Healing Plants Essay

Submitted By nickeluhh
Words: 1466
Pages: 6

healing plants In the world we live in, and continually destroy; we harbor plants that can be used for healing. In North America we have One hundred and seventy-five plants that can be used for non-prescription medical uses. (NCCAM) Without these plants people wouldn’t have as many options for their own treatments. Plants can help with things as simple as sunburn, or as bad as cancer. Plants could fix a large array of problems, it can heal many different issues. Plants are used to treat many people currently, but are underappreciated in modern society. If people would realize the power plants hold, they might not have to spend millions to create synthetic drugs. Some of the plants included in this are aloe, chamomile, and cranberries. (Infoplease) Aloe, which is a plant that has large, thick leaves, can be used to treat burns, bites, cuts, and scrapes. Aloe is native to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It can be made into a gel that you rub externally onto burn areas and injuries to help relieve the pain. It can also have the juice taken out of it, and used as a digestive aid to relieve pain internally. Chamomile is a plant commonly used for teas and put in pills and other ways to absorb it either internally or externally. It can be used externally for bug bites, or bug stings. It helps relieve the pain, and the swelling. Chamomile is also used to help relieve skin rashes. Internally however, chamomile has a lot of common uses. Many people have chamomile tea, this is been proven to relieve stress, and help relax people. Cranberries are very common for everyday use. People drink cranberry juice just for flavor. The benefits that these sweet berries give are a cure for urinary tract infections, gum disease, heart disease, and even ulcers. Just these very common plants have many uses and can do great things. These aren’t even plants that are hard to find, the rainforest has been called the ultimate chemical laboratory. The rainforest holds millions of different species, most of them not even tested yet. Seventy percent of the plants that carry anti-cancer characteristics by the US national cancer institute are found only in the tropical rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the drugs used in western medicine are found in the rainforest alone. Despite all the promise that the rainforest holds, less than ten percent of the plants have been examined for their chemical properties. People from rainforests have been more adapted to use the natural plants to the area. The people native to rainforest areas use all the resources they can get, and this includes things for healing. In the Southeast Asian forests the indigenous people use six thousand and five hundred species, the people in the Northwest Amazonian rainforests use one thousand three hundred species for medicinal purposes. The shamans to these indigenous peoples have been testing and experimenting with different combinations of plants for generations. They have found that eighty-six percent of these plants combinations have actually induced biological changes in humans. This shows that natural medicine actually works. Insurance companies even support the use of natural drugs now. They have done studies that show that sixty million people in the United States alone use medicinal herbs. This is important to state, because when it comes to natural medicines, the use is sustainable. If we keep growing and cultivating the plants that heal, then we can continue to use them for generations. We don’t need chemical compounds and thousands of dollars to come up with synthetic pills that emulate the natural occurrences that these plants cause in the body. Hippocrates, who had discovered a way to reduce fevers, and help with headaches by simply using bark and leaves from a willow tree, can show this process. Scientists spent many years of research trying to figure out what exactly made the healing happen, then they made their own synthetic