Garlic has long been a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Eastern cooking, but many people don’t realize its potent effects on our immune and digestive systems. Garlic supplements offer a convenient option to regularly eating raw garlic; these can be used as a dietary supplement to fight infection, reduce blood pressure, and even manage blood-sugar levels. Nature’s Way Garlicin offers a simple way to enjoy many of the health benefits of garlic in a safe, natural formula.

History Lesson
Garlic was commonly used as a treatment for leprosy by ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and mixed with other herbal ingredients and antioxidants for its powerful therapeutic properties. Before the advent of modern medicine, raw garlic was prescribed to heal wounds, combat colds and fevers, and neutralize inflammation in the body. Some researchers in China believe that garlic has natural cancer-fighting benefits that can improve the body’s resistance to tumors, helping to prevent cancer-causing agents from circulating in the body.

The most important compound in garlic is allicin, the substance that is released when garlic is cut, chewed, or crushed. This is why many cooking techniques require garlic to be crushed before adding it to meals; the release of allicin makes it easy to absorb the key ingredients of garlic, and standardized allicin is found in a variety of garlic supplements. Since garlic also works as a natural blood thinner, it should not be taken by those who regularly have low blood sugar, or are taking medication that has anticoagulant properties.

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If you’re like most people, you don’t give a lot of thought to your liver, but you literally couldn’t live without it. This organ plays multiple roles, including filtering out toxins, regulating your metabolism, producing energy, assisting with digestion, storing essential vitamins, and controlling cholesterol production. Since it does so much for you, wouldn’t it be nice if you could do something for your liver? You can. There’s a supplement you can take that has proven benefits for your hard-working liver: Thisilyn.

How Thisilyn Helps
Offered by Nature’s Way, Thisilyn contains milk thistle extract. Milk thistle is an herb native to the Mediterranean region that has been a folk remedy for liver and other disorders for thousands of years. The milk thistle extract in Thisilyn is primarily composed of a flavonoid complex known as silymarin. Silymarin protects the liver by preventing absorption of harmful toxins.

Silymarin is so effective in preventing liver damage that it is sometimes used to treat patients who have eaten extremely poisonous mushrooms. The use of milk thistle can dramatically increase the survival rate of patients in this predicament.

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Sometimes it’s difficult coping in this complex, fast-paced world. Couldn’t you use a hand in getting past the murky parts—naturally?

Essential oils provide a clean, safe pick-me-up. These plant-based babies do wonders in helping your body create its own natural balance. Essential oils are derived from the part of the plant that gives it a scent, contain hormone-like properties, and act as infection police, protecting the plant from disease and fungus. They also contain ingredients similar to human blood and tissue, making them compatible with our own physiology.

Our olfactory sense is highly attuned to our emotions. Notice that sometimes when you smell something, you are instantly brought back to another time. This could be a survival method that carried humans from long ago to the present day. It could be a way for us to tune into our sense of emotion, our own well-being. The bottom line is, our sense of smell elicits definite feelings and thoughts—it is a total immersion, an immediate reaction.

According to the Ananda Apothecary in Boulder, Colorado, researchers found that essential oils give a boost to various brain functions, including the limbic, or emotional, function. In a Korean study, it was found that by using essential oils in massage, patients experienced positive effects in mental aspects of wellness. While essential oils do not cure depression, they do provide a valuable get-out-of-bed-and-look-at-the-day attitude, which then enables you to concentrate on the source of your depression. Many naturopaths believe that, by using essential oils to help combat your depression, you are creating a balance within your body that allows you to heal quickly and more effectively.

Some essential oils for depression are:

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  Jasmine.

  
  


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  Lavender.

  
  


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  Neroli.

  
  


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  Bergamot.

  
  


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  Rose otto.

  
  


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  Rose absolute.

  
  


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  Chamomile.

  
  

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Chamomile has long been known as a powerfully soothing, relaxing herb, but you’ll find even more benefits of this potent plant when using it in aromatherapy. Chamomile is commonly associated with treating insomnia, and is often added to sleep aids as a natural relaxant. Most people find comfort in a cup of chamomile tea, but there are other ways to use the herb if you’re suffering from anxiety, nervousness, tension, or even skin problems.

What Is Chamomile?

Chamomile oil itself has a fairly sweet fragrance, and its essence is extracted from the flowers of the herb. It was used heavily during the Middle Ages as a natural soothing agent, to improve digestion, reduce inflammation, and soothe irritated skin. Egyptian cultures used it to treat fevers and heal wounds.

It is made from the flowers of the Matricaria recutita plant, and is a natural anti-inflammatory. Since it can soothe the body both inside and out, it’s one of the most versatile essential oils available.

Chamomile also contains the active ingredient azulene, which can help fight infection and speed up recovery time. This natural pain reliever has been shown to reduce joint inflammation and can even stimulate the production of white blood cells, which are essential for healing, and keeping the immune system in balance.

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Did you know that many over-the-counter and prescription medicines are derived from plants? For example, aspirin, recommended for everything from headaches to certain heart conditions, is made from salicylic acid. This is also the active ingredient in the herbal remedy willow bark—used by Native American people for thousands of years before Columbus made his famous journey.

Fortunately, though dosing yourself with herbs is best done under the guidance of an expert, aromatherapy is easy and safe. To choose the best essential oil for the job, you’ll first need to determine what triggered your headache.

Here are some of the more common types of headaches and the essential oils that work best to relieve them:

Chamomile. Used for centuries to relieve the pain of severe headaches such as migraines, chamomile oil provides a wonderfully calming influence that helps to dispel headache pain. Because of its gentleness, chamomile is considered safe enough for use in children; however, do remember that because chamomile is a member of the daisy family, people allergic to daisies can have an allergic reaction to this oil as well.

Eucalyptus. If your headache seems to be located in your forehead, eucalyptus oil may well provide the relief you seek, especially for headaches associated with head colds and sinus infections. Eucalyptus oil, a favorite ingredient in cough syrups and cold medicines, can help clear infected material from sinuses, thus reducing pressure and headache.

Lavender. Tension headaches, especially those caused by emotional tension, respond well to the scent of lavender. Lavender acts on the limbic brain to encourage relaxation, which in turn releases the tight neck and shoulder muscles that usually accompany a tension headache. By encouraging deep breathing, it increases blood flow to the brain.

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If you’re looking for relief from congestion or a quick pick-me-up when you’re feeling fatigued, eucalyptus is a great choice. Its clean, healthy smell is instantly recognizable and impossible to resist.

The Aboriginal people of Australia have used eucalyptus as a folk remedy for thousands of years. Some say it can even help detoxify the environment in a metaphorical sense so that disagreeing parties can reach accord. For these and many other reasons, eucalyptus is a favorite ingredient in aromatherapy and is now widely used in medicinal and personal-care products all over the world.

Eucalyptus is native to Australia and is perhaps best known as the favorite meal of koalas. The mammals live in eucalyptus forests and can subsist entirely on the trees’ leaves. In fact, koalas rarely have to drink water; they get adequate fluids from the eucalyptus leaves, which are 50 percent water.

There are more than 700 species of eucalyptus, ranging from small shrubs to full-sized trees. The evergreens are also known as gum trees in Australia because of their sap production. Eucalyptus trees have a high oil content. In fact, the oil production is so high that eucalyptus trees gave Australia’s Blue Forest its name—the evaporation of the oil results in a bluish haze.

Aside from coloring the landscape and providing nourishment to koalas, the eucalyptus is important to the Australian economy. The essential oil distilled from eucalyptus leaves is widely used in aromatherapy and as an astringent. The versatile oil is used medicinally to treat a variety of conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Ginkgo is one of the best-selling natural remedies in America, and some herbalists feel that it is the most beneficial herb to be used for general well-being. For centuries, it has had a wide variety of uses, and it is a powerful antioxidant that removes toxins from the body. It also increases the brain’s absorption of glucose and oxygen—which are essential to its proper functioning—and acts as a natural antidepressant as well

Today, ginkgo is mainly recognized as a memory enhancer, and much of the scientific literature also suggests that 120 to 240 mg of this herb daily is helpful to people who are in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or suffering from some other form of dementia. (To a lesser degree, it has proven to be effective in the treatment of tinnitus as well. Often referred to as “ringing in the ears,” tinnitus is an exasperating condition in which a person hears sounds in the ears or head that do not come from an outside source.)

Other Benefits

Several studies also indicate that ginkgo provides some relief to patients suffering from claudication (leg pain caused by clogged arteries either during exercise or while at rest) symptoms, but it may not be as beneficial in dealing with this problem as prescription drugs or exercise therapy. It is also used to decrease inflammation of the lungs in people who have asthma.

Arteriosclerosis, commonly known as “hardening of the arteries,” decreases the normal flow of blood by thickening the arterial walls while creating an excessive buildup of plaque in the blood vessels. Since this can lead to coronary artery disease, it is extremely dangerous, and treatment with ginkgo—a vasodilator—may allow the blood vessels to expand and contract as the heart pumps, while helping to dissolve plaque on blood-vessel walls. Read the rest of this entry »

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

—World Health Organization, 1948

Question: When is an illness not an illness?

Answer: When it’s a remedy.

“Huh? How can that be?” You may ask. “Certainly an illness is something to be dealt with, knocked out with good ol’ prescription drugs, gotten rid of in one fell swoop. Why let it hang around more than it needs to?”

Well, that’s the idea. Consider our old nemesis, the fever. The poor, misunderstood fever is actually your body’s way of getting rid of a virus, by heating it up and essentially burning it off. Zap! The virus is gone. Your fever goes down. Magic? No, indeed. It’s just the natural way of things—your body working for you.

Such is the homeopathic method. The philosophy, if you will. The idea is that your body naturally heals itself, using its own reliable system to get rid of illness—enter coughing, sniffling, sneezing, fever, etc.—along with homeopathic medicines that stimulate these naturally occurring symptoms.

So what exactly are homeopathic medicines? Well, back in 1796, a doctor named Samuel Hahnemann developed a principle of similia similibus curentur, or “Let likes cure likes.” This medical system ensures the body will heal simply and gently, by diluting to the greatest degree possible a natural substance that produces the very symptoms that are making you sick in the first place. In this way, the homeopathic medicine oh-so-tenderly pushes your body back to health effectively and efficiently. And because the remedies are made from naturally occurring materials found in plants, animals, and minerals, they are safe beyond belief. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you want to increase your endurance and vitality? Would you like to boost your immune system? Reduce stress? Lower your cholesterol? Improve liver or lung function?

A key to better health and higher energy levels might be hiding under a leaf of lettuce in your salad—mushrooms. Prized for thousands of years by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, mushrooms offer many benefits to modern-day consumers who seek to improve their well-being. Varieties of the fungus are used to battle immune-system deficiencies, cancer, heart disease, blood-pressure imbalance, and diabetes. Mushrooms have also been enlisted to combat stress and increase strength.

If you’re interested in exploring the therapeutic value of mushrooms and mushroom extracts, you’ll find a broad range of products available and many studies that attest to the effectiveness of specific fungus types. Some products offer a combination of mushrooms to maximize effectiveness. But a quick glance at the range of available mushroom products shows that three of the most popular types for promoting good health are maitake, shiitake, and reishi mushrooms. Here’s an overview of the benefits of these three varieties. Read the rest of this entry »

Citronella is usually associated with candles for warding off mosquitoes and other insects in the summertime, but, as an essential oil, it has many other natural properties to offer. Taking advantage of the therapeutic benefits of citronella essential oil can help treat a variety of ailments and conditions. The oil is derived from the grass of the citronella plant, which is primarily found throughout Costa Rica. It has a fresh and lemony scent, and many people find that it has natural healing properties beyond a simple candle.

Why Are Essential Oils Important?

Essential oils have long been used in aromatherapy for their natural healing benefits and therapeutic properties. The oils are extracted from plants and leaves, then distilled and stored for use. Essential oils can be combined with carrier oils to be used in massage, or combined with products such as lotions and creams for topical application. Scented oils are often used in fragrances, candles, or room sprays; the aromatherapeutic benefits of essential oils can help enhance well-being and relieve illnesses. Read the rest of this entry »