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August 3, 2011

Does Exercise Help Reduce Blood Pressure?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 11:22 am

If you are concerned about your blood pressure being high, which is also known as hypertension, you are probably asking yourself what you can do about it. Well, no guidance on medical matters could be complete without the get-out phrase of telling you to chat about it with your doctor first, so now that we have got that out of the way, there are a number of things that you can do that your GP will not disagree with.

The first is to lose weight by means of a sensible diet, if you are overweight. Cut down on salt and eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. The second is to give up smoking, the third is to not imbibe so much alcohol and the fourth, the subject of this piece, is to take more exercise. Exercise will help you reduce weight and it will also reduce your blood pressure.

Blood pressure tends to rise with age and age has a tendency to coincide with a less energetic vocation, as you get promoted into the office and a less dynamic home life as the kids are older and have almost certainly left home. If you let watching TV take over from walking as your foremost kind of entertainment, the chances are that you will develop hypertension.

The fact is, that you ought to be getting more exercise as you get older not less. Exercising will not just reduce your hypertension, but avoiding hypertension will also reduce your chances of having a stroke and getting kidney disease. Exercising is a medium to long term strategy, because the premise of the strategy is to fortify the heart. Exercising will cause your heart to beat faster which will make it more powerful.

A stronger heart will have less trouble pumping your blood around. Exercise can reduce your blood pressure by ten points or ten millilitres. Exercise can not just reduce your hypertension, but it can prevent you from procuring it.

If you have let yourself go, beware of exercising too strenuously at the start. Do not put excessive strain on your heart for the first couple of months. What can you do? Well, walking or swimming is a decent start. Most doctors would agree that hiking merely thirty minutes every morning and thirty minutes each evening can make a big difference to your heart and your blood pressure.

You can walk in the open air or if that is inconvenient, you could get a stepping machine. After a few of months, you will be fit enough to take on more arduous exercises like yoga or going to a gym.

If you are worried about over doing it, you ought to join a gym where someone will keep an eye on you or even devise a routine for you. A home blood pressure monitor is a useful device to have. The best type to have is the fully automatic digital monitor with a self-inflating cuff. If you buy one that has a memory, you can easily evaluate your progress at reducing your hypertension.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is currently involved with work on cause of high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our site at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

July 31, 2011

The Basic Facts Of Aloe Vera Drinks

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Alfred Tanya @ 3:25 pm

A lot of people which have attempted aloe vera juice have only skilled what’s obtainable from a neighborhood drug shop or well being shop, and really frankly it’s no wonder at the very least the taste of aloe vera juice has gotten a poor press.

The finest top quality aloe juice it is possible to get cannot be purchased in shops and can only be discovered by word of mouth or on the net, and only after you have sampled this item will you have the ability to appreciate the distinctive qualities that this miraculous plant has to provide.

Are you currently trying to find one thing that may shield and heal your body from the inside, then i would seriously recommend attempting an aloe vera drink. To begin off i would like to say that I’m putting this down as somebody who has been drinking aloe juice for fairly some years, and i’ve drawn from my own encounter here, this isn’t a scientific point of view, i don’t comprehend the science of how aloe vera works i’m speaking purely from private expertise.

When you would like to attempt the juice for your self, start having a smaller quantity each day added to water or whatever juice you like a half an hour just before food or having a meal, you are going to begin to really feel the aloe working it is magic in no time at all. Firstly you might turn into conscious of an improve in power and stamina which will have the impact of growing your self esteem and confidence, and provide you with the impetus to accomplish your objectives.

There is a number of diverse aloe vera juice brands about nowadays, with a lot selling at very low costs, in my view although, it is an excellent concept to invest some additional money and purchase a excellent brand, since it’ll be a lot more helpful, thus you’ll must drink much less to really feel the benefit.

Many people shudder if you recommend they attempt drinking aloe vera drink, it has fairly a bitter flavour, you are able to acquire it with unique flavours added or alternatively just add it to whatever juice you like to disguise the bitterness.

These drinks have been a portion of my standard diet plan for over a decade and 1 of my favourite combinations is always to take a certain selection flavoured with sun ripened peaches and mix it with natural orange juice, it is entirely refreshing and healing!

For everyone attempting an aloe drink for the very first time it is a great notion to begin having a desert spoonful every day added to your favourite juice, 30 minutes ahead of food for 1 week, thereafter enhance to a tablespoonful, that is the maximum any individual must need to have unless you are an Olympic athlete, you could alter the quantity based on how you really feel, personally speaking I do not drink the juice each day, mostly 3 or 4 times in a week. Right after some time you’ll know when the best time is.

It really is prevalent nowadays for people today to really feel that there’s some thing crucial not present in their diet plan. Aloe vera juice has far more than 200 vitamins and minerals it’s also a total food in it is own perfect.

When an individual drinks aloe vera on a common basis it can tremendously enhance someone’s well being in quite a few techniques, plus it can help an individual to locate the impetus and strength you may must succeed inside your life. The energy of aloe vera juice is such, that it can shield and heal your body in such a way that sets it apart from any other natural remedy.

When you need to search doctors near your home, Aetna Doc Find will give you hints. You can use Aetna Doc Find to search doctors near your place.

July 28, 2011

Is Vegetarianism On A Budget Possible?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 3:33 pm

The household budget makes up a substantial part of most families’ outlay and of that the largest part of the bill is for food. Meat probably makes up the largest part of that food bill too, so you would be forgiven for thinking that you could save a lot of money by giving up meat. You would suppose that becoming a vegetarian might save you some money.

However, that is not always the case. You can save money by taking up vegetarianism on a budget, but it does not necessarily work out that in that way without some work on behalf of the vegetarian. The fact is that vegetables, on their own, often appear boring to someone who used to enjoy a good steak or barbecued spare ribs, so food manufacturers have come up with all sorts of accoutrements to liven up vegetarian dishes yet these are not usually all that cheap.

Even some of the fairly regular vegetarian staple foodstuffs like nuts are not necessarily cheap, especially if you like variety. After all, you can not just eat salted peanuts, not that all that salt would be good for you anyway but when you start to buy macademia nuts or pistachio nuts for a change, you will find them more expensive than meat.

Eating out at vegetarian restaurants is also pretty expensive, because the market is relatively small. There are not many restaurants that refuse to cook meat and the percentage of the populace that is vegetarian is still fairly small. This all leads to higher charges, yet that is if you can find a vegetarian restaurant outside a large city. A sandwich bar is likely the nearest thing you will get to it in most towns but there will be meat on the premises too.

The cost of vegetarian food is exacerbated if you insist on eating organically grown food. Eating just organically grown food can add 30% to your food bill making vegetarianism on a budget impossible. So what can you do to trim down the price of your food bill if you are a vegetarian?

The first thing to do is decide if you really believe the whole organic story. Some do, some do not. Either way, you could endeavor increasing the costly vegetables in your garden, your greenhouse or in an allotment. If you can not do that, you could offer to purchase these vegetables from friends, if they will grow them for you. Many pensioners take up gardening and numerous pensioners would become happy of the extra earnings.

Another way is to shop at farms or farmers’ markets. I know that time is valuable, but if you can just go to such a place once a week, you could buy enough food for three or four days without it deteriorating. Buying in bulk like that should become cheaper as well. A sack of potatoes will last a month and it is far cheaper than purchasing a few pounds at a time from the supermarket.

Another method of reducing costs is not to purchase your fresh fruit and vegetables from supermarkets at all, because it easy to be enticed to buy the latest fad fruit or vegetable from halfway around the world at an exaggerated cost ‘just for a change’. Stick to locally grown fruit and vegetables that are in season and you might just about manage vegetarianism on a budget.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of topics, and is now concerned with low carb vegetarian recipes. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com

July 23, 2011

How To Protect Yourself At The Barbecue In The Summer

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:40 pm

The summer is the time for barbecues, backyard parties, lounging in the backyard or bathing in the pool. It is also the time for insects, usually of the flying variety. Flies and mosquitoes can be everything from mildly annoying to downright perilous. So what can you do to protect yourself in the backyard during the summer?

The first thing to do is start clearing up your backyard before the summer begins. Mosquitoes breed in still water and it only has to be a half-inch deep. This means that you ought to keep the gutters free from dropped leaves and other blockages.

Blocked gutters and drains are prime breeding grounds, but so are all items that can hold rainwater. Flower pots, buckets, old tyres and folds in sheets are others.

Drill holes in pots, bins and old tyres; pull tarpaulins tight, upturn boats and canoes and if you have water features, make sure that there are either guppies or goldfish in there too, because they are well-known for feeding on mosquito larvae.

Making a pre-emptive strike on mosquito breeding grounds will radically lessen the number of mosquitoes in your garden and thereby reduce your liklihood of being given West Nile virus (in the USA). It will also protect you against E.coli.

However, your neighbours may not be as particular as yourself, so mosquitoes will still come into your backyard. To protect yourself from these spray insect repellent containing DEET (25% +) on your clothes and exposed skin to avoid mosquito bites.

In the twilight, hang a bug zapper with a blue light and an electrified coil in the environs of where you are sitting. The best ones also use pheromones to lure mosquitoes, especially octenol.

Some species of mosquitoes hang around animals, so rub some natural mosquito repellent on your dogs or do not allow them to lie at your feet.

Do not use DEET on them because they will lick it off and become sick. Use citronella oil, lemon oil or garlic. There are plenty of others as well, but they are not as effective or as long-lasting as DEET.

If you are cooking, and who would not be, be cautious of meat, particularly chicken and pork. If the meat is frozen, thaw it gradually and keep it in the fridge until minutes before you are going to cook it.

The risk zone is between 40-140F, when bacteria will grow very quickly and flies will lay eggs in it. If you have to store the meat out of the fridge, store it ‘under water’, that is, in a marinade, so that flies can not get at it and it is out of strong sunlight.

Keep food and drinks apart, so that the fridge is not opened so frequently as to permit the temperature to increase above 40F. Use two sets of kitchen utensils, one to handle uncooked meat and fish and one to take cooked meat and fish off the flames otherwise you will contaminate the cooked food.

Use a meat thermometer to check that the food is cooked: 160F for meat and 165F for chicken. Discard cooked food not consumed after two hours or after one hour if the ambient temperature is over 90F. If you would like to use marinade up on cooked food, boil it first.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the anopheles mosquito. If you would like to know more just go to our website at Mosquito Bite Swellings.

June 25, 2011

Some Basics About Cholesterol And Triglycerides

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 10:08 am

Cholesterol has a bad press to be sure, but this is because the press does not normally give the full story. It is easier and scarier to leave a couple of bits out. The fact is that we have to have cholesterol and triglycerides for that matter in order to live normally. The point where these fats get to be a problem is when we have too high a percentage of them in our blood.

This is a comparable situation to having too much sugar in the blood on a regular basis, which is otherwise called diabetes. A different word for this is hyperglycaemia and hyperglycaemia can be a cause of having too many triglycerides in the blood as well, which by the way is known as hypertriglyceridemia. ‘Hyper’ meaning ‘too much’.

Cholesterol and triglycerides are the two foremost fats in our blood system. Cholesterol and triglycerides come from the foodstuffs that we eat, but our own bodies make them as well. Cholesterol is vital for many fundamental bodily functions like controlling hormones and creating bile.

Having said that, there are two kinds of cholesterol: low and high density cholesterol. The low end can go very low and the lower it goes the worse it is for you. This is a very complicated topic which is better explained in a longer article, but all you have to bear in mind is that low density or LDL is bad and high density cholesterol is ‘better’.

This is a very simplistic description, but it is the one that we are told about in the popular press. HDL cholesterol is believed to help mop up LDL cholesterol, which is why it is called good.

If this natural process does not take place or goes out of balance, the LDL cholesterol waxy fat will stick to the walls of arteries making them thinner, narrower. This is called atherosclerosis (furring of the arteries) and means that the heart has to pump blood harder in order to get oxygen to each part of the body.

This is called hypertension or high blood pressure and puts the heart at risk of stress and failure – coronary heart disease and stroke are the possible consequences of furred arteries.

There is a great deal that you can do to amend any issues with your cholesterol levels. Most of our cholesterol comes from eating red meat and full-fat dairy products, so just by replacing every other steak with a salad could hugely reduce your difficulty. There are other ways of doing this too, like exercise.

Exercise is a useful way of burning up the surplus fats in your blood stream, but it has to be carried out on a daily basis. Not that it takes a lot. If you think about what you consume and reduce the foodstuffs heavy in cholesterol, you might merely need 30 minutes moderate exercise a day in order to be healthy.

The fact is that if you do not do something about your state of affairs, you will be placed on tablets for the rest of your life. You may think that this is a fair alternative to diet and exercise, but it is not actually. It is merely the simple option.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a lot of topics, but is now involved with the question: what is a triglyceride?. If you want to know more, just visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

June 19, 2011

Fighting Atherosclerosis With Good Nutrition (part 2)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 3:42 pm

You will have to make your own mind up on whether cholesterol or omega 6 is to blame for arteriosclerosis. The argument is similar to the dieting problem: do you have faith in in the old-style fat-reduction, high carbohydrate diet or the newer, Atkins’ high fat low carbohydrate diet?

It is very perplexing for the layman, but that is how specialists sell books. You pay your money and take your choice or you only go along with your medical doctor.

However, both camps of dietitians agree that fish oil is good for you and in particular is helpful for decreasing LDL cholesterol and omega 6 overdose. Omega 3 is best found in oily, cold water fish like salmon, herring and mackerel.

They contain relatively high degrees of omega 3 essential fatty acids. Another source of omega 3, but different ones from the fish, is from meat that has been fed on grass.

Garlic is well-known for being an antiseptic but it is also useful for reducing cholesterol. It appears to have a deleterious impact on LDL (bad) cholesterol, but leaves HDL (good) cholesterol alone. One clove a day is said to be adequate to have a beneficial effect.

Fibre and roughage are crucial for good general health. These components are to be found in fruit and vegetables (particularly the leafy green ones); grains, lentils, legumes and nuts. Roughage and fibre will help remove LDL cholesterol and prevent constipation. They also help avoid bowel cancer which is on the rise in the West.

Some nutritionists say that LDL is not perilous, but is just a threat and it becomes perilous when it has been damaged. One kind of damage is oxidization. Therefore, anti-oxidants will reduce your risk from cholesterol and arteriosclerosis. The next question ought to be: what are major anti-oxidants?

There is a huge array of anti-oxidants ranging from the fun to the boring. I do not know what you find boring, but flavonoids are a useful anti-oxidant and they are present in high quantities in red wine. As well red wine, other anti-oxidants include: Vitamins Ce and E and beta carotene.

These are available in peppers, citrus fruit, strawberries, cantaloupe melons, broccoli, white carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, mangoes and green leaf vegetables. Other good sources are wheat, oats, nuts and seeds.

Mono unsaturated fat is one of the best sources of oil you can find. Mono unsaturated fat comes best from olive oil, which is one of the factors why the so-called Mediterranean Diet is so good for people.

Mono unsaturated fat has another valuable effect: eating it lowers hunger for a longer time than you would expect for the calories involved. This makes it a good substance for dieters. The same is true of roughage, fibre and eggs.

Mono unsaturated fat is one of your best friends in the fight against atherosclerosis. However, it is not merely present in olive oil, it is also in avocados and nuts, especially pecan nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds.

Last but not least is ginger. Ginger has a high amount of phytochemicals known as gingerol and shogaol which are also antioxidants. Ginger not only lowers LDL cholesterol, but it also helps prevent the oxidization of LDL

If you can merely implement a few these alterations to your diet you might be able to stave off arteriosclerosis and sidestep having to take drugs like statins for ever.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of subjects, and is now concerned with omega 3 arthritis. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Omega 6 9

June 18, 2011

The Benefits of Electric Smokers

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Mark Brown @ 3:50 pm

Smoking in bbq smokers is really a way of cooking, curing or preserving food by the use of smoke brought about by burnt plants and wood. Prior to its chief objective is always to cure the meat for later consumption but today the approach of smoking is already an extremely popular way of enhancing the flavor and depth from the food.

There are plenty of sorts of bbq smokers offered within the market place today. There are gas smokers, electric smokers, charcoal smokers, cold smokers, hot smokers, and water smokers. Every single has its personal positive aspects and disadvantages but among the mentioned sorts of bbq smokers, the electric smokers are regarded as one of many best bbq smokers there’s. In situation you have your doubts, listed here are some of the advantages of employing electric smokers.

a.Electric smokers are capable of controlling their very own temperatures generating it much more effortless and hassle-free to utilize since you don’t have to adjust the vents in contrast to when making use of a charcoal smoker or any other bbq smokers. Adjusting the air vents every single ten minutes or so is not the thing that you would want to do during a night-long smoking.

b.Electric smokers are cleaner to utilize. Gone are the days if you need to excruciating cope with the mess of charcoal smokers like the lighter fluid, the ashes everywhere, and also the coals. All you must do is turn the switch on and that is it.

c.Electric smokers, as long as there is certainly electricity around, never run out of fuel.

d.Electric smokers also cooks a lot evenly due to the fact of controlled temperature

e.What’s much more, electric smokers are also more affordable to make use of than charcoal or gas smokers.

With all these in mind and if you’re planning to proceed getting a smoke, it really is very probable that you have already been convinced with all the benefits of an electric smoker. To assist you additional, here are some strategies which can make a distinction for your smoking outcomes.

1.Use brine to soak the meat with ahead of you proceed together with the smoking. Brine will prevent dryness from the meat and it will add flavor and moisture to it. 2.Soon after the brine soak, rinse it and apply some dry rub. Let it dry by exposing it to the air. You can use a wood-flavored rub or you can apply some seasonings and spices if your taste buds favor it. 3.Use electric smokers with a wood box to become in a position to add flavors for the meat. Absence of a wood box will limit you in enhancing the flavor of the food which you chose to smoke.

For further about bbq smokers move ahead to electric smokers website.

June 13, 2011

The Best Dieting Secrets Of The Top Stars

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 4:35 pm

The stars always look so fabulous, do they not? Both sorts of stars do. Celebrities too. OK, we do not see them when they arise in the morning or with a bad hangover, but if we do see them, they always seem at the peek of physical fitness and dressed in perfectly tailored clothes. It is their job not only to act and remember their lines but to look good too.

most if not all of them have personal fitness coaches, dietitians and even chefs in order to help them tackle the flab, so it is not really so difficult for them as it is for us, but the penalty for gaining weight is more severe, they might not be offered much more work, which would mean falling out of the limelight and that would be a serious matter for any celebrity.

Therefore, it is not surprising that most stars have their own favourite pointers for staying on top of the weight problem that faces most individuals every day of their lives. Here are seven celebrities’ tips on how they accomplish it.

Jennifer Aniston: follows the 40:30:30 course of action of counting types of foodstuffs. That is:

40% of what she eats has to be slow-burning, low glycaemic foods like beans, root vegetables (like swede and potatoes), dark-green leaves (like cabbage) and fruit (such as bananas).

30% of what she consumes has to be lean-to-fatless protein such as skinless chicken, tofu, turkey, ostrich, veal, fish and low fat dairy products.

30% of what she consumes should contain essential fatty acids such as oily fish, nuts, seeds and olive oil.

Kate Hudson; placed on 60 pounds during her pregnancy but was determined to lose it especially after the media was so cruel to her about her size. She did it in four months by concentrating on eating only high protein, but small meals often and training rigorously. This sounds a lot like the Atkins diet, but it worked for her and now she looks better than ever.

Oprah Winfrey: applies a similar plan to Kate Hudson’s. She works out at least five days a week and tries to consume mostly fish, nuts, fruit, beans, seeds, chicken and vegetables. She is especially careful to avoid, but not totally cut out, white sugar and white flour and last but not least, she does not eat anything after 19:00 hours.

Gwyneth Paltrow: has a regimen that is comparable again. She as well avoids white sugar and flour, but follows a macrobiotic diet of vegetables, brown rice and very lean meat and fish. She does not eat any dairy produce at all and does yoga each day.

Madonna: also does yoga every day and follows a macrobiotic diet of organic vegetables, brown rice and fatless protein. She has given up junk food entirely.

Claudia Schiffer: will eat just fruit before noon and after noon she adds salad and steamed vegetables to her diet, She drinks lots of tomato juice and herbal tea and is especially fond of black grapes.

Christie Brinkley: is a strict vegetarian, who has also eradicated all types of junk food from her diet. She snacks on sweet potatoes and if she puts on a couple of pounds, she goes on a crash diet of fruit juices.

Do not forget that these celebrities have paid and almost certainly still are paying thousands of dollars for their advice, so if one of these outline diets appeals to you, do some more research and try it out free of charge. It works for them as you can clearly see.

If you want to learn more about food in general or the essentials for a healthy diet in particular, please visit Traditional Welsh Recipes

June 5, 2011

Supplements For Building Muscle

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:54 pm

Whilst most people who diet in the world do so to lose weight, there are also those who diet to put on weight. There are far fewer who would like to put on weight, it is a fact, but the number is still fairly high.

Who would like to gain weight? The overwhelming majority of those who want to gain weight have been ill and perhaps for a long time.

However another group of people who want to gain weight are those concerned with power sports. They would like to ‘bulk up’ their muscles in order to be able to lift heavier weights. There are a great deal of products on the market to assist athletes bulk up, but most of them contain protein and/or creatine and a host of vitamins and nutrients.

The fact is that you can make extra muscle without supplements but you will still have to eat more and train more. Dietary supplements of extra protein, nutrients and vitamins only serve to speed up the process.

Protein is the preferred supplement to gain weight among body-builders, field athletes and weight lifters. Protein can be got from numerous sources, but body builders prefer their foremost sources to be whey, soy and eggs.

This is because these sources contain very little or no fat and particularly cholesterol. Most individuals in training seem to prefer around two grammes of protein per pound of body weight. Protein can be bought as a food additive, tablets, milkshake powder or in the form of a nutrition bar.

Creatine is also a very well-liked source of bulking up muscles but it is more complicated to use. You must be willing to read and obey the directions on the box if you want to try using creatine.

The basic course of action of using creatine is to ‘load’ your body with the supplement with a precise event in mind and then to use it for that event. Some individuals take this to mean two activities a week!

Vitamins and so-called micro-vitamins are also vital supplements if you would like to gain weight in a decent, healthy fashion. Each cubic centimetre of your body requires its quota of vitamins, so if you would like to put on weight it only makes sense that you will require more vitamins and nutrients too.

If you bulk up by eating healthy food the extra vitamins are not a problem, but if you try to take a short-cut by using bulking agents as described above, you will have to check that you actually are getting everything that you require to bulk up those muscles.

Muscle-building supplements do help, but they have to be used sensibly. It is not always crucial to go to a physician first, but you should talk to someone who has some knowledge on the issue. Not another body-builder, but someone like the coach or trainer at your local fitness centre.

If you are way out of shape or have other worries, the trainer may suggest that you go see a medical doctor first, in which case you would be unwise not to follow his or her advice before trying to use supplements to build muscle.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, and is now concerned with omega 6 and omega 3. If you want to know more, please visit our site at Omega 6 9

June 2, 2011

Traditional Medications

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:57 pm

As you all know, the way that it works with medicine is: you get sick, you go to the GP, he/she gives you a prescription, you buy that, take it and hopefully undergo a full recovery. In a way, it has always been like that. People went to the most skilled person in the village for advice on how to cure an ailment, a couple of herbs were prescribed and a donation received.

The only real difference in the procedure nowadays is that then, there was a far higher general awareness of the power of herbs. These days, in the Developed World at least, the medical profession and the pharmaceuticals have managed to wean us off herbs by one means or another – usually fear.

The fact is that most drugs are made from herbs or plants or from synthesized chemicals found in herbs and plants. In a way, all we have done is substituted purchasing for picking.

OK, I know that it is more complicated than that. Drugs are often combinations that work well together and being told to take one tablet a day saves you having to worry about overdosing, but there are still often side-effects. Just read the leaflet inside the box of your next box of pills.

Mine says: concern, fainting, erectile dysfunction, low blood pressure, diarrheoa and heart failure. Charming, isn’t it? They are pills for high blood pressure (beta-blockers). I live in a small village in northern Thailand, where high blood pressure is not a problem, but I know one old lady who has it and high cholesterol and her nurse showed her which tree to choose leaves from to make a tea. She does not take tablets, but I still do.

There is also a woman who started coming into our garden four months ago to select purple flowers off a form of wisteria that we grow (dork anchan). ‘It is for my son’s very bad cough’, she said. Asthma, I think she was trying to say.

Anyway, she plucks a handful a week and her son is fine. I had a cough at Christmas and tried it myself. I drank two cups of tea before going to bed and I drank the cold dregs in the morning, but my cough had already vanished.

The hottest time of the year here is March – May, after which it is still hot but the monsoons come and cool it down. Last year, for the first time in my life I suffered from prickly heat in the hot snap. This year it began again, but someone suggested Aloe Vera.

‘Obviously’, said my wife and went into the garden to cut some. She cut two small ‘leaves’ and I spent three days dabbing the sap onto the affected parts. It had almost gone on the second day, but it disappeared on the third day and has not come back despite the fact that it has become hotter since then.

A great deal of people are taking another look at traditional treatments and I am going to be one of them. The difficulty in our village is that my Thai is not good, only my wife speaks some English and individuals are afraid to talk about the old methods in case I think that they are backward.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with the macular degeneration test. If you want to know more, please go to our website at Macular Degenerative Disease

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