Natural Remedies - A Primer for Usage and Cautions

For thousands of years native peoples have relieved their aches and pains and cured their illnesses with the use of natural remedies instead of scientifically trained, licensed professionals or synthesized medicines. Different cultures have different remedies for different ailments. Community healers picked up on the use of the items in nature that helped their people, and as the world became smaller this information was passed along to other cultures and before long medicine books and literature became a part of every culture. Some cultures use more natural medicine than others and as the more industrialized parts of the world look for ways to return to the soil, natural remedies have become a rallying point.

The increased use of natural remedies has been a sore spot for doctors, drug companies and legislators for years. In efforts to play "Mother and Protector" of the people these large interests have done all they could to play down the effectiveness of natural remedies and play up the benefits of synthesized medicines. The problem with someone playing "Mother and Protector" is that most of the time it is done for purely selfish reasons but it is touted to protect the end user from charlatans and dangerous combinations of natural ingredients. While some oversight is welcome a complete shut down of natural remedy information seems to be the goal for most of these three.

The more you spend time studying natural cures the more you find that the current slew of modern medicines are based on these natural ideas. Antibiotics from different types of mold, headache relief from tree bark, burn and cut ointments from plants and all forms of minor ailments are treated by different teas made from flowers and herbs. If you take the time to follow the ingredients on over the counter medicines you will find that many of the items in them come from natural ingredients but have been replicated in the lab instead of harvested from the field.