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Echinacea is a well-known herbal supplement, which is thought to have a number of health benefits. Here’s a brief overview of using this particular remedy.

Echinacea is probably best known for its ability to boost the body’s immune system. Several studies have claimed that echinacea helps to stimulate the production of essential T-cells, as well as helping white cells to fight off bacteria and viruses. For this reason, many people have found that taking echinacea when they start to feel under the weather can help prevent symptoms developing.

Additionally, many users find it beneficial to take echinacea if they have already become unwell. Common illnesses, such as hay fever, sinusitis or urinary tract infection are thought to be particularly receptive to the effects of echinacea in promoting a faster recovery. Echinacea can be taken in a number of forms, most of which are oral. This means that even when an individual might feel too ill to do much apart from sleep, watch television or play online Foxy Bingo, echinacea can be a convenient remedy to take. By boosting the strength of the immune system, it is thought that the body is able to naturally heal and recover in a much shorter space of time.

In the same way, echinacea has also been used as an effective topical treatment for a number of other conditions. A variety of skin conditions, from eczema to sunburn, may heal more quickly when using echinacea on the skin itself. This can also be helpful in ensuring that the skin does not become infected during the healing process. Some sources claim that echinacea is able to act as a natural disinfectant, as well as having useful analgesic properties. Rather than taking painkillers and chemical treatments, many people would rather opt to use echinacea as a good natural alternative.

Hypopigmentation scarring is characterised by flat pigmentless areas of the skin. Normally with inflammation, and minor skin damage melanocytes within the skin are triggered to produce pigment. This leaves dark ‘hyper’pigmented scars, as you would normally see with acne, or minorly inflamed insect bites. The brownish scars will fade, and can be lessened with essential oils treatments and various enzymes to speed up the process of healing, and the rate of exfoliation of the pigment rich layers.

Occasionally, as with lesions on the skin, the dry damaged skin containing melanin rich light blocking agents lifts or peels away, to reveal pigmentless new skin. This does not necessarily mean you are suffering with hypopigmentation. Usually the newly recovered skin will take some exposure to sunlight before the melanocytes under the skin start to blend it’s appearance with the surrounding skin.

Unfortunately, for those inflamed marks in the skin which have sustained deeper vascular damage, the melanocytes loose their ability to match the surrounding skin pigment altogether. Where the skin might heal without the fibrous scar tissue, it will just remain white and uncoloured after the dry skin or scab has peeled away. Deep and severe acne can cause hypopigmentation scars. The characteristic spattering of small white colourless marks in the skin are caused by areas of the skin which have suffered rashes, bites, and inflamation due to many common problems. One of the main causes of hypopigmentation scarring is dry skin leaving scars on the legs and arms.

There are many causes of dry skin, and to prevent hypopigmentation scarring those issues should be addressed first. Even while the skin is new and healing it will often remain dry and irritable, exacerbating the susceptability to inflammation. Various forms of dermatitis, including eczema, fungal conditions, contact allergy including bites, and hives, are the main contributors to hypopigmented scars on the legs and arms. However, all is not lost, there is something you can do about these strange little white discs on the skin. In most cases, rubbing a little olive oil into dry skin on the legs and arms to aid it’s return to a natural resiliance is a safe and well known method.

What is little known though, is an old traditional chinese herbal medicine, ginger. Yes, that common old ginger root you see in the supermarkets. Just cut a fresh slice of ginger root and rub it’s moist juice over the skin two or three times a day. Cut a fresh slice each time you do it, and don’t rub the skin too hard, you don’t want to irritate it again. The philosophy behind using the ginger root, is that it’s essential ingredient triggers the melanocytes that are not working under the skin, to react and mimic their neighbouring cells. It’s a slow process and may takes 6 weeks for blending to start visibly occuring. Hypogimented discs will appear to shrink and then blend between 4 to 12 weeks use.

In early times the effects of plants’ essential oils were known, but not well understood. Early civilizations discovered the benefits of these herbs, and they imbued them with spiritual significance.

The Egyptians are known to have burned essential woods, herbs and spices. They believed that the smoke went up to the gods in heaven, carrying their prayers with it. Ancient stone tablets up to 6000 years old show how the Egyptians used oils for cosmetic and medicinal purposes. They distilled the oils from plants in similar ways as modern aromatherapy does today.

Parallel to the Egyptians the Ancient Chinese were also used herbal oil remedies. Texts dating from 3000 BC show catalogs of hundreds of plants and their uses. They used these essential oils in a similar way imbued with spirituality by burning them in incense and using them for massage. The Chinese and Egyptian aromatherapy practices are believed to be the oldest in the world, predating the other ancient civilizations, although there are others who have known specific prophylactic properties of aromatic plants.

The Greeks inherited Egyptian aromatherapy practices and combined them with their own. Ancient thinker and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides wrote a book about healing with herbs “De Materia Medica”. This book had been very popular in Europe for 12 centuries. Hypocrites is the father of modern medical science, and he was known to use herbal aromas for medical purposes. This knowledge of plant lore was consolidated and transported by the Romans, and was passed down through the ages in Europe.

During the middle ages, treatments for various illnesses were given by “apothecaries.” These were men who had studied all sorts of shamanism, herbal lore, primitive medicine and ancient knowledge. There are texts surviving from this time, such as “The Leech Book Of Bald,” written around 900 AD, that teach these practices.

Arabic perfumers improved aromatherapy science. They were the first to apply steam distillation to extract essential oil from rose petals. This invention is believed to belong to Avicenna, philosopher and a physician of Middle East who described more than 800 botanical medicines. In his book “The Canon of Medicine” he described coiled pipes and other devices from Persia and the Middle East to extract herbal oils. These were brought back into Europe, along with many Arabic perfumes with soldiers returning from the crusades

The Catholic Church gained total control over Europe from around 1300AD. They believed that illness was the punishment of God. On came the dark ages for medicine. Most medicine was treated by bleeding and prayer. Herbal treatments, as well as other natural treatments, were thought of as heathen, driven underground, and a knowledge of divine power only to be retained by the church.

The science of aromatherapy would have to wait many centuries to be fully explored. In the 17th and 18th centuries, various herbs were used for wigs and other cosmetic purposes. In the 19th century, there was some limited scientific research on certain herbs’ ability to treat illnesses. But, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that aromatherapy was born.

One of the most difficult things to get through to people who have some understanding that water is important, and yet understand they probably don’t drink enough of it, is REALLY how important that is.

“Oh yes, but I drink coffee, and tea, and hot chocolate and enough other soft drinks to make up my eight glasses a day…”

Most of the body’s water is found within and surrounding the the cells. If the surrounding fluid bathes the cells contantly in waste material the individual cell membranes will not work efficiently and this will lead to cellular damage or cell death. At the very foundation level, the source of many diseases, including premature ageing.

Long term dehydration can lead to several effects:

Reduction in lymph circulation (swollen joints, lower legs)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrom: Your muscles begin to get tired, you may have leg cramps or feel faint.

Localised Pain including Low back pain, Migraine headache, Joint pain, and Angina [chest pain]: A complication of dehydration is joint pain. The cartilage in your body, including your joints, is composed mainly of water. As cartilage surfaces glide over one another, exposed cells begin  to wear and require replacement. New cartilage is has to be produced  to replace the damaged cells. Due to the lack of blood vessels in cartilage, water is the requirement to diffuse the nutrients for required for maintenance and repair. Dehydration not only increases abrasive damage, but delays its repair, resulting in joint pain.

Years of chronic dehydration cannot be simply reversed overnight by drinking a few more glasses of water. Your urine should be clear or lightly coloured, if it’s darker than that it’s an indication your kidneys are working too hard to concentrate the urine. Many people are chronically dehydrated and never notice until a condition alerts them, such as chronic back pain and sciatica resulting from dehydrated discs.

An injured disc,compressed in the spine from 75% of your weight might actually lose more fluid than it can absorb overnight. This leads to disc dehydration. A dehydrated disc can herniate, bulge, and even become diseased, if it is not able to receive all the nutrients it needs to maintain a thick and healthy membrane.

The problem with trying to rehydrate is that the body being so accustomed to a lack of water diverts sudden water intake and holds it in fluid retention in the fatty tissues. The body has a means of protecting important circulatory systems first by allowing fluid to those parts of the body in certain priority. It can take a two weeks  for the body to fully hydrate, to a level where nutrients can return to the starved parts of the body before even repair can take place.

Certain drinks and foods act as a diuretic also, which stimulate the urge to urinate. Alcohol, coca cola, caffiene, some fruit juices, all have a dehydrating effect on the body. That is, they stimulate the body to remove fluids faster than they are replenished by actually replacing your eight glasses a day with fluids other than pure water.

The long term affect of intaking diuretic fluids is nerve damage to the badder lining, stimulating the need for relief when it is often not the case. Unfortunately this is the scenario that many people use to interpret their requirement for drinking pure water is less than the recommended 8 glasses a day, as they have decided it only makes them want to pee more.

If you want to shock yourself, visit this site with full medical citations on the effects of  Dehydration.

Aromatherapy works by influencing  a woman’s  endocrine system through stimulating the activity of specific brain cells. Plant oils are aromatic because the molecules are tiny, so small they favour vapourising (why we smell them) but, at the same time are able to penetrate with efficiacity every cell in the body.

There are many such natural treatments available, such as diet changes, which will require a strict regime to see the effects, and possibly even diagnose a cause of imbalance in the endocrine system that controls what hormones we produce. Aromatherapy will have immediate effects, and you will know if it is for you. Typically the aromatherapist will design a topical or inhaled aromatherapy treatment plan depending on the type of hormonal problems which may include;

* Inhaling essential oils from a handkerchief,  or through steam inhalations, vaporizers, and sprays

* Relaxing or stimulating massage using diluted essential oils where the molecules will be absorbed directly through the skin, as well as through scent.

* Application of essential oils to areas such as the breasts, hips, lowers back and kidney areas. This is based on the fact some plant oils have hormonal properties which will be recognised by the endocrine system of the body based in those areas

Ylang-ylang or lavender has a soothing effect on anxiety.

Zesty essential oils such as grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange, and peppermint and ginger are stimulating and help reduce hot flashes

Ginger peppermint or nutmeg are energizing and work against fatigue

Essential oils that have properties similar to estrogen to achieve hormonal balance including Spanish sage, Clary sage, Sage Geranium and fennel, and can be used in massage. Geranium oil has been used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic medicine to traditionally to balance premenstrual syndrome, constipation, insomnia, restlessness, nervousness, anxiety and worry.

Patchouli or Cardamom oil for grounding or sedative to reduce irritability.

Please note that due to the hormonal effect of some essential oils, some treatment is not advised whilst pregnant.