Pregnancy and Herbs

Herbs can support an easier pregnancy by helping alleviate morning sickness, mood swings, leg cramps, hemorrhoids, constipation, and anemia. They can also be used for nourishing and strengthening the body to support a growing, healthy fetus.
Some herbs are best used to prepare your body before pregnancy. Then there are herbs you can use to support your body and the future health of your child during gestation; many of these herbs will help enrich your breast milk during the nursing period. Finally, thank goodness, other herbs can help your body get back into shape again. And some herbs, of course, should be completely avoided during pregnancy.

How to Choose the Right Herbs Combinations?

How do you know what combinations of herbs to choose? Don’t worry— it will be spelled out for you. Combinations are excellent because you can take just one pill that contains several different herbs for a specific body system. For instance, instead of purchasing fenugreek and thyme separately to help you eliminate mucus and boost the immune (many take these herbs when suffering from bronchitis), you can obtain one combination pill that contains both these herbs. Hey, it saves space and allows you to take some other herbs without having a bottle of every single herb you need filling up your countertops! Taking combinations can save you money also since you only need to buy one bottle and not two or more to get the same synergistic effects one bottle of a combination provides.

When you see a combination of two or more herbs together in future tables, it’s because the combinations are working synergistically and usually serve a few different purposes to help you with an ailment. If you cannot find a combination that I suggest in future tables (hint: I know they are out there) then don’t hesitate to combine your own using singles or bulk herbs. Let’s look at some other combinations that work synergistically.

Lobelia and St. John’s wort is one combination that many smokers use to help them quit. The lobelia is calming and has an effect similar to nicotine in the body. St. John’s wort has been used to fight mild depression sometimes associated with breaking an addictive physical habit.
Capsicum with garlic and parsley is another synergistic combination utilized for its positive effect on the circulatory system. The parsley serves as a deodorizer that helps mask the unpleasantness of garlic breath!
Combinations are excellent; nevertheless, each person is chemically a little bit different, so some will respond better to a few single herbs and others to combinations.
The positive affirmation you made by purchasing and reading this book alone proves you are ready to continue learning and take more responsibility for your health and life. Although the road to total health through natural means is not necessarily a piece of tofu cake, the rewards you earn are vitality, clear thinking, emotional control, vibrancy, and energy—well worth working for, wouldn’t you say? Once you begin using herbs, you instantly become more aware of your body and you will feel how herbs can enhance your life and health. If you are interested in studying herbology, start studying now because it’s a vast and wonderful journey—oh, and don’t forget to take your ginkgo biloba to boost your memory while you learn!

Hot, Cold, Wet, or Dry: Which Do I Apply?

To get the right synergy and energetic combination, consider the nature of your symptoms. You can use four general descriptions—hot, cold, wet, and dry—to categorize your illness, and these can be matched to four general effects that herbs have on the body.

You can determine whether an herb is hot, cold, wet, or dry by its taste, smell, touch, and sometimes just by its appearance. For instance, slippery elm, when tasted, will have a slippery feel on your tongue. This means that the herb has a wet characteristic that can be used for dry conditions in the body. The slippery elm, being mucilaginous, is soothing to the body tissues; I use it if I get a dry, scratchy throat from talking too much! An example of the hot category is the herb capsicum, which is the fruit of the cayenne pepper plant. Capsicum is a very hot herb indeed—and one taste on the tip of your tongue will prove it! Another clue that capsicum is hot is its red color. If you are cold and lacking circulation, capsicum would be a great herb to help you generate some heat.

A dry herb in energetics is an herb that causes your tissues to dry up. Most of these herbs are referred to as astringents or sour herbs. A good example is white oak bark, which is used to tighten and dry up swollen tissues and blisters. An example of a cooling (cold) effect from an herb is aloe vera, which is also a mucilaginous herb. This herb has both a cooling and a moistening effect on the body. If you were hot and dry, drinking a little aloe vera in your water would help you cool down and would moisten your tissues.

Try your own taste test with each of these herbs and see for yourself the effect it has on you. Open a capsule of capsicum and dab some on your tongue. It won’t be long before you’ll be reaching for that cooling sip of aloe vera! You will feel the white oak bark tighten your tongue, and you’ll sense the sliminess of the slippery elm when you moisten it. This experiment will really get you in touch with energetics.

Adjusting Herbal Remedies to Your Needs

If you aren’t working with an herbalist, or someone educated in herbology, you will need to experiment somewhat on how much or how many herbs your body needs to get results. Larger people sometimes need larger doses, and smaller people need smaller doses. Children usually need very little amounts and respond quickly to herbal remedies.
If you are especially sensitive to medications or foods it is best to start out with smaller doses than what is recommended on a label. It’s always best to get little or no results and work your way up than to bombard yourself with too much, which can bring on an uncomfortable cleansing.
Sometimes it takes a couple days to feel the effects of an herb. This is especially true with the cleansing-type herbs, so it’s a good idea to take the recommended dosage for a few days and wait for any changes. If you are not seeing a change, in-crease what you are taking daily until you start seeing changes in your body.

Synergistical Approach on Herbs

Why is it that one herb doesn’t seem to help change how you feel, but three or four in combination can change your life? This is called synergy. Synergy is the effect you get when everything is working complementary with one another. You may require the benefits of the synergist effects of more than one herb to help your body get back into shape.

Many herbs work synergistically with each other just like a nice wine goes with a certain meal. On the contrary, some herbs can actually cancel each other out because they have opposite effects on each other. (Kind of like onions and ice cream!) Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the magic herb, although sometimes an herb added to a few other herbs can serve as a catalyst that helps boost the effects of the others. Some herbs just make good teams together; for instance, capsicum is an activating herb that works synergistically with many herbs to enhance the effect of the other. Herbal companies who know this will add a pinch of capsicum to their herbal formulas for this synergistic and enhancing effect.

Many herbalists and nutritionists believe that what can prevent a sickness also can cure it. If your disease was caused by a lack of nutrients in the first place, then it makes sense that feeding that nutrient back to your body will return you to your normal functions. Take scurvy, for example. It is caused by a lack of vitamin C.
We not only use foods rich in vitamin C to prevent scurvy, but it is also the remedy for this disease.

An Energetic Approach on Herbs

Energetics is an interesting and complex approach to herbology, but once you get the hang of it, it can be fun and very effective in choosing the right herbal remedy for your body. Used in this context, energetics is considered the energy, the nature, or the personality of an herb and the effect it has on you when you take it. When you assess the nature of your illness, you can choose a herb with a more balancing or complementary energy.

For instance, if you don’t take into account the energetics of a cough, then you might assume that a cherry bark cough syrup is what you need. After all, cherry bark has been used successfully by many to tame coughing. However, if you have a dry cough and you take cherry bark, your cough will worsen because cherry bark has a very drying effect on the tissues. It works great for those with a loose, phelgmy cough, but you are better off with a different remedy for a dry cough—you might try slippery elm or licorice root, which soothe dry, irritated tissues.
Energetics is a very deep subject that’s just briefly introduced so that you can understand why not just one herb works for everyone’s cough. Where appropriate throughout this book, I have provided suggestions for each ailment to help you choose the best remedy for your needs.

This quote, by Leonardo da Vinci, explains quite eloquently the holistic view of an energetic approach to healing:
“You know that medicines when well used restore health to the sick: they will be well used when the doctor together with his understanding of their nature shall understand also what man is, what life is, and what constitution and health are. Know these well and you will know their opposites; and when this is the case you will know well how to devise a remedy.”

An Energetic and Synergistic Look at Herbs

Sometimes you will hear about an herb’s energetic effect on the body, or you will hear an herbalist say that a combination of herbs works synergistically together. What’s all this about?
Energetics describes the personality, energy, and general characteristics of herbs. It’s also used to categorize how an herb or a food reacts to our body when we taste, smell, and ingest it. Synergy is a term used to describe how herbs work together. We can have a synergistic relationship with our friends, but not our enemies! Working synergistically together is basically working in harmony to enhance the effects of each other.