Using Herbs to Enhance Your Health
For Many, Natural Herbal Cures Offer Safe Alternatives to Drugs
Sep 23, 2009
If you're like most people who've lived a few years, you know this drill: You have a medical complaint, so you visit your doctor. You're prescribed a medication, which helps with your problem. But much to your dismay, the cure comes with a cost - side effects.
For many people, this situation can produce quite a dilemma. Do you continue with your medication and try to cope with undesirable side effects, or do you ditch your prescription and try to stiff it out with the problem you had in the first place? To make matters worse, many doctors are not fully aware of the complications medications may cause. So many drugs exist on the market today that it's nearly impossible for the average internist to know everything that could happen.
This is where herbs can help. Many common medical complaints, including seasonal allergies, headaches, joint pain and inflammation, and many digestive disorders can be treated with herbs when the symptoms are mild and you are otherwise healthy. Evidence from traditional herbal medicine even suggests that some herbs can be beneficial in combatting flu symptoms, and in strengthening the immune system to ward off viruses such as this year's swine flu. It's worth the time to educate yourself about which ones work, because quality herbs provide a treatment alternative that nearly always comes without unpleasant side effects.
Getting started . . . slowly
The key to using herbal treatments to your best advantage is healthy moderation. Don't become an extremist and think you're going to go "au naturale" overnight. What you want to acheive is a healty balance of natural care with the traditional treatments that have been studied and proven effective. For example, an herb may help with a common ailment, say, seasonal allergies, so that you don't need to take as much prescription allergy medication as you once did. As a result, side effects like drowsiness and dry mouth can be reduced.
Take the time to educate yourself and then pick one or two herbal preparations that are recommended for a problem you have. Avoid adding more than one herb at a time, because you want to know exactly what is helping you. Remember that no one can listen to your body the way you can. The help that herbs provide is usually gentle and subtle, so you might not "feel it" as fast as you do a medication. After one or two weeks of using an herb, hopefully you'll be thinking, "Hey, it's not as bad as it used to be!"
Don't ditch your doctor!
By all means, keep your trusted doctor fully apprised of any herbal supplements you're taking. If your doctor disapproves, follow his or her instructions, because after all, they are the one with the medical degree. But if your results are good and you're staying under doctor's orders, chances are they will be as pleased as you are with the results!
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