but it is true in all cases and applicable in all situations. Regardless of which medical system or therapy you are using, if a condition is cured, it follows this rule. We know ipecac is useful to cause vomiting (if you’ve been poisoned) and as a result it is one of the best remedies for nausea and vomiting. A sore throat that is characterized by intense burning can be relieved by hot pepper which, as we all know, can cause great burning in the throat.
Cayenne pepper is often recommended as a home remedy for sore throat and the law of cure explains why. The important thing to keep in mind it will only relieve the kind of pain it causes, so it is not a remedy for all sore throats, but only for the kind of sore throat that is similar to the sore throat it causes.
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