Is IBS Plaguing You or a Family Member?

Everyone has an upset stomach from time to time.

You probably know the sort of thing I mean – sometimes you've got gas and at other times you feel queasy or nauseous. There may be times when you can't seem to go to the toilet for days, constipated as can be, but there are other days when diarrhea strikes and you can't stop going!

Although we all know that there are some foods or drinks that might prompt our digestive system to react in a certain way – a big meal of very spicy food sends many people scurrying to the bathroom for example – the only really predictable thing about our digestive system is its unpredictability.

However, because for most of us our digestive system acts the way we expect it to most of the time, we don't really give a great deal of thought to what our colon and gastrointestinal system is doing unless it is ‘misbehaving'.

This is not the case for everyone however. A surprisingly high number – some reports suggest that it could be as many as one in five US citizens – suffers from a chronic condition called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and for these people, what their digestive system is doing can often dictate what they do too.

As with the majority of non-life threatening medical conditions, there are essentially two ways that you can deal with IBS.

Option one is to visit your doctor or other medical care professional, get a prescribed pharmaceutical medicine and take it. This option might be an effective way of managing your condition but as with many pharmaceutical situations and the drugs related to them, you have to consider the side effects before deciding whether this approach to IBS is the right one for you or your kids.

The second alternative is to do things the natural way. Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic disorder (a long-term problem that could potentially last for life) that affects your gastrointestinal tract and intestines. Guess what? Women who are moms are twice as likely to suffer from this problem as other people. In the next blog I will discuss what you might be able to do to prevent this disorder from taking over your life. It's not fatal but It can feel like it!

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More Natural Remedies for Cold Sores

Cold sores are so obnoxious I decided to do more research into how to heal them. Furthermore a predisposition to them can be hereditary!
Reishi mushrooms
Reishi mushrooms have a long history of being used to boost the effectiveness of the immune system in traditional medicine throughout many parts of Asia.
In more recent times however, evidence has pointed to the fact that reishi also seems to have the ability to inhibit the spread of the herpes virus, thereby preventing the development of cold sores.
Furthermore, as reishi can be obtained in either powdered or food supplement form, the benefits of including this in your diet are readily available even if the mushrooms themselves are not.
Herbal remedies for cold sores
There are many herbal solutions that you can use to keep the herpes simplex at bay. These include the following:
Echinacea and goldenseal – Both echinacea and goldenseal are plants from which the extract helps to boost the ability of your immune system to fight against viruses like herpes simplex. The extract is available in capsule form over the counter in most health stores or online.
Self-heal – This is a plant that grows in Europe and in Asia (with a more scientific name of ‘Prunella vulgaris') of which the extract has been seen to be effective against the spread of both the herpes simplex 1 and herpes simplex 2 viruses.
There is also some evidence that it works against strains of the virus that have become resistant to drug-based cold sore solutions as well, and again, you should be able to find the extract in your local health food store or it is available for purchase online.
Blackcurrant – Studies in Japan have indicated that eating blackcurrants or including the extract of them as a supplement in your diet may be effective for combating the herpes virus as laboratory tests have indicated the effectiveness of blackcurrants against herpes simplex.
Wakame – Wakame is the Japanese name for a particular type of seaweed which appears to improve the healing time for anyone who is suffering from cold sores, whilst there is also some evidence that it inhibits the reactivation of the virus as well.
Sage and rhubarb cream – In a German study that compared the use of sage and rhubarb cream with the effectiveness of a cream using sage and Acyclovir, it was seen that there was little difference in the ability of the two test substances to help cold sores heal. However, the study concluded that the all natural mixture of sage and rhubarb was more active in fighting against cold sores, hence there is every reason for thinking that the natural option is to be preferred to the one containing chemicals.

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