How to Incorporate Herbs Into Your Daily Routine
The question has often been asked, “How did you go from a conventional lifestyle to establishing an herbal routine?” For me, it was a matter of changing my mindset medicinally. When I first began studying herbal medicine, I still had a conventional mindset – meaning that I was still treating symptoms, but I began to substitute healthier choices. For instance, if I had a child step on a bee, I would use plantain instead of baking soda. If I had a child get into stinging nettle, I would use mullein instead of steroid cream. So, as I learned about the different herbs and what their actions were, I began to fill my medicine cabinet with herbs and essential oils as opposed to drugs.
If you are someone who is more health-conscious as in being physically active and striving for a better life-style – then, you might want to start by bringing more herbs and supplements into your daily diet and/or routine. For instance, in your morning smoothie, you might want to add some spirulina for protein, some horsetail for calcium and/or some yellow dock for iron. In other words, I would start where you are the most comfortable and where your greatest passion lies.
Not very many of us can change everything in our life overnight. Most of us need to pick one area and get focused. Learn as much as we can and then start implementing what we have learned. As we begin to utilize more and more natural modalities, our understanding and experience increases, so that line upon line, precept upon precept, we find that our whole outlook begins to change and it becomes easier to start implementing a more holistic way of living in all areas of our life.
One of the cautions I tell people is not to get fanatical about any one modality. All of them are pieces to a puzzle which can create a beautiful picture when utilized together. Too often people will latch onto herbs or essential oils and think that that is the only thing they need to fix everything. Unfortunately, when this happens, they never discover the beauty of hydro-therapy, massage therapy, reflexology, homeopathics, the frequency of tuning forks, etc. There is so much truth and beauty all around us if we are open-minded enough to receive it.
Since this article is focused on herbs, let’s look at some examples of how we can begin to add more of them into our life:
Nutritional
Nutritionally, there are many ways we can add herbs into our daily routine. Every time you reach into your spice cabinet, you are adding more plants to your diet. One of the ways we like to add more greens into our life is through green drinks. These can be made in a variety of ways:
Juicing – if you own a juicer, you can juice fresh fruits and vegetables
Smoothies – If you have a blender, there are lots of smoothies which you can incorporate fresh produce and/or green powders in to
Even on the go, you can add green powders to water, almond milk, coconut milk or juice
Instead of going out for a soda – there are lots of smoothie shops such as Jamba Juice, Orange Peel and others where you can pull up and get a fresh smoothie’
Here is a great recipe to try!
Ingredients
2 cups of spinach
2 cups of water
1 cup mango (utilizing some frozen fruit in your smoothie will add a nice chill to your drink)
1 cup pineapple
2 bananas
Directions
Tightly pack two cups of leafy greens in a measuring cup and then toss in a blender.
Add water and blend together until all leafy chunks are gone.
Add mango, pineapple and bananas. Blend again until smooth.
Makes 2 glasses.
Supplements
When it comes to incorporating herbal supplements into your life – it is just a matter of deciding where you want to start as the sky's the limit. What I mean by this is that if you have lived on the Standard American Diet (SAD) your entire life and you want to start cleansing some of the toxins from your body or maybe you just want to feel better and have more energy, then adding some cleansing herbs to your daily routine can help you to accomplish this. If you have always struggled with a sluggish bowel or constipation, then adding an herbal bowel formula to your daily regime cannot only help your bowels to move, but they can also help to feed and strengthen the bowel instead of acting like a harsh synthetic laxative might.
Many people have a difficult time incorporating enough of the right kind of fats into their diets. If you are one of these people, then adding a flax oil supplement to your daily routine can help ensure that you are getting enough of the right kind of fats on a daily basis.
If you are struggling with hormone imbalances or infertility issues, then adding an herbal hormone formula can quite often help to restore balance to your hormonal issues whether you are dealing with severe PMS, infertility, mood swings or hot flashes due to menopause. Taken with wheatgerm oil, they will quite often work faster and be more effective. Someone explained to me years ago that the herbs in these hormonal formulas have the precursors to the hormones our body needs to make. When taken with wheatgerm oil, the chemistry can take place within the body to convert these precursors to the actual hormones.
Like I said, the sky's the limit, you can find herbs which will help with liver issues, gallbladder issues, herbs to strengthen the heart, help with eyesight, strengthen bones, increase circulation, help remove plaque, decrease inflammation, remove brain fog, increase energy, strengthen the bowel, decrease arthritis, balance the thyroid, remove infections, heal wounds - these incredible plants, trees, flowers, grasses, roots and shrubs have many amazing nutritional and medicinal properties which can help the human body in countless ways. You merely have to decide where you want to start your particular program.
Medicinal
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is where it all started for me. I began my journey into a holistic lifestyle when my husband was diagnosed with diabetes. As a commercial airline pilot, I had to find a way to control his blood sugars without turning to insulin. If a pilot has to use insulin, they are grounded. I had a large family to feed and take care of, so I could not afford to have him grounded. I was so blessed as I began my journey into this amazing world because I was able to experiment on my own family using simple plants to help with simple problems. As I gained experience and grew in confidence, my challenges became more and more advanced – sometimes even life-threatening.
However, through it all, I came to understand how the body works and how to work with it. I was amazed at how many ‘miracles’ I was witnessing! I told you in the first paragraph, that I started out thinking very conventionally – I was still treating symptoms. What I have come to understand after almost 30 years of experience is that true optimal health is not about treating or chasing symptoms. True health is about cleansing and nourishing the body is such a way that it just becomes a lifestyle. Just as darkness is the absence of light – I have come to understand that disease is the absence of health.
When your focus is on health, then disease fades off into the background. As you cleanse, alkalize and nourish the body, you can reach a state where disease no longer has anything to feed on. The environment in the body is not a place where it can take hold or thrive. Scientists tell us that the human body was designed to live at least 120 years. However, most people do not make it past their sixties without chronic diseased conditions going on in their bodies. We have just accepted the idea that as we age, we are going to become disabled, lose our eyesight, possibly our hearing and maybe even our mind. This does not have to happen!
We can choose to take a different path. Every day our body is replacing the old cells with new ones. If we decide that the new cells are going to be stronger, healthier and better than the ones which are dying off, we can do that. We just have to be willing to make the life-changes necessary for this to happen. Whether that involves cleaning up our diet, drinking more water, exercising every day, learning how to eliminate and/or handle stress better – these are all choices we have the ability to make every single day.
There is no reason to beat ourselves up or to become discouraged! Whatever conscious choices we make which lead us to a healthier lifestyle will definitely have a positive impact on our life. Decide where you want to start! Is it incorporating better nutritional choices? Adding herbs to our daily routine to help restore homeostasis (balance) in the body? Or, is it learning what medicinal properties we can bring into our life to help reduce some of the synthetic or pharmaceutical drugs we might be using now?
Wherever you choose to start, I hope your journey will be as amazing and rewarding as mine has been!