Natural Health and Herbal Remedies Blog

Aching Feet

Give your feet an ultimate treat. Chop up unpeeled cucumbers and blend until they are a thick mulch and apply to your feet. Sea Salt: add 2 tbsp. of sea salts or Epsom salts to a foot bath. Essential Oils: use any or a combination of the essential oils listed above in a foot bath and foot massage oil.

Kombucha: soak in a warm kombucha foot bath, then apply a friction rub with kombucha tea.

Ice: rub an ice cube over hot, swollen aching feet to soothe and refresh them.

Athletes Foot

This is a most irritating fungal infection when the PH of the foot changes from acid to alkaline. It is mostly found in between the toes and can affect other areas of the skin. The area between the toes becomes itchy, moist, cracked and smelly.

To control athletes foot keep your feet dry leaving them out in the sun a lot. Walk barefoot and wear open-toed sandals. To prevent infection spreading use separate towels. It is highly contagious and thrives in warm, moist conditions.

Water: wash the effected are with acid water then with alkaline water.

Vinegar: wash with equal amounts of apple cider vinegar and warm water.

Essential oils: can be added to foot baths, lotion, oils or ointments, such as lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus or tea tree.

Kombucha: use the kombucha culture to rub onto the affected areas. Soak in a kombucha foot bath then apply kombucha cream. Honey: apply raw honey mixed with onion juice in between toes before going to bed. Cover feet with cotton bed socks.

Herbs: comfrey and thuja is used as an ointment or as infusion of both

herbs are used in a foot bath. Thuja infusion is used as a fungicide wash

for cleansing the shower to stop athlete’s foot from spreading.

Kefir: massage kefir or natural yoghurt in between toes and leave on over

night.

Urine: every time you urinate, rub the urine in between the toes. Oil: make up a mixture of 3 drops thyme, 2 drops sage, and 5 drops of each of the following essential oils, rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender, tea tree. Add to 50 ml olive oil, 1 clove of fresh garlic. Mix all ingredients together, leave to steep for 2 weeks. Discard garlic clove. Rub oil into the affected area nightly after a foot bath.

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Solar Keratosis

I received the following letter from M.B.B .

“… solar keratosis covering a large area, raised red painful areas across my forehead at the hair line and on my nose, requiring frequent bum freezing by local GP. Using the treatment I started to cleanse my skin with papaya facial cleanser followed by an application of papaya ointment. This treatment has reduced the problem significantly, so much so that the painful bum freezing treatment has not been required for some considerable time, in fact since I first started using the papaya ointment.”

Sunburn

Urine: wash the affected area with urine, also apply before exposure.

Foods: buttermilk, cucumbers, raw egg yolk, honey mixed with equal parts of wheatgerm oil, kefir, milk, olive oil, yoghurt, diluted vinegar or kombucha,

Herbs: aloe-vera gel, dry comfrey root tea mixed with water to make a paste.

Essential oils: bergamot, geranium, lavender, peppermint, eucalyptus, chamomile

Cold pressed oils: sesame seed oil is a natural sun filter, and has a cooling affect on sunburn.

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Papaya is used in skin products for a natural ‘face lift’ and rejuvenation. The green fruit is used in cosmetics as it contains papain and other enzymes, papaya is beneficial for skin care and repair. Old dead skin cells, dandruff and other disorders can be treated or eliminated with Papaya and even the signs of premature ageing can be reduced. Papaya is also used for treating skin disorders such as eczema, psoriasis, acne, sores, wounds and ulcers. The papain in papaya, has an incredible ability to digest dead tissue without affecting the surrounding live tissue.(See also skin disorders)

Papaya tea and fruit contains an enzyme that dissolves surface cell debris making it a great facial peel.

Caution: In rare cases and long term application of a highly concentrated Papaya, sensitivity and/or skin irritation may be experienced.

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Sour milk-The solid portion of sour milk is composed of casein. It is too valuable to throw away, use it as a cleansing cream.

Tomato skin-Rub the inside of the skin over blackheads, also great for sunburn.

Watermelon-The thick rind is bound around the forehead and temples to relieve headaches. To relieve pain of the gall bladder or liver apply a poultice made from mashed rind and the pulp placed directly over the organs.

Watermelon seeds and rind are dried and made into a decoction and taken as a diuretic. This has a soothing effect on bladder inflammation.

Walnuts Green or immature black walnut is used. Make an incision into the outer shell and rub the juice onto blemishes, ringworm’s, warts and age spots.

To make up a hair dye, take 1-1/4 cups each of bruised walnut husks and leaves, soak in a gallon of rain water for 24 hours. Then pour the liquid into a saucepan and boil until half the liquid is reduced. Cool, strain and bottle then add 1 tbsp. of alcohol. Apply to hair daily until a darker colour has resulted.

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Although the main site of Candida overgrowth is in the gut, it can also proliferate elsewhere – in the vagina or mouth, and on the skin, especially in damp areas, such as between the toes. The common name used for infections in the mouth and vagina is thrush. In the vagina, thrush produces an intense itching, and an unpleasant discharge in some cases. In the mouth, it can produce a sore throat, or creamy-yellow patches inside the mouth that leave a sore area when they are rubbed off, or tiny red spots that show where the Candida infection has occurred. If Candida gets into a woman’s urinary tract or bladder it can produce a form of q-stitis – characterized by a burning sensation when passing urine.

Babies are very susceptible to such infections, especially in the mouth, where Candida produces a creamy or grey-coloured membrane covering the tongue. In newborn babies, the infection is usually picked up from the mother’s vagina during birth. Some cases of ‘nappy rash’ are due to Candida.

Diabetic women run a higher risk of developing Candida infections in the vagina, because of the sugar in their urine – sugar feeds the yeast. Thrush in the mouth is also more common in diabetics.

In the gut, the main symptom of candidiasis is said to be bloating and wind, because as the yeast ferments its food it produces prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide gas. Diarrhoea and abdominal pain are also common symptoms, probably a result of toxins produced by the yeast. In some people there maybe constipation.

Much more rarely, Candida can invade the eye, kidney, liver or brain, doing serious damage. However, such infections only occur in people with a severe immune defect, a serious disease affecting their hormones, or some other fundamental disorder.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Out nails reveal a lot about our health. It’s not uncommon for the nail to become affected by a serious disease. In fact, a good medical detective will be able to tell when you become sick and for how long you’ve been suffering just by looking at your nails.

When horizontal grooves appear across your nails, it’s a common sign that a person is recovering from a severe illness. You see, when a person is sick for an extended period of time, the body seems to cut down on the amount of nutrients it sends to nonvital areas such as nails so that it can put its resources into boosting the immune system and/or ridding the body of the illness. And so the growth of the nails slows down, which results in the grooves.

Treatment

If grooves appear across your nails, you don’t have to do a thing. When you recover from your illness and your nails begin to grow again, the grooves will disappear, though it may take several months for the nail to grow out.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Of the countless medical conditions throughout the years, some can be of the foot problems I see won’t occur if you wear shoes that fit properly.

This includes heel pain. The tough pad that comprises your heel serves as a shock absorber for your entire foot as well as the rest of your body. If you feel a pain in your heel every time you take a step, the pad of your heel is probably inflamed, which may be caused by absorbing too much shock. Though some people may call your condition a heel spur, this is a misnomer, since a heel spur is a problem with the bone of the heel, in which part of it becomes calcified. A heel spur is excruciatingly painful, since a bone is digging directly into your skin.

Heel pain is usually due—again!—to wearing shoes that don’t fit properly or pounding on your heel while walking or running. Women are also prone to heel pain when they switch from high heels to flat shoes. High heels force you to walk on your toes, whereas if you start to wear flats, there will be more weight on your heel than it’s accustomed to.

Treatment

If you think you have an inflamed heel pad, try changing the shoes you wear to comfortable, flat shoes that have a lot of padding in the heel. While the pain remains, however, you can take aspirin and apply ice to reduce the swelling. This is all most people need. Others, however, will need to see their doctor, who may decide to inject corticosteroids into the heel for instant relief.

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There have been hundreds of books written on this topic, and it’s likely that hundreds more will be written in the years to come. Then why is the public still generally confused about cholesterol and what— if anything—should be done to bring down an elevated cholesterol level?

These are the facts: A normal cholesterol reading will be 200 milligrams or less. If your cholesterol tests above 200, it’s necessary to check all of your blood lipid levels with a series of blood tests, taken after fasting at least six hours.

I feel a cholesterol test should be performed by a reputable lab and interpreted by your physician. The result of a test done with a finger prick at work or at home should be used only as a screening. If the number is elevated, you should then make an appointment with your doctor.

The spotlight has turned on cholesterol because even in people of normal weight, an elevated cholesterol level increases the risk for devel-oping premature aging of the blood vessels, which leads to heart and kidney disease, cerebral stroke, and other vascular diseases. Diabetes, some forms of liver disease, and some of the medications that are used to treat acne and high blood pressure can also cause your cholesterol levels to go up. Elevated cholesterol levels may also be due to genetics, but most often it’s due to the high amounts of cholesterol and saturated fat people include in their diets.

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As I’ve mentioned, the major problem with high blood pressure is that most of the time you won’t have any symptoms. Unfortunately, once you start taking medication to treat your condition, you may experience adverse reactions such as headaches and dizziness, until your doctor finds the medication right for you. At this point, many people stop taking the medication before it even has a chance to work. Or else, you may want to start taking other medications to treat your side effects, which in turn can cause more side effects. Before you know it, you can spend a significant part of your day opening bottles and swallowing pills. That’s why when I first start a person on blood pressure medication, I strongly recommend that in the beginning she visit me in my office at least once a week so I can assess the effectiveness of the medication and her adverse reactions, if any. It’s important for you, as a patient, to feel like an integral part of the medical treatment team with whom you are working.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

When I was a kid and my aunts used to sit around complaining about their corns, I always thought of that old Bugs Bunny cartoon where an ear of corn sprang full blown from somebody’s foot. I looked at my aunts’ clunky orthopedic shoes, but they didn’t look as though they could hold something that big.

After 4 years of medical school and 20 years of practice, I know a little bit more about corns. A corn usually appears on a toe where the skin has become thickened, usually by the pressure and/or friction of shoes that don’t fit right. A callus is a close, thick-skinned relative of a corn— except that it usually appears on the sole of the foot and over a wider area.

Though corns and calluses are annoying and corns are sometimes painful, they probably won’t prevent you from staying on your feet.

Treatment

If you get a corn or callus, you should first soak it in warm water for about 10 minutes. Then you can rub it away with a pumice stone or use a special over-the-counter cream that softens the skin. There are also special corn pads you can buy that will reduce the friction between your shoe and your foot.

But the best way to treat a corn as well as to prevent it in the future is wearing shoes that fit properly. It might also help to choose shoes with a leather upper that will easily mold to your feet instead of fighting against them.

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