Tag: herbal tea

We are going to have to become a lot more creative and inventive in our healing methods if the government and the ” powers that be”  manage to ban the counter-sales of vitamins and minerals, herbs and homeopathic medicines.

We are told that this is for the benefit of our health, that these things can be dangerous if taken without consultation, that safe dosage may be exceeded, and so we need an intermediary, if we are to use these things at all. This intermediary, a doctor or a qualified health practitioner then will be paid to prescribe for us, sell us expensive equivalents of the relatively cheap herbs and vitamins we use already, and tell us what to do with them.

It is hard to believe that our safety is the main cause of concern  by either the government or the drug companies.

Alcohol and tobacco and party drugs cause more ill health and deaths than do the taking of vitamin and mineral supplements. But we don’t have to go to the doctor or any other accountable body to get prescriptions for these potentially dangerous items.

Comfrey, or “Knit-bone” was banned several years ago. This was a  famous and well-tried healing herb, used from olden times unto the present day. Its name “knit-bone” impies its healing nature, which derives from its high silica content,  its high content of minerals, vitamins, and a cell proliferant which speeds up the growth of new cells in the body, including bone tissue.

Comfrey tea is soothing to the digestion, and because of its high silica, is good for hair, bones and teeth when used as a herbal tea.

We usually add some peppermint or chamomile herb to the tea, as it is fairly tasteless on its own. It puts a wonderful shine to the hair if used as a rinse. (The next best thing to compare to comfrey for hair, bones, teeth and nails is oat-straw tea.)  I used to add comfrey to silverbeet,  so that we could benefit from its nutrients. The alkaline quality of comfrey counteracts the acid from the silverbeet.

Its silica-sliminess makes a fantastic dressing for burns and wounds. I once cured a scald on my child’s arm by placing cooked, cold, wet comfrey dressings continually over the wound. This took about five days or so to heal, but when it did, there was barely a trace of a scar.

An article came out in our New Zealand papers which suggested eating comfrey could cause cancer in pigs. That was the end of it, basically. The herb was taken off the shelves of the health stores, and, furthermore, the plant itself was made illegal here in New Zealand.

I never knew anyone who ate comfrey in quantities. It was unpalatable to eat on its own, so there was never any danger of eating too much of the stuff. I never knew anyone who had “O-Deed” or died from eating comfrey. My opinion is that the green outside skin of a potato would be  more potentially hazardous to the health, as this contains a poison, saponin, which does affect the liver badly, and could contribute to a cancerous condition if you ate enough of it: yet potatoes have not been banned.

The idea of banning potatoes on the grounds that the saponin contained within the green of the skin , known to be a carcenogen, is hazardous to health, is as ridiculous as it was to ban comfrey on the grounds it could cause cancer in pigs.

I doubt that comfrey has accumulative effects of a negative nature. So few people used the herb, but the people I knew who did use it, used it moderately. They were generally  health-conscious people who avoided the use of toxic chemicals and the ingestion of allopathic medecines, and generally were very fit and strong.

I have never found out who engineered the comfrey ban, but I can guess. Comfrey saved us on many an occasion from having to go to a doctor and from using prescriiption medecines.

Drug companies have already successfully won over the rights to produce iodine and gentian violet. These medecines were taken, respectively, off the market in New Zealand at precisecly the same time they were taken off the shelves in Australia, between 5 and 10 years ago. This shows that, even then, drug companies were working globally toward gaining control over pharmaceuticals. The reason that both these medecines were hated by drug companies is that they were cheap and lasted for many a long year, as opposed to the concocted products which drug companies sell for the treatment of the same conditions and for about three times the price.

It is a pity that iodine had to go: apart from preventing infection when painted onto a wound or graze, a weekly daub of a small part of the sole of the foot gave us enough iodine to help our immune systems, keep the endocrine system in balance, prevent thyroid problems, help form healthy teeth, bones, nails, and grow healthy hair.

In the days when I still had iodine to use, I found its effects remarkable in encouraging hair growth.

I found this out after using iodine to treat eczema-like patches on the scalp.  I had allowed this condition to developed mainly because of using milk which I was allergic to. After several weeks, on the spots where I had been dabbing iodine every two or three days, thicker hair began to grow.

Cider vinegar, which you still can buy, is the next best thing in maintaining a healthy scalp and in promoting hair growth. I just rub the neat vinegar into the scalp after washing, which neutralizes the alkaline effect of soap or shampoo, and feeds the scalp with potassium and other mineral salts.

Since the writing of this article several years ago, iodine has been reintroduced, but it is an extremely diluted form, and you have to buy it from the chemist, or drugstore if you live in U.S.A. Previously, you could buy it in supermarkets, and it was, of course, a very cheap option for an iodine source.

The thing which we will probably all feel compelled to do before long, is to grow our own vegetables in soil which we ourselves have enrichened with the nutrients it is lacking. The best way to do this is to collect sea-weed from the beach after a storm and to bury this well underneath the top-soil layer.

Sea-weed is extremely high in iodine, and contains all the other trace elements which we need, and  we therefore need to put this into our soils for our vegetables to be a rich source of these things.

Then, we would have no need for buying iodine or for buying health supplements such as the minerals and vitamins which are now under threat by a change in legislation.

Of course, this will result in a radical change of life-style for all of us: hopefully, more shared, communal gardens will evolve in the cities and towns, with the land mass breaking up into smaller, more manually manageable farm plots being developed to feed and maintain the health of their local communities.