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| Follow these ten steps to reduce your allergies. |
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| My herb gardens are full of herbs that help to bring a sense of peace and calm to my daily life. |
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| Astragalus is the perfect herb to get to know. It has a very pleasant taste and you can make tea with it or add it to your soups and grain dishes. |
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| The botanical name for basil is Ocimum basilicum which comes from the Greek word for king. Indeed in many parts of the world basil is known as the king of all herbs. |
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| Beets are a wonderful food containing many health benefits. They are high in folic acid, potassium, calcium vitamin A and C. |
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| Basil contains plenty of vitamins A and C and is a powerful anti-oxidant. |
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| One thing that every household needs to have on hand is a remedy for minor to moderate burns. |
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| Just about every week I receive calls or emails from people asking where and how to purchase good quality herbs. |
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| From an Ayurvedic Medicine perspective, cabbage is a calming and grounding food. |
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| Chives have been used as a food for more than 5,000 years. |
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| Whenever you go to a restaurant that has a salsa bar, heap on an extra tablespoon of cilantro. This delicious green herb is nothing short of a healing ally. |
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| I love corn season, it usually means more time with friends, BBQ’s and warm summer nights… Hey, when you shuck your corn to eat at the next BBQ, save the corn silk! |
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| Cranberries are loaded with vitamin C and help to ward off colds and flu. They help boost the immune system and can help keep the body strong during the cold months. |
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| If you haven't noticed, dandelion leaves are bitter. The American diet
centers around sweet and salty tastes so many people haven't developed a palate for bitter foods. |
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| Do you ever have special thoughts come to mind when you are gardening or making tea with your herbs? Do strong feelings ever come up while you are walking somewhere in nature? |
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| The last few months I have been sharing my experiences of how we can cultivate more earth awareness. |
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| Take a moment to find a spot to sit down or lie comfortably. If it is a nice day you can lie outside on the ground. |
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| Elecampane isn't a well known winter health herb like Echinacea or ginger but it should be! |
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| So many of our foods have highly medicinal properties, but a lot of that knowledge has fallen out household awareness. Not so with garlic. |
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| Herbal bathing is a great way to relax, heal and support healthy skin function. |
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| Everyone needs to know a few bee sting remedies! |
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| When we think about wholesome eating, we also have to think about what we drink. |
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| Herbal syrups come in handy this time of year and are easy to make. |
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| There are so many wonderful medicinal herbs that will continue to thrive year after year even if you completely forget about them. Here are a few of my favorites. |
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| Putting herbs in ghee is an age old way of taking herbs for everyday health. Ghee is butter that has been clarified. |
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| Herbs have hit the big time. St. John’s Wort and Echinacea are household names. We have seen St. John’s Wort on 60 minutes, Echinacea on the evening news, and herbal therapies have been featured in Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines. |
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| Summer is here and with the heat comes a thirst for cool drinks and ice cold treats.
A great way to quench that thirst and save lots of money is to make your own popsicles. |
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| There are many wonderful herbal teas that are refreshing, nourishing, tonifying and also taste good. |
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| I formulated a love potion for my wedding and gave it out to everyone. Years later hundreds of people have taken it and it is a favorite among my family friends and students. |
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| Herbs for Vibrant Health really means, “Do you want to have more energy at the end of the day?” |
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| Often when we think of mood altering herbs, kava kava and St. John’s wort are the first to come to mind. |
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| Gua sha is the name for an Asian technique of rubbing the skin. |
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| Everybody knows that soup is the cure for when you are down. Making soup with bone marrow stock is more than a mood cure; it enhances your immune system and provides you with easy to assimilate minerals. |
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| Did you know that many common kitchen herbs and spices keep away colds and flu, support digestion, and help with relaxation? |
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| A little lemon added to your food goes a long way. Lemons are anti microbial, helping to rid your food of unfriendly bacteria. They help you to digest your meal and also add a little extra flavor. |
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| Have you heard the saying, “You are what you eat”? It’s true, but really you are what you digest from what you eat. |
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| In one of the first herb classes I took almost twenty years ago with Rosemary Gladstar she said, "If it can’t go in your mouth, don’t put it on your skin." |
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| Drinking tea provides an easy way for your body to assimilate the healing properties of herbs. |
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| Wait! Don’t throw away those mandarin peels! Dried mandarin peel sells for $30
to $50 a pound and has been used for hundreds of years in Chinese cooking and
Traditional Chinese Medicine. |
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| The stores and trees are still full of delicious citrus fruits including tangerines and mandarins. |
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| In fact, onions are used throughout the world for colds, cough and flu. Like garlic, onions are rich in sulfur compounds that are highly anti-bacterial. They are effective against salmonella, e-coli and dozens of other pathogenic bacteria. |
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| Medicinal uses of commonly used food items. |
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| What healing remedies did your family rely upon before antibiotics and hospitals were available? |
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| Menstruation is not usually thought of as a time of honor or celebration. Menstruation is a sign of good health. Without menstruation there would be no human life. |
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| We can develop a new way of thinking about menstruation. A way that creates positive thoughts and images in relation to this important body cycle. |
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| Seasonal health and wellness should be taught as a semester class in high school. |
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| The ‘golden rolling hills of California’ are
honored in paintings, songs, and poems. Have you ever wondered which plants
give us this wonderful display of changing colors? |
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| Decorating the Christmas tree is an ancient tradition from a time when various trees and plants were honored at different times of the year. |
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| When I was growing up my grandmother always told me to eat the parsley garnish when we were at restaurants. She said that it was the most nutritious thing on my plate. |
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| Herbs are either annuals, bi-annuals or perennials. Annual plants are fast growing and need to re-seed themselves or be planted each year. Perennial herbs last continuously for more than two years and sometimes a single plant can live for a very long time! |
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| It is a lush poison oak/ivy year and sometimes those wonderful hikes in the woods can turn into an itching nightmare! |
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| Many of the homes in the old part of Vacaville have giant pomegranate trees. We would raid the trees as kids, come home with lots of fruit but my mom quickly sent us outside to eat our messy red plunder. |
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| Lots of old timers used to make rhubarb pie and its true you don’t go to many pot lucks where someone has made a rhubarb pie. Maybe one of the reasons they made that pie is because it is so easy to grow and when there weren’t any other fruits ripe you could still harvest rhubarb. |
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| I can never get enough of this plant. The dark green leaves and the bright blue flowers of the rosemary ask us to stop and just behold their beauty and healing power. |
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| Roses have a very long history of medicinal, culinary and magical uses. Like many of our helpful plant friends, they are growing all around us and in many cases we have just forgotten how to use them. |
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| Preventing and limiting the duration of colds and flu is a household art that has broad social application especially when it comes to taking antibiotics to get rid of a cold. |
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| Anywhere from mid-June to mid-July this beautiful plant goes into full golden bloom with bright yellow flowers. There are many ornamental, non-medicinal St. John’s Wort plants. The medicinal variety is Hypericum Perforatum. |
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| With its high content of iron and calcium Nettles offers herself as a valuable herb for all stages of a Woman’s life. Stinging Nettles!? |
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| Herbal bathing is a simple practice that has many healing benefits. Steeping your body in a bathtub full of medicinal leaves and flowers is more than pampering; it is preventive medicine that washes away stress and tension. |
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| Scent has a powerful influence on our lives. How many times have you caught a scent that immediately transported you back to being at your grandmothers’ house, or got a whiff of something cooking in the kitchen that reminded you of a time in your childhood? |
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| Lavenders name comes from the Latin verb, ‘lavare’ which means to wash. We use the medicine of lavender to ‘wash’ on many levels. |
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| Tinctures are also called herbal extracts or liquid herbal extracts. Tinctures are concentrated herbal preparations where the medicinal qualities of an herb are extracted into a liquid form. |
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| The winter cold and flu season is when anti-biotics are most often prescribed unnecessarily. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, twenty to fifty percent of all outpatient antibiotic prescriptions and twenty five to forty five percent of antibiotic prescriptions in hospitals are inappropriate. |
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| The winter solstice is a time when the veil is thin between the physical and spiritual worlds. |
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| Every time you take a drink you have the opportunity to overwhelm your body with sugar and chemicals or nourish and support it with minerals and nutrients. It all comes down to how good do you want to feel and how healthy do you want to be? |
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