Okay, so Shane gave me some herbal books for Christmas. I'll list them as well as some other resources in Friday's blog post. One of my books explains how to use herbs as antibiotics. Of course, these antibiotics aren't like the ones from the pharmacy in many, many ways. Let me attempt to explain, with another caveat: I am really new at this. My natural philosophy has been in place for years, but I'm very green (pun intended!) in this area. Use my posts as a springboard into your own study and don't hold me up as any kind of expert. I'm sure someday I'll look back at these posts and laugh at how much I didn't know!
First, lets look at bacteria. Bacteria was thought to be rather unintelligent but it turns out that experiments prove they are quite smart. Bacteria can learn from other bacteria how to resist our antibiotics. They line up side by side and in a manner of speaking, blue tooth data to each other. This means that a bacteria that has never come in contact with a certain antibiotic can learn how to resist that antibiotic! MRSA is a scary example of this.
Now, our antibiotics are single component substances. Penicillin is penicillin, tetracycline is tetracycline. However, herbal substances are complex, multifaceted substances. Yarrow has 170 different medicinal components in it. This reminds me of breast milk and it's scores of helpful properties. God knew what he was doing! He gifted us with an amazing medicine cabinet right in nature!
Because of the complex nature of herbs, they can better treat bacteria. Bacteria can't figure out the complexities of herbs like they can simple antibiotics. As scientists start to put all this together, the author of this particular book feels the end of the antibiotic era will come. Scientists are already attempting to mimic nature by combining drugs to make them more complex, but this complexity is still a far cry from herbs.
We all have been warned to be careful with our antibiotic use. We are possibly entering a precocious time, medically speaking. It behooves us to build up our arsenals with a variety of weapons against disease, and I believe herbs need to play an important part in that arsenal. Quality foods, exercise, pure water and rest are others.
1 comment:
Very cool, Wendy. I am really enjoying the Herbalism posts. You said it, God sure knew what He was doing. It amazes me that one herbal remedy can help/cure a score of symptoms and ironically, most of those symptoms are the graduating classifications of various diseases that are rampant in this day and time. I like the "check engine light" analogy where if you're driving along and your check engine light comes on you can do 2 things: 1) Check the problems and treat them doing what the symptoms say, which probably will take a little time for repair and proper maintainance, or 2) unplug the light and keep going, the same as medicating a symptom instead of righting the issue, which is what we're prone to doing right now.
Good for you! You're a good, approachable teacher. I'm looking forward to reading more.
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