@ spidergoat,
I prefer remedies that work, in other words, medicine.
That statement seems a bit daft. Even doctors will outline home remedies.
It is common knowledge that some diseases are thwarted by healthy eating.
Do you wait until you get scurvy before you eat an orange? There is a entire field of science around something called "nutrition", and if you ran to the doctor every time you got a cold you would certainly be raising our taxation.
In the cases of flu and infections being prescribed penicillin is not always the best option either. I won't go into much detail, but that aids in the creation of super-viruses resistant to penicillin. Prescription drugs are any supplement that contains chemicals or unnatural substances which alters our brain chemistry, hormones, or mentality. There are some prescriptions that work because the drugs involved fool our brain into thinking the opposite of what we are experiencing. A prescribed cold remedy may only address symptoms in some cases, and simply make you feel better because your nose is no longer stuffy. Many of these chemicals/hormones have side effects, and many healthy people would rather avoid the chemical treatments. How radical?
Prescription drugs that are hormonal based require a synthetic hormone in the drug. For problems with hormonal deficiencies such as infertility, sexual problems, and emotional issues the synthetic hormones involved usually come from animals (such as horses) which is very unnatural for our bodies to experience. Because animal hormones are not natural to our body it can cause cancers, tumors, and so much more because of this foreign element.
Herbal supplements are a healthy alternative to prescription drugs. People have been using herbs and plants as medicine since the dawn of time. Prescription drugs are a fairly new concept in terms of the last century. Issues of infertility, emotional disorders, organ trouble, brain function, pain, arthritis, among countless others have all been experienced since creation. These health issues are not new. For thousands of years these problems have been fixed and cured by natural remedies.
To pretend as though natural remedies are insignificant and do not work is preposterous. A person who believes this is severely ignorant and should consider becoming a little more educated. During the last hundred years scientist have tried to duplicate natural remedies by way of chemical and hormonal elements. The basis for their studies all began with herbal remedies and how they worked. But instead of using the essence (natural elements) in the medicinal herbs and plants they began creating synthetic elements.
I have not even mentioned how some drugs can create a dependence, especially in regards to narcotics or simple mood altering drugs. You start messing with brain chemistry and then the brain can stop producing its own in the proper amounts, and withdrawal can cause confusion or worse.
Salicylic tea and plants used to make it were among those listed in Ancient Greece and Egyptian cultures. Willow bark extract has a high salicylic content and was used to treat fever and pain as far back as the 18th century in our society. Acetylsalicylic acid or ASA eventually became known as Aspirin. So a few hundred years ago you might be better off with a home remedy than a doctors prescription simply because they did not exist.
Sometimes home remedies may simply be the placebo effect such as rubbing a potato on a wart and then burying the potato to remove a wart, or sometimes it is something as valid as willow bark tea in the example I just outlined.
Here is a valid home remedy as good as any medicine, and one of my favorites.
Upset stomach
The cheapest home remedy (which is also available in most homes) is a glass of water with baking soda mixed in to it. This relieves stomach ache caused by gas, and helps to neutralize (instantly) stomach acids. Of course you can drive to the drugstore and buy a heartburn medicine such as tums, tums provides calcium, but does not work as quickly as the home remedy. Alka Seltzer of course has its main ingredient as Baking soda, but also has some aspirin in the mix.
