Herbal Medicine Center

Archive for May 7th, 2010

Well, all the Christmas lights and decorations have started to appear in our local malls. It’s probably the same where you live. The competition is really hot this year. Retailers have been suffering because of the credit crunch so they started the campaign to get us to spend our hard-earned dollars really early. But, of course, we first have to get through Thanksgiving. In the midst of all this consumer pressure and the expectations of friends and families, it’s easy to forget one vital ingredient – your health! In the good old days, those Pilgrims had an easy ride when it comes to weight loss. There was little food to last through each year so the idea of celebrating a successful harvest with a feast made sense. Filling up the store houses with grains and cereals really was the difference between life and death. So getting the family together was a way of boosting morale as everyone faced the hardships of the winter to come. Oh, and everyone was as thin as a rake. Today, the story could not be more different. It’s not just the turkeys putting on the pounds for the festive season. We spend the year eating just that little bit too much, not counting the calories and giving in to temptations. At best, our weight stays the same but, more often, it rises slowly but steadily. Then along comes Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone is expected to binge on more food.

Social gatherings are mixed blessings. It’s good to see everyone and, when they all start eating and drinking together, it makes for a special event as we catch up with news, celebrate all the recent successes and bitch about all the problems. This hides all the hard work that went into making all the food and all the discomfort that comes afterwards – in particular that bloated feeling. There’s another sad truth. When months go by between visits, we forget each other’s look. It can be a surprise when the door opens and a slightly more overweight figure walks in. This can affect how much we enjoy the holiday. Everything about us is wrapped up in how we feel about ourselves and the others we love. The amount of energy we have and level of self-confidence we feel is dictated by how we look. It impacts the choice of clothes to wear, the places to go, and so on. A recent study by the University of Washington found an emerging majority of people do not want these extra pounds. Attitudes are changing with the overweight coming bottom on a scale of sexual attractiveness.

So unless you want to feel really bad about yourself in the New Year, start an active diet right now. The world is going to expect you to overeat on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Start losing some weight now. That way, you will emerge from the binge at the same weight and not carrying even more. That means a calorie-reduced diet starting today. If you feel hungry, take phentermine, the one appetite suppressant that has stayed fit and active throughout the years. Launched fifty years ago, phentermine has seen off all its rivals as the drug most likely to keep morale high and those weight loss blues away.

The mechanism of male erection is so sophisticated and complex that there’s no big surprise that sometimes it goes not as good as you’d wish to. Still, having problems with getting and keeping a good hard erection form time to time is nothing to worry about, because it happens to all men, and it’s not impotence. A cause for concern is the situation when a man is having problems with erection in more than 25% of cases – that is what doctors start to call erectile dysfunction. ED can have various degrees of severity, ranging from ongoing problems with keeping the erection, early ejaculation to being completely unable to get an erection at all. But what is more important is that erectile dysfunction can have various causes, and by knowing which one has influenced impotence in every particular case is the key to treating the condition.

Erectile dysfunction can be a very strong signal, informing you that there’s something wrong in your body. It usually doesn’t take place on its own, being a side-effect of a much more serious condition. Erectile dysfunction is typically caused by two different sets of factors – psychological and physiological – which require their own ways of treatment. So before you engage in any practices or consider using medications, you first have to define what the root of your problem is.

Psychological causes for ED are probably the most widespread, because things like stress, anxiety and depression are met more often these days. Treating erectile dysfunction caused by such conditions can be relatively easy, because it usually doesn’t involve any strong drugs or complicated medical procedures. However, when treating these conditions with certain anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants you have to be careful, because they may be causing ED as a side-effect. So make sure to consult with a doctor or a pharmacist before starting a course of treatment.

Physiological causes for male impotence include a very wide range of conditions, which are primarily related to the health of blood vessels and nervous tissue in the penile area. Having diabetes, blood pressure problems, heard diseases, high cholesterol levels, kidney or liver diseases, recent surgical operations, cancer treatment or prostate problems will raise the likelihood of developing erectile dysfunction. This is where addressing the condition on its own, especially when it has been around for a long time, is not enough and using drugs such as Viagra is encouraged.

Lifestyle and habits can also be the cause for erectile dysfunction. It is a well known fact that alcohol abuse and heavy smoking influence the development of impotence in men, and the longer you follow these habits, the harder it will be getting back healthy erections after you’re done. Shifting towards a healthier lifestyle, following a low-calorie diet, exercising and getting enough sleep can sometimes be a lot more effective than using Viagra, because a healthy lifestyle will improve the overall state of your body and not just the ability to have sex. So before you buy Viagra online, revise the way you treat your body everyday and see if there are some changes to be done.

We should not blame the bacteria that humans treat each other so badly. All they want is somewhere warm to reproduce with plenty of food. That the results cause people so much emotional pain is hardly their fault. Like most other diseases and disorders, acne is what it is. Acne does not judge us. It simply creeps up on us one day and shows its presence on our faces, necks and shoulders. Under normal circumstances, it then moves on and, hopefully, we recover from the emotional scars inflicted by those around us. But, in some cases, there are physical scars as well. Perhaps this was the unfair touch of the condition. That some could be marked for life. Except now there are treatments to deal with the scars left behind.

First, we need to understand why scarring results. There are two basic types of acne scar. Some are pits or depressions in the skin, either with a smooth rolling surface or with sharp angular edges. The other variety is raised portions of rubbery skin. These are most obvious when the outgrowth passes beyond the site of the original wound and may be itchy. Like a cut in the surface of the skin, acne is also a type of wound. It heals when a sufficient volume of collagen comes together and granulation tissue forms. But, because the wound is physically inside the dermis, the resulting scar forms under the surface of the skin. This makes it very difficult to remove. In fact, there is no one treatment that works well for everyone because the nature of the scars is different.

One approach, more cosmetic in nature, is to inject collagen into the site of the scars. This fills out or stretches the skin, and makes depressed scars less noticeable. Although this is a quick procedure, it is less useful when the depressions are deep and it is only temporary. The collagen slowly disperses and the injections must be repeated at regular intervals if a smooth complexion is to be maintained. This pushes many people into more aggressive treatments. For the best results, it is better not to delay treatment for too long. For depressed scars, the aim is to force the skin to regenerate. This is done using ablative techniques, i.e. the outer layer of the skin is physically worn away which encourages new skin to grow from underneath. Alternatively, chemicals are used to remove the outer layers of skin. For the most difficult cases, there is subcision to cut through the layers of skin and punch excision. Many practitioners will try to sell you on laser treatments. This is effective for minor facial blemishes but it has its limitations. The clinical trials have never used statistically significant numbers of participants and there is no real research evidence of their effectiveness.

This may suggest it better not to allow the acne to produce scarring. With effective early treatment, the different types of zit can usually be prevented from producing scars. If the conventional treatments are not successful, there is accutane. Although this has some limitations – there are always some risks for the more powerful treatments – the benefits are real. The benefits? That accutane removes all acne in the majority of people during the first course of treatment lasting three months. If there is some acne left, the second three month course is always successful.

It’s funny when you pick up any bottle containing a natural herb or supplement and read the little message at the bottom: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Ever wonder when the FDA is going to get around to evaluating them? After all, they have only been used for thousands of years.

People all through time have reaped the benefits of these natural cures but the FDA doesn’t seem too interested. On the other hand, they seem to implement a virtual approval stamping machine when it comes to brand new prescription drugs.

Toward the end of the 1980′s The FDA got slammed by AIDS advocacy groups who felt that the approval process for potentially life saving drugs was too long. They responded in recent years by putting new policies in place that would speed this process up. They have gone even further by offering incentives to drug companies to develop new drugs faster.

There was also the controversial Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1992 which helped bolster the FDA budget by collecting fees from industry user fees.

The problem with natural cures is that since they are natural, they can’t be patented. There is no big profit to be made off of something that can be copied distributed by everyone and their brother so no one can afford to pay these tremendous fees to the FDA to get them approved. And with no FDA approval, they can’t be prescribed by an MD. Very interesting how it all works.

There are also reported incentives given to panelists on the FDA from Drug companies. For example back in 2005, It was reported in the Associated Press that a study was done by Toward the end of the 1980′s The FDA got slammed by AIDS advocacy groups who felt that the approval process for potentially life saving drugs was too long. They responded in recent years by putting new policies in place that would speed this process up. They have gone even further by offering incentives to drug companies to develop new drugs faster.

There have also been reports of incentives given to advisory panelists on the FDA by drug companies. For example, back in 2005, a study that was done by the Center For Science in the Public Interest revealed that 10 out of 32 FDA panelists who voted on whether or not to keep some controversial pain killers including Vioxx on the market received incentives from their manufacturers including consulting fees and research support. The 10 panelists were reported to have voted 9-1 in favor of keeping the drug Vioxx on the market and 10-0 in favor of the other drugs. Vioxx was pulled off the market a short time later by the manufacturer to to the report of heart problems of some patients. Without these 10 votes in favor of keeping the drug, they would all been pulled off the market.

A study in USA Today by Dennis Cauchon reported that: “More than half of the experts hired to advise the government on the safety and effectiveness of medicine have financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies that will be helped or hurt by their decisions.”

The report goes on to say: “Federal law generally prohibits the FDA from using experts with financial conflicts of interest, but the FDA has waived the restriction more than 800 times since 1998.”

Wow 8oo times. Makes you wonder.I think the message is very clear here . . .Money Talks.

Actually, natural plant-based cures got kicked to the curb in the early part of the 20th century when pharmaceutical companies gained considerable influence over medical schools with generous funding.

The health-care industry is one of the largest industries in the world and it only grows exponentially in profits as the population continues to grow and the baby-boom generation gets older.

There is simply not enough profit in natural cures for them to get the same consideration by government as a the gigantic pharmaceutical health care industry.

It is also important to note that there is no real profit in you getting healthy or staying that way.

Simon Hightauer Jr. is a strong advocate of all-natural cures and remedies and is constantly looking to shine the light on secret hidden knowledge for the benefit of all. For more information, click here or go to: http://www.morenaturalcuresonline.com