Category: Medicine

Your life is active; you’ve got work, kids, as well as a ton of other things in between. How can you find the time to do all of it? Moreover, how do you manage to get the energy to finish all of the day’s responsibilities? While it’s not safe to use too many prescribed pills for the staying power you need, energy medicine from Chinese herbs might be exactly what you need. Here are various herbal remedies that might do the trick.

Perhaps you use aloe vera to soothe sunburn and bug bites, but are you aware that you can drink aloe vera juice for greater energy? People all over the world are making use of this leaf in the treatment of problems that happen inside and outside of the body. Thus you can soothe your sunburn with the gel of the aloe vera leaf, and drink the juice to strengthen your digestive tract and eliminate acne. When your digestive system is working efficiently, you are going to be far more alert, and you won’t have an energy slump in the middle of the afternoon.

Using dong quai root for energy might also be a smart move. This herb helps to manage hormones, which can sometimes be the main cause of lack of energy. It is mainly recommended for women, and can help to normalize the menstrual cycle as well.

For a sharper memory, improved concentration, and energy that can keep up all day, you can use the energy medicine found in ginseng, ginger and gingko biloba. These three herbal treatments can help you be more alert, so you can take clear, concise notes at your staff meeting, and you won’t forget about your daughter’s softball game before dinner. The ginger can also help when you’re trying to battle a cold, or strengthen your immune system throughout the winter months.

For ongoing strength and health, you can use catnip in capsules to clear up the stuffy nose and irritated eyes that can accompany seasonal allergies. Nettle flower and eyebright will also help to reduce the sneezing and itchiness, and you’ll be able to find these herbs at your nearby pharmacy in most cases.

If you’d like to shop for energy medicine but can’t get what you’re looking for in the store, you can find numerous online retailers that market these items. Use caution, however; despite the fact that these preparations are natural, that doesn’t guarantee they’re harmless in any dosage. Follow the instructions carefully, and if you observe any negative side effects, discontinue using it at once.

Long before orthodox medicine took center stage in the health care practices around the world people who were sick used to visit different kind of doctors. These doctors were not the steth-wielding, tech-savvy, white-coated medical geniuses of today. Mostly, they were bearded, wizened and gnarled humans looking less like physicians and more like witches or wizards. But they were revered, loved and even feared because of one particular skill they possessed the healing touch.

In the early days of civilization, a vast majority of people were cut off from formal’ medical care. Competent physicians were a luxury, to be enjoyed only by the super-rich and royalty. For everyone else, there was the local witch-doctor who was respected for his or her in-depth knowledge of folk medicine. This was the man or woman who treated everything from boils to gangrene, from cesarean to malaria and even small pox.

What is astonishing is that many of these so-called doctors’ effectively cured their patients. What is even more interesting is that these medicines have lost none of their charms with the passage of time and more and more of them are finding their rightful place in mainstream medicines.

Remember how your grandma used to give you wild cherry bark for cough, or boil the twigs and leaves of red cedar to cure your cold? Well, that’s folk medicine! If you were to ask your grandma how she learnt those techniques, she’d draw a blank! These unofficial health-related practices were passed on informally by word of mouth and were developed through observation and experimentation.

Illnesses ranging from the common cold and sore throat to warts, cancer, malaria, impotence and arthritis are said to be treated through folk medicine.

Folk medicine largely depended on the use of natural materials such as herbs, plant roots, trees, barks, fruits, insects and food items. Therefore, these practitioners paid a lot of attention to botany.

But the advent of modern medicine saw a decline in folk medicine as these rustic’ practices were put under the microscope, dissected and then discarded as worthless. One more reason contributed to the decline of folk medicine.

Folk medicine started its downward slide with the advent of magical healing powers. Seedy people on the lookout for a few fast bucks were successful in capitalizing on the trust and faith of large sections of the society. Once their ruse came to light, people began to lose faith in folk medicine. Soon folk medicine was relegated to a gray area between orthodox medicine and quackery.

However, as more and more people have started to realize, there is a wealth of knowledge in traditional folk medicine. As people have started adopting the holistic way of life, there is a struggle to re-invent the precious folk medicine of yore. In recent years, the folk medicine of indigenous people is becoming more popular.

Some examples of folk medicines that we use in our daily life are:

Garlic – to reduce blood cholesterol levels
Chinese acupuncture – to treat blood clotting and migraine
The juice of neem leaves – to treat malaria
Poultice – to treat infected wounds

Turmeric – to treat bee or wasp stings

Today, amazingly more than two-thirds of the world’s population rely on the healing powers of folk medicine at some point of their lives. For many nothing else is available or affordable. For some, nothing else is acceptable. And for a very few, nothing else works.

Asthma is a physical condition that affects the air passage of the lungs. When you have asthma, the tubes that carry air down to your lungs get hyper-reactive and they become easily swollen and inflamed. Excessive mucus is secreted into the breathing tubes and the breathing tubes restrict the airflow and the asthma condition sets in. When this happens, the entire process of breathing inhaling and exhaling – becomes a struggle.

If you are diagnosed with asthma, the chances are that you may suffer from it for life. A recent study has revealed that 85% of females and 78% of males diagnosed with asthma between the ages of 8 and 12, continued to have medical symptoms for a long, long time. Asthma experts claim that asthma is a growing worldwide problem and are not able to explain why it has grown to epidemic proportions over the last thirty years. This increasing incidence could be due to several factors – stress, diet, dust mites, better living standards, increased pollution, better diagnosis etc. One of the most disturbing findings is that over consumption of some asthma drugs like bronchodilators may also be a factor.
The fact remains that many people are suffering from asthma without even knowing about it. Some of the common medical symptoms of asthma are wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and persistent coughing. Asthma usually occurs due to dust and dust particles, fumes/cigarette smoke, any pungent smell, some allergic foods, sudden changes in air temperature, obnoxious chemicals, common cold etc. When your asthma is well controlled, then you will not use a reliever drug more than three times a week, will not suffer from nocturnal coughs and wheezing, will not experience discomfort when performing normal daily activities, will be able to do physical without asthma symptoms.

First ascertain what allergies the person suffering from asthma has and then avoid these allergens to prevent asthma attacks. Eat foods that relieve asthma symptoms such as salmon, tuna and mackerel that are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids which help reduce the production of inflammatory compounds, improve pulmonary function, and prevent breathing constriction. Eat plentifully fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C and B that are known to reduce stress and inflammation. Prostaglandins found in onions relax bronchial muscles and open lung airways. Chick peas are also a source of vitamin B6 which reduces wheezing. Drink only chlorine-free distilled or ionized water as chlorine irritates receptors in the throat and lungs. Perform breathing exercises daily – breathe in through the nose and exhale through the mouth to strengthen the respiratory muscles. Lavender and eucalyptus are best used during an asthma attack because they relax and open ling airways.

Everyone with asthma should always carry a reliever inhaler. When you get asthma symptoms a reliever inhaler will help you to relax the muscles around your airways, making breathing easier. There are preventer inhalers that help to soothe and calm the inflammation in your airways. Although the preventer will make you feel better, it does not make your asthma vanish altogether. So you will need to take your preventer regularly to keep your lungs healthy and strong. A spacer is a plastic container with a mouthpiece at one end and a hole for the aerosol inhaler at the other. When you press your inhaler the fine spray of medicine is trapped inside the spacer ready for you to breathe it in.

Is your workout becoming monotonous to you because it is the same one that you’ve been using for as long as you can remember? Sure you may have changed up an exercise here and there but it is still typically the same old routine. How about changing it up even more by adding in a medicine ball? If a poll was taken, I would bet that there are still some people out there that really have no idea what a medicine ball is or even what it is used for. This article will show how using this simple ball can be a very key piece of your workout when you want to lose weight exercising or even if you are just trying to stay in your current shape. Let’s now outline how you can use these medicine balls to kick start your workouts back into fast forward allowing you to start to once again see the training results you once did.

A Medicine Ball?

Let’s give a bit of a description of what these balls are made of for those of you that have not had any experience with them. Another name that you may hear when dealing with medicine balls is exercise balls. They are for all intents and purposes the same thing. The power of these balls comes from their differing weights and also from their different diameters. Each one could potentially have different uses (more on that later). These balls are typically not made for bouncing. Coverings vary from cloth (nylon) to leather to even vinyl and their fillings can also be gel, sand or even lead shot. The outside surface is very similar to that of a basketball, in that it is quite dimpled. This dimpling helps you maintain grip on the ball when your hands start to sweat. These medicine balls come in different weights which allow the user to increase their weights as they get used to exercising with the ball. The issue of plateau’s in your workouts is a common one (if you haven’t ever hit one, you probably will). You need to make sure that you keep increasing your balls’ weight at regular intervals so that your results do not stop.

So a common question asked is why should I go and get a set of medicine balls when I already have other workout equipment? The biggest reason is for those folks that want a stronger core or better abs. Medicine balls are perfectly designed for these types of routines. So I can hear you saying that you can’t see how strengthening your core will help you with your weight loss activities. To put it simply, you need a strong core to reduce the likelihood of injuries from almost any other activity that you do. Your core muscles help to control the movement of your upper and lower torso. Sports such as boxing and cycling, to name a few, require a strong core.

Medicine Ball Exercises

As you should with any of your workouts, a good warm-up is a must to start out with. Using weighted medicine balls with cold muscles puts you on the path to injury. Try modifying some of your current workout routines by adding in medicine ball variations. Let’s modify a normal sit-up by adding in a medicine ball. For some people a sit-up is going to be tough enough to do on its own, but to increase that difficulty, let’s now grasp the ball and hold it tight to our chests during the exercise. This adds quite a bit more resistance that your abdominals now have to deal with. Sure, the exercise becomes tougher but the added results will astound you. If these are too tough at first, try adding them in to every other workout until your body starts to adapt. These modification exercises are great ways to lose weight by exercising.

Other abdominal exercises could look like the following. This one is a bit different in that you will need another person to act as your partner. Let’s play catch. Get your partner to toss you the ball but when you catch it, make sure to catch it using mostly your stomach muscles (i.e. get the ball to hit you in the stomach). Once the ball has been caught you can then use your hands to grasp it. Throwing the ball works your upper core and catching and cradling it works your abdominal muscles. How about doing some stretching exercises while holding onto the ball? Besides allowing you to stretch farther, the extra weight will also be working on your stabilizer muscles.

So as you can see, a medicine ball can be used in quite a few different ways. These few examples were for illustration purposes only. There are many more types of exercise that could also be used. You will find that over time, if a ball is used, that your core will become stronger and firmer. A proper diet will also have a big impact on you if one of your goals is to lose weight exercising. Try adding some medicine ball workouts into your exercise routines and watch the results come.