Why use herbs as medicine and for wellbeing?
You might ask yourself how can herbs help me? The truth is that a large proportion of the world still use herbs as medicine and for wellbeing. And it is only a few hundred years since we did in this country before it became a legal requirement for this country to follow orthodox medicine in our health system (which is the pharmaceutical drugs we use today).
When we use the term ‘herbs’ it can be a plant, a tree, or just a bog standard weed which grows in your local field or woods or back yard such as dandelion, plantains, red clover, nettles, as just a few examples, but they have been found to have medicinal qualities. Most people dig these up in their gardens as they are unsightly but, unbeknown to them, they have wonderful medicinal properties which can help us deal with everyday ailments as well as more serious conditions. Unfortunately, not enough money is spent on clinical trials for these plants so sometimes we don’t have the scientific studies to back them up; sometimes we do; BUT these plants and weeds have hundreds of years of folklore documented around them and if people have been using them for ailments for a long time, the proof of their efficacy is in the pudding as they say.
Herbs. or we can call them medicinal plants, contain many constituents which make up their therapeutic value. Constituents such as saponins, flavonoids, glycosides, alkaloids, to name just a few, and they have many different actions within the body such as anti-inflammatory, vulnerary (wound healing) diuretic, antiviral, antibacterial, antibiotic, alterative (blood cleansing), sedative, relaxants, anti-depressants. They also contain many nutrients just as food does, and because it is from a natural source like food, the body recognises it so much easier and can utilise it much more effectively in the body, as opposed to many packaged supplementary vitamins.
Herbs balance. God has thought of everything when he created medicinal plants. They have many constituents which work in harmony with each other and balance each other out. They have an innate intelligence that have the ability to ‘speak’ to our bodies nicely and they know just how to act once inside our bodies. For example, herbs for hormone balance – the herb will know just how far to balance; it will increase or reduce levels just as required. Whereas orthodox drugs can swing your body too far one way or another which is one reason why a lot of medication can solve one issue but cause other (or many other) side effects.