Teas From Plants Around You and Their Benefits
December 4, 2008
All teas unless specified are brewed with 1 teaspoon dry material or 2 teaspoons fresh material to 1 cup of water. Always steep. This means pouring hot water over material and letting set for 5 - 15 minutes. Always dry leaves and roots out of the sun, in dark airy places. Then store in airtight containers.
Persimmon Tea: The leaves when dried and crushed make a fine strong tea. Can be used all year round. Rich in vitamin C. Used as a healthful tonic.
Sassafras Tea: Boil fresh roots after washing, until water turns reddish brown. Can be sliced and dried for later use. Claimed by some to be a blood thinner, a blood purifier, to help bronchitis, a stimulating spring tonic. Mostly it is used for pure enjoyment.
Birch Tea (Wintergreen): Black, yellow and white birch. Dried leaves can be used year round. A large handful of fresh leaves steeped in hot water was drunk 1 to 2 cups a day for rheumatism and headaches. Said to reduce pain of passing kidney stones, and a fever reducer. Cold it was used as a mouthwash.
Fight Cancer With Broccoli Sprouts
December 3, 2008
Mom was right to insist on us eating our vegetables. She knew they built health and gave us the minerals we need. Now scientists have found that we can eat foods to help us both prevent cancer and fight cancer.
Take Broccoli sprouts. Broccoli sprouts are rich in a compound that provides significant protection against breast cancer and colon cancer. The compound is called sulforaphane glucosinalate.
Sprouts grown from certain types of broccoli seeds contain up to 50 times more of this compound than mature broccoli to help you fight cancer.
My research shows that a brand of sprouts developed at John Hopkins University is guaranteed to have 20 more times the SGS compound than the mature broccoli. This one is called BroccoSprouts. You can purchase broccoli sprouts at your local health food store or grocery store.
It is possible that Broccoli sprouts could carry the bacteria that make you sick - salmonella and e.coli, so you may want to take them out of the container when you get them home and soak in a bowl of water with a few drops of grapefruit seed extract for three or four minutes.
Aromatherapy Favorites - Beautiful Rose Oil
December 2, 2008
Ah, Wonderful Rose Oil
If there’s an aroma that more individuals find deeply moving than any other, it is the oil of rose. The scent is divinely sweet, rich, and deeply floral - exclusive to the extract of history’s most revered flower. Though the rose is renown for it’s fragrance, the flower actually contains very little aromatic oil by weight. Some 60,000 roses are needed to distill a single ounce of oil, or about 60 roses PER DROP, a fact which brings the seemly high cost of rose oil into perspective.
The Flower of Love
The hardy nature of the thorny rose bush and the flower’s magnificent beauty make it a horticulturalist’s dream. The genus Rosa has some 150 species spread around the globe, being cultivated in your grandmother’s backyard garden, in vast fields in Bulgaria’s Valley of Roses, and everywhere in between.
Roses have somewhat of a unique past, peppered with interesting stories and extravagant displays of affection. The flower’s association with devotion was perhaps most wonderfully expressed during the Roman empire, with banquet halls being carpeted with petals. Cleopatra once received her beloved Marc Antony in a room literally knee-deep in rose petals ? how’s that for greeting? Roses are the unrivaled symbol of love, given dear ones through the ages as an affirmation of true affection. It’s no wonder the flower’s oil has great healing properties, both physically and emotionally, for the human heart.
Starbucks Green Tea Frappachinos, Can They Prevent Cancer?
December 1, 2008
Starbucks now offers the Green Tea Frappachinos, yes I had one and they are very tasty indeed. We all know green tea helps prevent many types of cancer, not to mention a host of other things. Green Tea is very good for your body. Starbucks makes their green tea frappachinos with Green Tea powder derived from Green Tea Leaves. As you watch them blend your drink you will probably wonder if it will taste good, if it can really help. Well you are in luck on both accounts. Although it might be a little on the fattening side at least you know it is doing good things inside your body due to the green tea.
New research seems to indicate that green tea does in fact protect our bodies from getting cancer. Well few of these things are as good as green tea researchers say, of course the Chinese have been saying it for 10,000 years. A brand new research now shows that the phytochemicals in green tea are absolutely incredible. Something that the Asian cultures have known throughout their history, in fact it is quite well known that green tea is known to prevent many forms of cancer such as; Ovarian cancer, Pancreatic cancer, Colon cancer, Lung cancer and Breast cancer.
Quick Tip for Runners Who Have Knee Pain
November 29, 2008
Running with knees that hurt and are not getting better trough time is no fun, and being addicted to running doesn’t help either.
Fortunately, pain isn’t always a definite sign of tissue damage; instead it can be protective pain that is coming from entities called myofascial trigger points.
Pain from trigger points can feel like its coming from knee joint or patellae, while it’s actually coming from contraction knots in the quadriceps muscles.
What makes things quite enigmatic is that these knots can sometimes reside high in quadriceps muscles, far from where the actual pain symptom is felt.
It’s not uncommon for knee pain to be solely or partially muscular. It’s also common for doctors to overlook trigger points as a possible pain cause, because at this point there is no imaging equipment in use, which could verify their existence.
For now, only way to find out if trigger point are part of the pain equation, is manually palpating and searching for them from the muscles. There are not many doctors who do this, or know how to do this, or think that it’s even beneficial to do this.
Heres Hope for Parkinsons Disease
November 28, 2008
Frank’s 85 year-old father was in advanced stages of Parkinson’s.
Confined to a wheelchair…his speech jumbled…his face frozen in a Parkinson Mask…he was hardly more than a vegetable.
Day after day, he sat, unmoving, unable to communicate. It broke Frank’s heart to see the once robust, active man he always loved reduced to such a tragic state.
One day, a friend mentioned that simple sugars might help his father. Frank had never heard of them and was more than a bit skeptical. After all, they had already tried everything modern medicine had to offer.
But desperation drove Frank to check it out.
He was impressed with the logic of the science and the volume of clinical research available. This was obviously not some new miracle food with extravagant claims, backed by little or no real medical research.
Furthermore, he understood that simple sugars would be no more harmful than giving his dad a blueberry muffin. They were a food. Nothing more…nothing less.
He began with small doses. Then gradually increased the amount his father was taking until they reached the amount suggested by their Recovery Coach.
Holistic Medicine
November 27, 2008
Holistic Medicine involves natural treatment options like holistic nutrition, herbology, environmental medicine, energy work, mind-body medicine, anatomy, and many other holistic medicine practices.
Holistic medicine allows an individual to be treated naturally and establishes a positive balance between body, mind and spirit. Holisitc medicine encourages self-healing. Holistic medicine promotes detoxification by utilizing cleansing herbs. Holistic medicine also teaches nutritional guidelines that enhances proper diet and longevity. Furthermore, holistic medicine means utilizing recommended vitamins, minerals and other nutritional supplements to make one’s body function more effectively.
Holistic medicine encompasses preventative and maintenance programs. But it also enables us to learn alternative healing methods like Yoga, Reiki, Tai Chi, acupressure, acupuncture, herbal and plant remedies and so much more. There are well over 100 medical conditions like cancer, migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome and many others that can be helped with holistic medicine today.
In modern society, there are countless advantages to holistic medicine. If you or someone you know is interested in learning about the benefits of holistic medicine or would like to contact a holistic medicine practitioner, Holistic Junction has a directory listing of many, professional holistic medicine specialists. Simply go to “Directories,” click on Business Directories and we’ll help you find one close to you.
Acupuncturists
November 26, 2008
An ancient Chinese method of pain relief and disease treatment; acupuncturists have used acupuncture effectively over several centuries. Acupuncturists use a treatment where fine, hair-like needle insertion is done over several, specific areas of the body.
According to Chinese philosophy, acupuncturists can influence the channels of energy that run within the body. Through the insertion of needles at points along these meridians, acupuncturists believe that acupuncture can relieve disease and pain through bringing balance back between the two principal forces of nature — the yin and the yang. Modern acupuncturists theorize that acupuncture reduces pain through biological mechanisms. {That, as in the opioid peptides, and hypothalamus and pituitary gland stimulation, neurotransmittal and hormonal changes, or immune system modifications.} Regardless of theory, acupuncture is a safe and common practice.
Most often, acupunturists are used for chronic illness and severe injury. Patients are always conscious and feel little or no pain for the duration of the acupuncturist’s procedure. Scientifically researched, acupuncturists can trigger signals in the nervous system, and redefine pain signals to the brain. An acupuncturist’s therapy increases brain productivity of endorphins, or the body’s natural painkiller. Practicing acupuncurists are widely scattered in Asia and Europe, but acupunture therapy is rapidly gaining popularity here in the United States as well.
The Importance of a Parasite Cleanse
November 25, 2008
A parasite cleanse is required if your body is overburdened with other toxins. A parasite is an organism that derives its food, nutrition and shelter by living in or on another organism. Therefore, by its very nature, it robs nutrients from its host and, by its very existence, it deflects the host’s immune system from warding off disease. Within the broad term "parasite", a range of creatures can fall ? worms, flukes, mites, yeast, bacteria and viruses, just to name a few. While your first reaction maybe one of disgust, keep in mind that your body does need certain beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract to keep your system in balance. Ever had a yeast infection? This is when the parasitic yeasts have overwhelmed the beneficial yeasts, most often with the assistance of what has become our annual dose of antibiotics.
Frankincense in Aromatherapy - Trees, Pearls, and Essential Oil
November 24, 2008
The Mysterious Frankincense
Used for many thousands of years, the Frankincense tree has perhaps the greatest association with spiritualpractice of any plant on earth. In most of the great ancient cultures,including the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman civilizations, it has played a role inreligious and domestic life. Frankincense has been sought after by kings and valued as highly as gold. Morerecently, the essential oil is gaining popularity with spiritual seekers and natural healers alike. What isso special about this tree that its ‘pearls’ were given as a gift at the birth of one of history’s most reveredprophets?
The Hardy Tree and its Tears
The Frankincense tree, or Olibanum, upon first glance, may seem rather unremarkable. It appears as agiant shrub, with many knurled branches topped with abundant slender leaves and occasionally, small white flowers.A native to northern Africa, it looks like it belongs in the desert, growing in some of the world’sharshest conditions. But it is not the tree itself, but rather its sap that has such profound lore surroundingit. Whenthe tree’s bark is pierced with a knife (known traditionally as a ‘Mingaf’), a milky-white oleoresin is exuded- thought the tree is not harmed. The resin forms droplets known as ‘tears’ or ‘pearls’, which harden intothe orange-brown gum known itself as Frankincense. The English name of this natural incense is derivedfrom the medieval French ‘franc’,meaning ‘pure’ or ‘free’, and from the Latin ‘incensium’, meaning ‘to smoke’.
