Abigails Herbs

There are many women who are struggling through menopause who are trying hormone replacement therapy to control and reduce the occurrence of hot flashes. Hot flashes are horrible because they keep healthy menopausal  women awake at night, perspiring and kicking the bed covers on and off until the wee hours of the morning. Then, the lack of sleep causes daytime  irritability and moodiness. Hot flashes are hard to control.

Many women are afraid that hormone replacement therapy increases the risk of breast cancer; especially in light of the Women’s Health Initiative, which recommends that women in menapouse stay away from estrogen during and after menopuase. Dr. Salman Hyder, Ph.D., professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia, assures us that a preliminary study suggests that women exposed to estrogen and progestin in hormone replacement therapy may benefit from curcumin, which is a compound in the Asian spice, turmeric.

In animal studies, curcumin decreased the growth rate and number of progestin-accelerated tumors. You can get curcumin from cooking with turmeric. Or you can ask your doctor about trying a curcumin supplement. I have been making sauces with turmeric, and, shortly after consuming meals containing turmeric, I feel extremely healthy, enlivened  and energetic!

You know how cinnamon lowers blood sugar levels, however, new research reveals that the herb, chamomile has similar health benefits. Sipping on a relaxing cup of chamomile tea in the evening  provides much more than a restful night’s rest. The chamomile herb may help control blood sugar fluctuations and prevent the ravaging  ill effects of Type II diabetes.

When researchers fed chamomile tea to rats with diabetes, the animals had significant decreases in blood sugar and lower levels of componds that can cause diabetic complications. Yes,  it is true that more research is needed, however, those of us diagnosed with diabetes can reap the same benefits from chamomile that cinnamon offers.

Be careful to stop drinking chamomile tea if you have allergies. Always consult with your doctor before drinking  or consuming this wonderful herb. Always drink this tea in moderation. Remember, too much of any good thing can have disastrous results.

In a previous article, I had emphasized that passionflower is great for promoting  a solid night’s sleep and ending  insomnia. Damiana is great for helping one to relax. When damiana and passionflower are taken at or near the same time, there are no fireworks or exciting things that occur.  That’s right- after drinking passionflower tea and taking damiana, the only thing that happens is that you will fall asleep!

Now for some of us who have difficulty falling asleep, this is a welcome event!  These two herbs will really induce sleep; a good quality, sound sleep. Now, I have friends who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Then, I have some other friends who fall asleep, but wake up at the wee hours of the morning, unable to get back to sleep. On the other hand, I have more friends and family who toss and turn and are so frustrated because they can’t get to sleep, no matter how many sheep they count.

So, this combination of damiana and passionflower not only promotes getting to sleep; it also improves the quality of sleep and induces wonderful, lucid dreaming. As I have said in my last article, dreams images are symbolic of  1) things we fear and/or 2) things we hope to happen. I never take dreams literally. I look at my dreams as that part of me which needs self-expression or parts of me to which I need to pay more attention. Remember, your dreams are important: we dream during the REM sleep period. Without REM (rapid eye movement) stages of sleep, we do not function as healthy individuals. Instead, we tend to get depressed, restless, and unable to focus on daily or routines activities.

We all need to de-stress and to relax as much as possible, So, go on a camping trip, sleep under the stars, attend a music festival out in the country, relax in a hammock and don’t forget to DREAM!

Last night I went to see the movie “Inception”  at an Imax  theater. It was very imaginative; about shared dreaming and being in dreams with others. I enjoyed it. I  love to dream vividly, and oftentimes I can’t remember my dreams; only bits and pieces of them. Anyway, what I started doing is, before I fall asleep at night, I tell my sub-conscious to remember my dream and that works. Then I write it all down before I forget it. Thus, I have created my own dream journal. I won’t go into the content of my dreams right now, but I have noticed that my dreams are much more lucid when I have consumed passionflower in the evenings. I drink it in tea form, although some people smoke it.

It has been reported that it creates a mind expanding experience, heightening one’s consciousness and increasing visual and perceptual awareness. Passionflower calms the central nervous system by increasing the neurotransmitter, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). It is also good for spasmodic asthma and generalizes seizures, among  other things. Passionflower is the number one natural cure for insomnia. I awake in the morning very refreshed and alert.

Passionflower is great alone, however, when taken with damiana it induces sleep and it seems that the combination of these two herbs also promotes lucid dreaming. To wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and invigorated with the experience of wonderful dream imagery is not only physically healthy, but able to give us insight into what makes us tick psychologically, is a wonderful feeling!

The subject matter of our dreams tells us what are fears are and they also tell us what our needs, wants and desires are. Secondly, we only dream if we are able to achieve REM sleep. Without REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, we don’t function at our optimal levels, both mentally and physiologically.  Our vivid dreams are valuable to us because they help us to expand our conscious awareness so that we can grow into fully functioning, creative human beings. Then can we be truly “present” for others, thus being contributors to our earth in a positive and humanistic way.

Disclaimer:  Do not take passionflower and/or damiana excessively. Always consult with your physician before taking these herbs.

Both black and green tea contain a concentrated dose of catechins. Catechins are substances which help blood vessels relax and protect our hearts. In a study of more than 40,500 Japanese men and women, those who drank at least 5 or more cups of green tea everyday had the lowest risk of dying from heart disease and stroke. Other studies involving black tea showed similar results.

You need only 1 to 2 cups of tea each day to start your heart off to a healthy lifestyle. Make sure the tea is fresh when you brew it. Ready to drink tea blends that they sell in the supermarkets are filed with sugars and water and thus, they do not offer the same heart healthy benefits. Once water is added to the tea, the catechins degrade and break down within a few days, losing their effectiveness. Tufts University professor, Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, was responsible for performing nutritional studies in this area.

Other studies have found that milk may eliminate tea’s protective effects on our cardiovascular system, so it is wiser to flavor your tea with honey or lemon. I  love the taste of straight tea. so I simply drink it without any sweetener or extra flavoring in my cup. Now that’s my cup of tea!

Last week, the harsh summer weather reached temperatures of 104 and 105  for tree days in a row. I was so hot that my skin was warm and flushed and it was becoming extremely dry. Instead of using my regular aloe vera gel, I decided to try rubbing some bala root massage oil into my parched skin. In symbiosis with castor oil, coconut oil and ashoka bark oil, this mixture was a wonderful experience for my skin.

Immediately after I massaged it in, I felt my skin was soft, supple and cool. The moisture seemed to renew my tired, old skin, which had been drained and parched by the brutal heat. I found out that bala is aged for a full 24 hours in copper containers by Ayurvedic physicians. The copper pots maintain the integrity of the oil so that it is effective and the oil’e healing properties are not lost in the curing process. Bala root oil has the ability to actually rejuvenate skin cells so they do not die.

My skin not only felt cooler, but younger and invigorated for sure. Ayurveda has been using the bala root for over 850 years now as an oil for healing.

I guess you have heard it said many many times that we should drink eight, 8 ounces of water per day for optimum health benefits. Then I read that you should let your body tell you how much water it needs in order to cleanse itself and the vital organs in our bodies. Then someone had told me that carbonated water is not good for us; (this was a nurse, by the way). Well, much to everbody’s shocked surprise, some researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently questioned the old adage of drinking eight, 8 ounces of  H2O everyday. These researchers asserted that there is no evidence that water cleans out toxins, wards off weight gain, improves skin tone or has any beneficial health effects.

They said that there is simply no such eveidence to support this long standing theory of water wisdom. The newest assertion in the war of the waters is from a new study taken from the British Journal of  Nutrition, which shifts the emphasis onto the kind of water you drink. Researchers found that drinking carbonated beverages increases satiety and decreases the amount of calories consmed. While the authors of this study aren’t suggesting you drink soda to lose weight; their research suggests that sparkling water may decrease cravings more than non-carbonated water.

I purport that drinking a few glasses of cold or warm green tea each day will lead to weight loss. The catechins and polyphenols  in the green tea do burn fat cells and increase one’s metabolism. It is still important to consume filtered or spring water daily, although I can’t really say that eight, 8 ounce glasses is the magic amount.

As we age, muscle mass becomes harder to keep. That is why, it is important to have a weekly exercise regimen in which we do strength training. For example, women lose one pound of muscle mass per year between the ages of 50 to 60; that is ten pounds of muscle gone after ten years. No wonder older people become weak! Men do not lose as much muscle mass as women for reasons I do not know. The term for this loss of muscle is “sarcopenia.”

I work out with kettle bells to help preserve my strength at least two times per week. Then I alternate with aerobics on the treadmill and the eliptical every other day, on which I do two to three miles at a time. I am finding out that I need some aerobics along with strength training. We can also slow down the process of sarcopenia through nutrition. Researchers at Tufts University Department of Agriculture found that foods rich in potasssium help preserve lean muscle mass. The study examined 384 volunteers for three years and they discovered that those whose diets were rich in potassium (getting more than 3,540 milligrams per day), preserved 3.6 more pounds of lean tissue than those with half the potassium intake.

That almost offsets the 4.4 pounds of lean tissue that is typically lost in one decade by healthy men, which the study’s author, Beth Dawson-Hughes, M.D. had announced. While bananas are the easiest form of potassium to eat (containing about 420 milligrams), there are other sources of this great mineral, such as tomato,cod, spinach, beets, papaya, swiss chard, lima beans, yams, acorn squash, pinto beans, crimini mushrooms, broccoli, brussels sprouts and organic pumpkin seeds.

Pumpkin seeds are great as a source of magnesium because you can eat them while you are traveling and they require no cooking. Bananas have the same convenient advantage.

Last night after work, I was invited to a dinner to celebrate my friend’s birthday.  We ate at Max Brenner’s; a restaurant dedicated to making and serving chocolate. The smell inside of the restaurant was so captivating and inviting. It was  rich and sweet.  I ordered a chocolate drink and I tried my friend’s onions rings. The onion rings were huge and served with a melted dark chocolate-ginger sauce on the side. I dipped an onion ring into the chocolate-ginger sauce and it was so good! I ordered an asparagus crepe with asiago cheese. I felt happy and full of  laughter.  The chocolate drink and sauce gave me a very full feeling, so I did not order a high calorie dessert.

I really believe that the chocolate curbed my appetite and gave me a full, warm feeling. I actually felt content and satisfied. I had a good time at the dinner, meeting new acquaintances, laughing and talking freely. Raw cacao contains over 300 polyphenols (chemicals) which balance our emotions. Some of these chemicals, (anandamides, flavinoids) are actually opioids. When the opioids reach the brain, we get a feel-good effect, much the same way that marijuana works. This is why chocolate lifts depression and generates a feeling of well being. Remember; the darker the cacao, the greater the plant chemical content. If you are eating regular milk chocolate with lots of sugar in it, chances are that the chemical benefits will  not  be there. Stick with the organic, dark chocolate for the best health and emotional benefits.

You can make your own chocolate-ginger sauce. It is fun to experiment with different recipes or to make your own creative recipes. Chocolate fondue pots can be used to melt different ingredients into interesting and tasty recipes.