Taking care of your heart is one of the key factors in living a long life. There are numerous ways that you can make sure your heart is in good shape. You can make sure that you eat right and exercise.
You can keep the stress in your life to a minimum and avoid habits that can cause damage to your heart. But taking care of your heart also involves using natural means that can help your heart now and in the future as well.
Some of the best natural means to help your heart is by using herbal products. You can find these in supplements or in food as well as in various other forms. You need to know the basics of herbals that can help you as well as how they can help your heart.
What are Herbals?
Herbals, which are also often called botanicals, come from plants – and the purpose of them is to treat the human body. There are several parts of the plant that can be used for medicinal purposes, depending on which type of plant it is.
With some plants, the bark is used. In others, the leaves and flowers of the plant are used. Many herbal remedies use the berries or seeds of the plant to naturally treat illnesses and even injuries.
Roots have also been used and in some instances, several parts of the plant are used at once. Using herbals has become more widely accepted over the years because of all of the studies that have shown the benefits these natural treatments offer.
They’re especially helpful in treating certain illnesses that would normally require the use of an antibiotic – because antibiotics used too frequently can negatively impact the immune system.
Herbals have the ability to help fight off many common illnesses, such as a cold. They can help keep diseases at bay that can be harmful to the body’s organs. They’re not just for preventative use, either.
These plants can be used to treat illnesses a person may already have such as ear infections or a host of other maladies. They can be used internally or externally such as to clear up skin rashes.
If you’d like to start using more natural methods of treating health issues, herbals are a great way to go. For those who aren’t familiar with knowing which herbals to use, there’s plenty of information available that can help to guide you.
Herbals that are sold have the ingredients listed on the label, but if you want to know more about the herbals that you’d like to take, you can check the labels here http://www.dsld.nlm.nih.gov/dsld/ for more information.
Using herbals is a long standing practice dating back to ancient societies that offers more than the benefit of natural healing methods. For example, if your body has trouble absorbing the benefits from certain vitamins, taking herbals can help with that.
Why Use Herbals Specifically for Heart Health
Long before there were any other means to take care of the heart, herbals were used and in ancient times, there wasn’t nearly the prevalence of heart related diseases that are now commonly found.
When you use herbals, you not only use a gentler means of taking care of your heart, but you can help maintain the health that your heart currently has right now. And if you’re already experiencing some problems, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late for you to use herbals.
In fact, choosing herbals over or along with prescription drugs (with your doctor’s approval, of course) can often give your heart far more benefits as well as benefiting other areas of your body.
When you select an herbal to use for your heart health, you’ll want to use one that offers you the maximum body benefit but that’s tailored to any heart issues you might have. For example, some herbals help with the heart’s circulation.
If that’s something you struggle with, you’d want to choose that one. But if you know that you also have issues with plaque, then you’d want to use the herbal that was also known to fight plaque buildup.
That way you get more benefits. Using herbals is a way of protecting your heart’s future health, easing symptoms, and treating current issues. Herbals are one of the most effective means of helping the heart function well.
The reason for this is because there’s a big variety of herbals to choose from that can boost the heart’s ability to function the way that it’s supposed to. But unlike traditional medicine, which treats, but doesn’t usually cut back on the deterioration of the heart, herbals can do this.
Plus, herbals have a nutritional element that prescription medicines used to prevent or to treat heart health don’t have. Your heart must have certain nutrients and minerals in order to function properly.
What some treatment methods do is they rob the body of those nutrients and minerals, which further damages the heart. When taken regularly, herbals can help keep the blood flowing properly, cut back on strain to your heart, alleviate painful and worrisome symptoms and restore a heart healthy balance.
You may be someone who’s well versed in how great herbals are to use, but you may not be sure just how they can help your heart function better. You may not be aware of which ones are best.
It’s always wisest to know how to use herbals before you just blindly buy them. You want to make sure that you’re taking the right ones for you, and that they won’t interfere with any medications your doctor has you on.
How to Use Them
Most natural herbals that are used today are in pill form. This is because they’re convenient, relatively inexpensive and easy to take this way. They can be found at the grocery store, some retail stores and online.
Plus, they can keep for years when you get them in pill form. Not everyone likes to take the pill form. Herbals can also be found in certain teas. You can use the tea form of the herbal to get the daily benefit that you need from them.
And most forms of herbals can treat other things, so you would look for this double duty herbal if that’s what you needed. For example, if you’re someone who’s experiencing some long term skin problems such as eczema, you can take herbals that offer heart benefits in gels that also specifically treat any conditions of the skin.
You can also use herbals to treat skin conditions that are temporary but can boost heart health. There are some herbals that can be absorbed through the skin in liquid form and these can be used in the bath or inhaled as vapors using steam.
You can also find herbals that can be used in the foods that you eat. Since some herbals can have a strong or bitter taste, this will help mask that. There are so many different things that herbals can treat, but if you want to treat your heart health with herbals, it’s best to know exactly which herbals you need. You can find several of them that treat different aspects of heart health.
Which Herbals to Take
One of the biggest issues that people have to deal with when it comes to the heart is blood pressure. Unfortunately, many of today’s prescribed medicines aren’t keeping blood pressure levels within a heart healthy range.
Too many people are walking around on doses of medication that’s making them miserable and not even helping. Instead, these medicines are often causing silent problems.
Many prescribed blood pressure medications are diuretic and these can not only cause dehydration, but they can also cause the body to lose both potassium and magnesium. This is bad news for your heart because your heart has to have both in the right levels.
It can be a catch-22 situation. You need something to keep your heart healthy, not something that will hurt your body. Some conditions with the heart can cause uncomfortable symptoms.
One of these conditions is tachycardia. This makes the heart beat faster than it should and can cause you to feel light headed and out of breath. Untreated, it makes the heart work a lot harder than it should because it’s beating at a faster rate and when your heart beats faster for long periods of time, it puts strain on the heart.
To treat a tachycardia, you would want to take the herbal motherswort. Having high blood pressure is very damaging to the heart and can lead to heart attacks. When the blood pressure is brought within normal range, this takes the pressure off the heart and it doesn’t have to work so hard do to its job.
It’s always best (with doctor’s approval) to use natural means that don’t give you those terrible side effects that can cause problems for your other organs. Some of the herbals that can lower the blood pressure naturally are rosemary, thyme, oregano and hibiscus.
Another thing that you have to watch out for when it comes to heart health is cholesterol. When your cholesterol levels are too high, this increases your risk of heart disease and heart attacks.
To get your cholesterol numbers down, you’ll want to use herbals like garlic, basil, and aronia berries, which are also known as chokeberries, because these help fight cancer. Sage is also helpful to use to lower the bad cholesterol.
If you’re someone who has been told that your circulation isn’t good, this can have a negative impact on the health of your heart. This is because your heart is having to double time its workload to pump the needed blood throughout your body.
When you have this kind of pressure on your heart and this kind of workload, it can cause high blood pressure to develop. It can also cause heart disease and lead to heart failure.
Using herbals can restore the circulation to your body and help your heart not have to work so hard. To help improve the heart’s circulation, you can take alfalfa or fenugreek. You can also take cinnamon.
Cinnamon fights heart disease, too, so you get a double benefit with this one. It’s safe to take 2 grams of cinnamon a day, which is a half of a teaspoon. Struggling with heart failure can cause extreme stress.
Heart failure is what happens when the heart just cannot effectively pump blood any more. One of the leading causes of heart failure is a build up of plaque in the arteries.
Because the plaque lines these arteries and narrows the opening through which the blood must travel, the heart has to work a lot harder to try and force the blood to get through.
It keeps on working as hard as it can even while the arteries continue to grow smaller. To relieve the symptoms of heart failure and make it easier for your heart to pump blood, you want to use herbals that can thin the blood.
These help the blood flow through the arteries easier and takes the strain off your heart. Some of the herbals that you want to use for this are cayenne pepper, ginger, ginseng and ginkgo biloba.
If your heart failure is in the earlier stages, herbals are most effective. You’ll also want to look at using hawthorn, because this herbal causes the blood vessels to widen. It’s also known to bring down the blood pressure, so it serves a dual purpose.
Unlike traditional medicines, this herbal won’t contribute to any arrhythmia that are a result of heart failure. Astragalus is also a great herbal for heart health. It helps the heart beat more effectively.
One heart related issue that a lot of people experience is angina. Angina is chest pain that’s caused by the heart not getting enough oxygen. This is usually because there’s the presence of coronary artery disease.
When you experience angina, it can feel like you’re having a heart attack. You might feel pain in the center of the chest, across your shoulders and down your arms. This is your heart letting you know that it needs help.
An angina attack can also feel like you’re experiencing a bout of indigestion. Though there are a variety of coronary artery diseases, herbals can still help. Hawthorn berry is one. Peppermint is another.
Motherwort can also be taken but since this one is very bitter, some people mix it with a little peppermint in a tea to help it go down easier. Parsley, that little green leafy herb that you’ll see as garnishment in food dishes, is also great for helping treat angina.
If you wanted to pick an herbal just to help with overall heart function and you weren’t experiencing any heart related problems, you would want to choose hawthorn. This is an herbal that has a lot of helpful properties for the heart.
It works to keep heart issues at baby and is great for helping to improve the function of the heart. This herbal is known to help prevent the loss of oxygen to the heart and it eases the strain on the heart while circulating the blood through the body.
Of the many great herbals to choose from, hawthorn can help deal with a lot of heart problems. Not only can it help prevent heart attacks and high blood pressure, but it can also help treat certain congenital heart conditions. This herbal is also known to help treat arrhythmia.
It’s always best to talk to your doctor if you’re currently taking any heart medications because although hawthorn doesn’t interfere with prescription heart medicines, some herbals can.
