Garden Maintenance and Landscaping

Healthy Herbs: Kelp

Kelp is an herb which is so high in vitamins, nutrients and minerals that it works wonderfully as an all around every day vitamin. It’s particularly useful as a women’s vitamin, because it’s high in iron, calcium and potassium – all of which tend to be essential for women during menstruation, and while pregnant or nursing.

Kelp has a salty taste to it too, and some people even use it in place of salt. It’s also a natural source of iodine and this is where a lot of it’s medicinal, healing and wellness power comes into play.

Iodine is essential to your body, because it helps the thyroid function properly. And the thyroid controls growth, energy and metabolism in your body. Since kelp is a natural source of iodine, it’s absorbed by your body more slowly and safely than chemical iodine is. I’m actually allergic to chemical iodine but I have no problems consuming moderate amounts of Kelp on a daily basis.

Kelp regulates both the thyroid and pituitary glands, plus it activates all glands in your body. It’s wonderful for nail growth and hair loss too, plus it can help regulate your body temperature. It even helps if you have problems with chronic low body temperature.

Kelp is beneficial to the pancreas and the prostrate. In fact it helps with both female and male organs in the body. It also builds cell membranes, helps the digestive system, can help prevent the growth of tumors, can help cleanse the body of radiation, and normalize glands and hormones. That last part makes it an excellent supplement to take while pregnant, particularly because Kelp contains such high mineral content too.

The natural, high iodine content of Kelp actually helps it act as an antibiotic in your body too. When there’s an infection in your body, Kelp will help assist the thyroid to release more iodine into your blood stream, and iodine kills infections.

I’ve personally used kelp tea for years to kill strep throat actually. I add a gel capsule of ground kelp to regular, hot black tea, let it dissolve, and stir it around. Then I drink the tea. The kelp coats the throat as it goes down, and the iodine kills the strep bacteria. It also relieve pain almost immediately. It’s gritty and doesn’t taste too great in tea form, but it works really fast and it’s cheap too.

One other little known fact about Kelp is the weight loss benefits it offers. Since Kelp regulates your thyroid, this can also stimulate your metabolism and give you more energy. It also acts as a diuretic, which means it will help you shed water your body might retain. These two benefits of kelp working together can help you achieve your personal weight loss goals.

NOTE: Statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and are not made by a licensed medical practitioner or physician.

Healthy Herbs: Golden Seal

Golden Seal is another natural, extremely strong anti-biotic. This is an herb not many have heard of, but it’s an excellent infection fighter with many other healthy properties.

Golden Seal can be bought in many health food or herbal stores, but sometimes you have to hunt for it at larger stores online. It’s most often sold in a combination herbal solution with other herbs such as Echinacea. Golden Seal by itself can often be purchased though, in both root or leaves pill form.

The root variety is the strongest of course, and most expensive. Buying Golden Seal pills made from the leaves and stem work quite nicely as well. I don’t recommend however, buying hard pill style herbs. Instead buy herbal pills which are in capsule form, with the ground root or leaves inside. This allows the herb to stay as close to a natural state as possible, doesn’t add a bunch of other junk to the pill that may be more harmful than good for your body, and is a form that can be quickly absorbed and utilized by your body too.

Golden Seal is a natural source of insulin, so it can lower your blood sugar when you take it. Because of this, anyone with low blood sugar problems – i.e. hypoglycemia – should not take Golden Seal by itself, particularly in large doses. You can however, take it in conjunction with Licorice Root to help combate the insulin effects, or simply take another herb called Myrrh instead of Golden Seal.

Golden Seal has a wide variety of uses and is in fact considered by many people to be a “cure all” herb. It can be mixed into a salve for instance, and used as a contact healer. I’ve personally used it this way myself for over 15 years and it’s excellent.

You can also take Golden Seal to reduce swelling, and it’s said to actually stop internal bleeding as well. You can make it into a tea to be used for nose drops, or to drink for a sore throat. The tea can also be used as a mouthwash to get rid of canker sores, and you can even mix White Oak Bark into Golden Seal tea to use a rinse after oral surgery. You need to be aware though: Golden Seal is quite bitter to the taste.

I’ve kept Golden Seal on hand for more than 15 years now, because it’s one of the best ways I know to help clear up colds, flu, and infections. I’ve also used it in several other remedies, here are a couple for you:

1. Golden Seal Salve – I’ve used this over the years to deal with major cuts, scrapes and injuries my three boys brought home regularly…

- One capsule of Golden Seal – Root or leaves doesn’t matter, but I do use ground Golden Seal in gelatin capsules.

- Aloe Vera juice or gel (Pure, not the stuff that has perfume and alcohol mixed in and is sold for sunburns), or standard Petroleum Jelly.

I open the capsule of Golden Seal and pour the powder into a plate, then mix in enough of the Juice or Jelly to make the powder mix in fully. Then I simply slather the salve onto the problem area, and if needed I cover it with a clean guaze bandage or bandaid. With larger affected areas I’ll wrap it in a sport bandage.

I should warn you: The salve will look nasty. It’s a dark greenish color that just looks gross and disgusting, and this will discolor your skin slightly too.

Leave the bandage or covering on overnight, then wash well in the morning. In most cases there is already massive healing progress just from the overnight treatment.

2. Hemorrhoid Relief – This can be used both internally and externally.

Open one capsule of Golden Seal, shake the powder onto a plate or dish of some kind. Open one capsul of White Oak Bark and empty it’s powder onto the same dish. Mix in a small amount of pure Aloe Vera gel until combined well. Slather that onto the hemorrhoids at night before you go to bed.

In my experience using this remedy: They hemorrhoids are completely gone by the time you wake up in the morning.

NOTE: Statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and are not made by a licensed medical practitioner or physician.

Healthy Herbs: Cayenne

Cayenne, also known as Capsicum, is one of the most important herbs for health and wellness I know of. It should be on the “must have” list of anyone who uses herbs for remedies or general health.

You’ll often find Cayenne combined with other herbs, because it acts as a catalyst, which stimulates your body to heal faster. Stimulation is a key factor in healing your body, and if Cayenne is taken regularly it can reach every part of your body: Helping with healing, cleansing, and having everything begin to function normally.

Cayenne is very high in Vitamin C, and that makes it a great choice for taking when you feel a cold coming on. I tend to mix it with an herbal antibiotic when treating the flu or infections, because it helps resolve the problems much more quickly.

Cayenne is also a wonderful herbal choice for improving circulation. The entire circulatory system in fact, is helped with this herb because it feeds the cell stucture of arteries, veins, and capillaries, and this in turn helps them to regain elasticity.

In addition, Cayenne helps regulate the flow of blood, and normalize blood pressure. The blood pressure regulation makes it an excellent herbal choice for either high or low blood pressure problems. Taking Cayenne will not increase your heart rate, but it will strengthen your pulse within minutes of taking it.

Cayenne has actually been used to treat shock victims, or prevent people from going into shock. And it stops bleeding. The powder can actually be taken for internal bleeding, or poured on an external wound to stop bleeding too.

I’ve used Cayenne for several of the above noted purposes in the last 20 years. I’ve found for instance, that as I get older I tend to have problems with my arms and hands “going to sleep” – particularly at night because I have a habit of laying on them while sleeping.

Simply by taking a Cayenne pill before bed, my circulation is improved immensely and I don’t have the problems in my arms and hands all night long.

I’ve also used Cayenne to stop bleeding many times over the years. When you have kids at home you know there’s almost always an accident of some kind right around the corner. It’s a very simply process though, to just sprinkle Cayenne on a bleeding wound to make it stop. I’ve never tried it with any large, massive sized wounds – I’d rush to the hospital for something like that – but I have successfully used Cayenne to stop all kinds of bleeding. It’s particularly helpful when nothing else seems to work.

Putting Cayenne on a wound will feel warm, but it won’t create any burns or blisters and doesn’t generally cause additional pain. Treating wounds this way also helps stimulate healing as well as stopping the bleeding too.

NOTE: Statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and are not made by a licensed medical practitioner or physician.

Healthy Herbs: Chlorophyll

Chlorophyll is sometimes referred to as Nature’s Green Magic. It’s also known as the blood of plant life, because it is the life force of plants. Chlorophyll contains many nutrients which are assimulated by the human body easily. In fact, the molecular structure of Chlorophyll is quite similar to the molecular structure of human hemoglobin – our red blood cells.

Chlorophyll has an extremely long list of uses. It can be used for simple nutrition and digestion, to cleanse and heal, to purify the body’s organs, and to create healthy intestines.

Here are a few examples of Chlorophyll’s power…

- It helps control and regulate calcium levels in the body. This is particularly useful for menstruating women, because up to 40% more calcium is present in menstrual blood, and you could become calcium deficient very quickly during your period.

- Chlorophyll helps with blood sugar problems, regulating blood sugar levels in your body which is good for general health and wellness, and could help with weight loss initiatives.

- Chlorophyll increases iron levels in your blood, which is especially useful for pregnant or nursing women.

- Excellent as a general cleanser or for use in a cleansing diet. The Chlorophyll fluids are said to clean cell stuctures and help build new cell life.

- Bacterias that cause diseases find it hard to live in the presence of Chlorophyll, so growth and development of toxic bacterias can be inhibited or stopped.

- Chlorophyll counteracts toxins and inhibits the actions of cancer causing elements.

- It helps purify the liver to get rid of toxic deposits built up from drug usage, chemicals in foods, artificial flavorings and other potentially harmful things from our daily lives that get stored there.

- It accellerates tissue and cell growth or re-growth activity which helps the body heal faster.

- It helps get your bowels moving, and acts as a detergent and deoderizer for your intestines, bowel and body.

- It helps kill toxic and disease causing bacteria in your colon, helps rebuild damaged bowel tissue and helps eliminate mucus from the bowel too.

- It helps reduce and eliminate bad breath.

Again this is just a small sampling of all the wonderful qualities and health benefits this herb provides.

I’ve personally used Chlorophyll for years as a general daily vitamin. I first began taking it during menstruation only, because it’s so high in calcium and I sometimes became anemic during that time.

I’ve also used it over the years for constipation relief. Taking one gel capsule with the powdered herb inside tends to resolve the constipation problems within just a few hours.

And when dieting – particularly with a very low carb diet – Chlorophyll works wonderfully for getting rid of bad breath and body odors.

NOTE: Statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and are not made by a licensed medical practitioner or physician.

Healthy Herbs: Aloe Vera

Aloe Very is possible the most popular and well known herbs in today’s society. It grows as a large, cactus-like plant – in fact many people think it actually is a cactus, when in fact it’s actually part of the lili family’s succulent “aloes”.

Most people already know that aloe vera is wonderful for pain, particularly the kind you get from burns. Whether cooking burns or sun burns, aloe is often used to take away the pain. It’s known as a contact healer though, because it not only takes away the pain, it stimulates healing on the affected area as well.

Aloe can be used for sore nipples by nursing mothers, and the juice can be used as an eye drop too. Used as such, it can help improve the eye’s circulation and sight.

Another little known use of aloe vera is to relieve itching from chicken pox, poison ivy, and poison oak. And drinking aloe vera juice for several days can expel pinworms too.

Aloe vera is wonderful for many kinds of skin problems too. Since it helps remove dead skin and promotes the growth of healthy living cells, it not only helps wounds and burns heal faster but it can help your skin improve in general too.

Because it has such great results for both skin and hair care, it’s common to find aloe vera in many types of beauty and cosmetic products. One of the reasons aloe vera is so useful as a healing herb though, is because it can penetrate all three layers of your skin. This can create wonderful results when aloe vera is used with other all natural ingredients that won’t harm your body.

Unfortunately aloe vera is often mixed with harmful chemicals, colorings and additives that can be harmful to your body. And since the aloe vera penetrates your skin so well, it helps carry those toxins deeper into your body as well.

This is one of the reasons aloe vera suntan lotions tend to sting. These popular products often contain alcohol and perfumes added to the aloe vera, so when you apply them to a sunburn, the pain isn’t often taken away as you’d expect. Instead it stings or hurts when it goes on, then it doesn’t really feel any better later. It also doesn’t seem to heal as fast as you’d expect it to.

Using pure, 100% aloe vera juice or gel however, almost always relieves the pain as soon as you put it on, and the healing happens much faster too.

So be sure to read product labels, and understand what you might be putting into your body when buying aloe vera products. My recommendation would be to stick with 100% natural and pure if at all possible.

NOTE: Statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and are not made by a licensed medical practitioner or physician.