Immune booster - Echinacea tea

Echinacea tea has been proven to boost the immune system by stimulating the white blood cells. The tea is often used to treat individuals suffering from mild viral infections. These include the flu, the common cold and other mild infections. According to Holistic Online, some professional herbalists consider liquid echinacea to be the most effective because of its ability to coat the internal parts of the body most negatively affected by colds and congestion.                        


Echinacea also known as purple coneflower, is one of the top selling herbal supplements in American. Echinacea comes from an herb found in the southern section of the United States.

History of echinacea herb:                       
The echinacea herb has been used as an herbal medicinal treatment for hundreds of years, especially among Native American Indian tribes. Native Americans and Europeans have used Echinacea purpurea (and other species of the plant) to boost the immune system, prevent colds and flu, and fight infections.

Health benefits of achinacea tea:
Echinacea tea is a great source of vitamins and minerals. Echinacea includes iron, maganese, selenium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, vitamin B, and several other vitamins and minerals.

Echinacea may also help fight off urinary tract infections, herpes, ear infections, strep throat, staph infections and bronchitis. It is recommended for those suffering with chronic respiratory infections and patients with cancer. Drinking the Echinacea can heal joint and muscle issues as well as reduce inflammation. Echinacea tea is the best herbal tea which contains infection-fighting natural anti-inflammatory properties.

Echinacea works to increase activity of our immune system by stimulating white blood cells. White blood cells attack viruses and bacteria that can lead to illness or infection. For this reason, research shows that its medicinal properties are very beneficial to those that suffer from AIDS since the disease attacks the immune system.
You can boost your immune system by adopting a healthy lifestyle and starting your day with a cup of Echinacea Tea.

How to prepare Echinacea Tea?
Ingredients:
2 cups cold water
1 teaspoon dried Echinacea fresh edible flower (or roots)
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
Juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon honey
Preparation: Place the Echinacea leaves and ginger in a teapot and pour 2 cups of boiling water over the leaves.
Cover and steep for 10-15 minutes. Strain into tea cups. Add lemon juice and honey and stir to blend.


Remember:
Be advised that people suffering with diseases, such as HIV or AIDS, tuberculosis or multiple sclerosis, using Echinacea can irritate these diseases by making their symptoms worse. Check with your health care practitioner first before using Echinacea in any form.

 Echinacea tea has a number of known benefits to a person's health, though you should never use an herbal supplement, even in the form of tea, without consulting your health care practitioner.

Useful links:

* Echinacea May Boost Immune System More Than Previously Thought

Natural stress remedy -herbal teas

We usually start our day with a warm relaxing tea and at the end of the day again a warm cup of tea helps relieve tension and tiredness. A cup of tea (with some herbs) can help you get relief from stress and calm you down.

Herbal teas are healthy drinks you can get from plants and flowers. They are commonly easy to serve and also taste good. Herbal teas help to support our body system by natural healing for some diseases, providing relaxation, soothing nerves, improving circulatory system, cleansing toxins, and so on.

L-theanine in tea helps regains your tranquility. It has the ability to calm you. Studies show that  L-theanine (known as a amino acid) has the ability to cross through the barrier of the blood-brain and is also a remedy for stress and anxiety.                                                                  

There are many types of herbal teas, among the most popular are Chamomile, Ginger, Ginseng, Peppermint, Cinnamon, Jasmine, Chrysanthemum, Lemon, Orange, Rosella and Green tea. These teas can serve as relaxing as well as healthy drink. For health purpose, they are usually taken from the stems, barks, and roots part of plants. You can also mix some variants of teas as to get the combined benefits and taste.

Green Tea:  Green tea is often used to give us the boost we need to get going in the morning. While green tea is often caffeinated, it also possesses several stress reducing properties. The biggest benefits of drinking green tea are that it clears the mind while calming the nerves so you may continue your day with clarity and energy.

Mint Tea: Mint tea is a great way to unwind at the end of a hard day because of its relaxation properties. Not only do the minty leaves have a wonderful aromatic flavor but they also relax and quiet the mind – great for after those long days staring at a computer screen – and also soothe an upset stomach.

Passionflower: Shown in studies, the passionflower extract has the ability to calm you down because it increases the number of the chemical in your brain known as gamma-amino butyric acid or also known as GABA


Chamomile: If you are having trouble falling asleep, consider drinking some chamomile tea just before bed. In addition to settling feelings of nausea, chamomile tea also calms your nerves, thereby allowing you to enter a calm and relaxed state – just what you need when your mind refuses to slow down on its own.

Lavender: Similar to chamomile, lavender is a wonderful natural stress reliever, well known for its soothing abilities. However, lavender packs a bit more of a punch and can reduce everything from tension headaches to anxiety. It is also a great soothing tea for nervous exhaustion which can often be brought about from our busy and often stress ridden lives.

Lemon Verbana: An herbal tea with Lemon Verbena is just the dose you need to an upset stomach and nausea. If you have insomnia problem, you will find it to be just right for your curing this problem. Catnip - This herbal ingredient is well-known for its properties to reduce excitement and palpitations. When stomach is unable to digest properly, it results in digestion-related headaches. At such times, a cup of catnip tea is just the thing you need for relief. It’s very good for quieting the mind.

Linden: This ingredient relaxes muscles and nerves. It’s very good for making the mind calm and reliving headcheese caused by stress. If you are suffering from frequent nervous tensions, include Linden in your daily tea can bring down such problems and keep you calm.

Passiflora incarnate: Drop this ingredient into your herbal teas and see problems like tensions and irritation, vanish just as they came. Passiflora incarnate is well-know for its ability to reduce headaches caused by anxiety and stress. It’s also useful for women with PMS & a menstrual problem as it brings down the irritation and pain experienced during such times.

Skullcap: This ingredient is known for its abilities to relax tense muscles, reduce muscle spasms, calm nerves and reduce headaches. Women will find skullcap tea to be very relieving because it’s also know to bring down irritability associated with Premenstrual Syndrome.


Ginseng: When most people think of ginseng, they think of the miracle supplement that may help your mind stay sharp. While the jury may still be out on whether or not ginseng actually increases brain function, it may help you function better. Ginseng tea is quick to clear up mental exhaustion as well as stress so you are more productive and energetic – or completely relaxed if you so choose.

Tips to get more benefits form your herbal teas:

• Make sure that the water you boil for tea isn’t from a traditional water softener. These types of softeners balance the minerals in your water by using salt which winds up in your tea. There’s already too much sodium in the typical diet so it’s best to avoid it through your drinking water. Using regular tap water or that from an alternative water softener is a much better way to brew your tea. Not only will your tea taste great, but it will have better nutritional value over all.
• Teas are always better to drink while fresh.
• Herbal teas are better to serve wholly, chopping the part of leave or flower will cause the oils and components inside to release
• For long-term health, you can have one before every bedtime, it will promote your body system to relax and so you can sleep well. You may also drink herbal tea after meal or in the morning.
• Tea will not interact with any anxiety medications and is safe to take with any conventional medications. Tea bag may also be added to bath water for an overall relaxing moment.

Related: naturalstressremedies.com and www.ahealthy.us

* Stress relieving foods

* News at 'BBC' Black tea 'soothes away stress'

How to Get Help with Herbs in Detoxification Process and Be Healthy?

Detoxification can help us stay healthy. And herbs help us in detoxification processes, as they can improve our body’s capacity to deal with it.

What is detoxification?
The whole purpose of "detox" is basically a process of getting rid of unwanted toxins from your body. This is done by only consuming natural and healthy products including only eating vegetables and herbs and removing any other forms of saturated fats or carbohydrates from your diet.

Combining herbal cleanse products with eating more fresh fruit and vegetables can be beneficial for detoxification.
Neil Levin, of Now Food says: ""the science of multiple chemical sensitivity. This is the science relating to the concept that at some point the total toxic load upon the body, which is mainly processed by the liver, may overwhelm the body's ability to detoxify and safely excrete excess chemicals, whether natural or synthetic. The use of certain nutrients to be utilized in these processes – notably antioxidants, minerals and amino acids - are ‘limiting factors' affecting an individual's detoxification capacity and chemical clearance rates. Detoxification is far more than just drinking tap water".

Simon Mills makes the point that if one of the body's elimination channels is overloaded, or not functioning as well as it could, it can affect the whole interrelated system. This is why skin problems are often dealt with by natural therapists by changing the diet of those affected, and giving them herbal cleanse supplements.

Other factors that can contribute to an overloaded body include:

• poor diet
• diet high in processed foods
• poorly functioning digestive system
• overeating, especially on a regular basis
• diet high in fat
• some medications, like antibiotics and others
• stress, especially over long periods of time
• lack of exercise

If food stays too long in the colon, it putrefies and produces more toxic by products. These can often be reabsorbed by the body, or at least produce irritation.

Erica Angyal cites these symptoms of an overburdened digestive system:

• diarrhea
• constipation
• abdominal pain
• bloating
• gas
• nausea
• vomiting
• burning sensation after eating

feeling very full after meals, especially if you haven't eaten much rumbling noises except the normal ones when you're hungry So, the benefits of an herbal cleanse, with an increase in fresh fruit and vegetables, is a great investment in your health. It's not really necessary to fast on juices or anything else. A long term, more gentle approach that encourages good eating habits and sustainable changes is better. Eating healthily, regular exercise and drinking plenty of water also helps your body become more efficient and you'll also be able to remove some of those excess fatty areas at the same time! Source article: Herbal cleanse

For more online resoruces and links:

• The 28-Day Herbal Program
• Herbal Body Cleanses
• Herbal Information and Research
• Liver cleanse recipes

First published : How to Get Help with Herbs in Detoxification Process and Be Healthy?

Why use herbal and home remedies to cure and how to use these remedies effectively?

Using herbal or home remedies might be due to these reasons:

High cost of prescription medication, not having health insurance or severe side effects. Whatever reason may be, there are alternative and herbal options for almost any ailment you may have. Still you need to learn more about the effective use of herbal or home remedies. This article offers useful tips and ideas to use herbal and home remedies to get cure and better results.

Not all herbal remedies work the same for everyone though. Sometimes this is just due to differences in body chemistry. Just as you can be allergic to some types of food and prescription medications while others are not, you can have or not have a response to herbs that others do not.

Often though, the primary problem encountered when using medicinal herbs for health problems, is wrong uses. Many people for instance, will buy herbs and supplements based on savvy product packaging, advertising and marketing. Many hard pill tablets for instance, will have some herbs in them, but that's not all. Those pills often have many other miscellaneous ingredients in them which can counter-effect the herbs. And in many cases, the pills only have a small amount of actual herb in them: Too small an amount to be of any use.

Hard pill tablets don't dissolve well in water or our bodies, so they're not able to be mixed up into tea, poultice or salve form. And if they're too hard to mix into these forms, they're not likely to be dissolved well inside our bodies either, thus they won't do us much good when taking them. If the pills also have very little actual herbal content in them, they're also of little use for medicinal means.

So the first step in learning to use medicinal herbs for yourself or your family, is to learn to buy true 100% herbs. The best kind are those which come in gelatin capsules, and have the ground herb inside them. These can be opened up and the herb powder poured out, or simply dropped into a mixture and after a few minutes the gelcap will dissolve, leaving just the powdered herb.

Part of learning how to buy herbs involves becoming adept at reading the labels. There are many products on the market today which appear to be one thing, when closely looking at the label tells you there's more to the picture.

Reading the labels will also help you understand dosage needs too. Since herbs are sold as food supplements only in the United States, there are no medicinal related dosage instructions on them. Part of learning to use medicinal herbs for medical purposes involves learning which dosages work best for which problems.

Herbs can come in many different dosage amounts too. If you're constipated and decide to take some Alfalfa or Chlorophyll to relieve the problem, you'll have drastically different results if you're taking 60mg instead of 600mg. 600mg is very likely to move your bowels within an hour or two of taking it, whereas 60mg or even 100-250mg might not do the trick.

This same example applies when you're taking herbs to relieve a headache, or kill an ear infection. White Willow for instance, often comes in capsules of 300mg. So taking two of these might work for a headache, but that's not the same dosage as regular Tylenol is. So you may find you actually need three white willow pills if your headache is fairly bad.

The opposite can happen in this respect too though. It's not uncommon to find Cayenne pills which are much stronger than they need to be for taking as a daily supplement. And since they're so strong, they can often make your stomach burn if you take them without food.

Another common problem people have when trying to use herbs as medicine, is a lack of knowledge, or mis-understanding of either the herbs they're using, or the symptoms they're having. This problem is not restricted to herbs and alternative remedies though, we see it happen often with over the counter medications too.

Many women for instance, who have never had a vaginal yeast infection, will go to the drugstore and buy anti-fungal ointment to treat it when they think they have one. This often causes the side effect of making them more susceptible to getting a yeast infection, because the bacteria in their body has had the opportunity to become resistant to the anti-fungal medication she used.

Now to the best of my knowledge, there is no resistance build up effect by bacteria and germs against herbal remedies, but there are plenty of times someone takes the wrong herbs for the problems they're having.

A common example actually, is the use of Echinacea. This herb has become quite popular in the last five to ten years, but many people think it's supposed to keep you from getting sick with a cold or the flu. And when it doesn't, they think using herbal medicine is a bunch of bull. The problem though, is that Echinacea doesn't actually keep you from getting sick. It can help keep you from getting AS sick as you normally would. And it can help you to shorten the amount of time you're sick. But it doesn't normally keep you from getting sick completely.

And again, if you're buying the trendy products which "contain Echinacea" instead of buying actual herbs, you're not going to see much - if any - success from these products.

An example of how some people use the wrong things for treatment, is kidney stones. Most kidney stones are calcium based, and these can be dissolved fairly easily with simple lemon juice. There are several other types of kidney stones however, and if you have one of those kinds, the lemon juice remedy may not work for you.

It's also important to reiterate the importance of being fully aware of what you're using too. If you go to the store and buy powdered lemonade, it's not likely going to have much - if any - real lemon juice in it. In fact, many things called "lemonade" in the store, are actually just lemon flavored sugar drinks. And these will not help with any kind of kidney stones. You must buy and use real lemon juice, or better yet: Real lemons to get fresh squeezed juice from.

There's another very important trend you should know about where herbal remedies are concerned, because we've seen it far to often in recent years and it really causes a lot of confusion for many people.

Garlic is an herb you will see mentioned for use in many remedies. This is because garlic is quite powerful. It is a natural antibiotic, antiseptic, and anti-fungal herb.

The primary healing compound in Garlic is called Allicin. One milligram of allicin has the same potency as 15 standard units of Penicillin. Allicin however, is also the source of the strong smell Garlic has. And unfortunately, it has become popular these days to buy "odor free" Garlic tablets, capsules, pills and liquids. What people don't realize though, is that without the odor, the garlic is almost powerless. Because it's primary healing ingredient has been removed along with the odor. This is unfortunately another marketing and sales tactic. Many people don't want to have "garlic breath" all day long, so the idea of getting all the healing benefits without the smell is quite appealing. It's a waste of time and money though, because again: It will not work if it's odorless. A better option is to eat some fresh parsley or take any other herb which is also high in Chlorophyll, to neutralize the garlic smell.

And last but not least for this part of our series, you need to be aware that some herbs can have side effects, and interactions with other medications - herbal or prescription.

There are herbs which will cause problems if too much is taken for instance. The cayenne example we gave earlier is a common one, if you take a large dose of cayenne in pill form without eating, you will get a burning sensation in your stomach. This hurts for some people.

Other herbs have more severe consequences though. If an insulin dependent diabetic takes too much golden seal for instance, they could go into shock because golden seal is a natural source of insulin. The same applies to hypoglycemics, too much golden seal can drop their blood sugar levels too low.

A popular herb used for hot flashes during menopause is Black Cohosh, and this herb can cause headaches if too much is taken. Other herbs can cause spikes in blood pressure, and there are even some which will cause a pregnant woman to have a miscarriage.

So it's very important to learn everything you can about all the effects an herb has. Often herbs will become popular for just one reason, and no one has any idea the same herb can be used for a variety of other things, or may cause a variety of other problems.

And be sure you learn how to read labels, to make sure you're getting the proper potency of herbs you buy, and to be sure you're not adding misc other chemicals into your system that could be potentially harmful.

Statements made in this article may not be approved by the FDA, and should not be taken as professional medical advice.


Source: 'HerbalRemedies.info'

* More articles on 'Herbal remedies'

"Natural Health files" for alternative health advice!

As I believe in alternative health topics, I try to add as many links and resources which might be beneficial for all of us. I don't write only for filling up space at my blod, but my blogs are in real means my online diaries. Sometimes I don't search at internet or for my hard drive disks, I simply log on to my blogs and search for the specific information post or link and get is within seconds.



Natural Health files is dedicated solely to seeking out alternative therapies and herbs that really do work.

Blog was created on April, 2006, but blog has very few posts and one cause may be that she was sick and was on move.

Suzanne Harris is a freelance writer & author, based in the UK. She has written two alternative health books, and have plans for many more.