Herbal Extracts

Herbs are plant food substances. This is not a scientific definition it is a practitioners definition. It is used by the people who make recommendations about how to build better health naturally. If a person uses herbs they are an herbal practitioner. Herbs have been used since people began eating. They are not new and they were used long before there were people who called themselves doctors or scientists and they worked and they still do. A large amount of information concerning what herbs to use for what was intuitive and some trial and error as people sought out what helped them but what we now have is an impressive list of plants that build better health. There is a solution to every physical problem. It was meant to be that way. It is not experimental. The great religions of the world say much and give much information about the use of herbs. It has been said each person has an herb. Since there are so many physical differences between us, it stands to reason one herb may do more for a certain person than another but do not despair. There is an herb for you too. Often there are many herbs that are especially helpful for you, just waiting, to be discovered. Luckily when eating an herb if the wrong one is taken, nothing much happens and if you do eat too much of it, body mechanisms usually reject it and you leave it alone. Interestingly enough, an herb which tastes awful to a person may indeed taste very agreeable to the same person when it is needed. Part of the fun is discovering your herb or herbs and in the process an acquaintance with herbs that help other people is gained. One of the ways to tell what an herb will do is to taste a little of it. This is much easier to do with a liquid herb than a tablet or a capsule but in any case it should be done before you ask anyone else to try an herb so it will at least be known if what the label says is in the bottle, is in the bottle. Practice has shown that even when two people have the same physical problem one may be helped more than another. This is because people are different and some folks are less ready to get well than others. Even when you know exactly what they need, they still find some way to keep it from working or a reason for not taking it. Never despair, that the herbs don't work. This is a cooperative team effort. The team is made up of the herb or herbs and they know what to do, the Creator who gave them to us and we would expect the Creator to be willing for anything good, the one who gave the advice, and the person using the advice. Each member of the team must do their part.

Then it works like the books says it does and that is what we can expect most of the time. Help those who are good team players.

It is widely accepted that foods do alter the structure and function of the human body. Herbs are natural food medicines in that respect. In this sense, the offerings in this book are intended as an addition to the diet for that purpose. They can and do alter the structure and function of the body favorably and if a dis-ease goes away then a person has been benefited by a change of diet. The concept of letting the foods we eat be our true medicines has been around for a long time, and proclaimed by many prominent practitioners, and what better way to do it. Regular drug medicines are concentrates, fractionates and synthetics. Many times they are made from plants to begin with but they are altered and the so called active principle is isolated and removed and concentrated. This creates an unnatural condition where man has tried to improve on nature by forcing the body to do something or numbing it. This is not the way to build health naturally. When you remove a substance from a plant in that manner you no longer have the other parts of the plant that act as controls to see to it that harmful side effects don't take place and that the natural medicine is absorbed at just the right rate. To make matters even worse, sometimes in the manufacture of drugs, portions of what have been removed from the plant have been altered in strange ways. Now we really get into harmful side effects. But the worst insult to building better health naturally is when a synthetic drug is made, usually from coal tar or petroleum, which may mimic nature or, which the body has never seen before and runs uncontrolled in the body, then it is anybody's guess what will happen. Then take the case of a person taking more than one drug at a time and these drugs interacting. A person literally becomes a walking experiment. This would be harmful to a well person, but think what it could do to a sick person.

An example of this would be where a person has headaches all the time because there is gas in the large intestine all the time. Powerful drugs are taken to relieve the pain and an ulcer of the stomach is created. Now the person still gets headaches and has the torture of an ulcer as well. The body was forced to stop feeling a headache at times despite the gas and a side effect occurred. Now an ulcer drug must be taken and the ulcer is not cured but the body does not feel the ulcer and all of a sudden there is a problem where the man can no longer perform as a man. Now we need a tranquilizer and it is taken. The tranquilizer keeps the nerves from being as upset but causes nightmares and the original headache is such a problem it is decided to cut the nerve in the brain which senses pain. Now the brain can not monitor and control the body as well, and all manner of drugs are needed to force the body to work. Each of these drugs can have its own side effects and interact with the others to cause more side effects. You can imagine the rest of the story. Wouldn't it have been easier to address the original problem and put some Ginger in the diet to aid the digestion and rapidly blow the gas out of the body through the nearest most appropriate exit? Then the headache would have gone away. We could have repeated adding ginger to the diet, until the digestive problem was finally resolved and the headache no longer occurred.

Please accept this offer to build better health naturally. The information in this Book was written because you are respected and appreciated, and loved. Someone does care about you and would like to see you well. Herbs are your birthright. Discover yours.

(Excerpted from the copyrighted work HERBAL EXTRACTS, BUILD BETTER HEALTH WITH LIQUID HERBS book). Dr. A.B. Howard

Herbal Extracts

Herbal Extracts are an herbal food or combination of foods, diluted in liquids such as distilled water and grain neutral spirits, that may be used as a "natural medicine." Grain neutral spirits are an alcohol distilled from grain and are also known as a neutral alcohol. Some people choose to make their herbal extracts with a cheap synthetic spirit made from things such as explosive ethylene gas. Unless you ask, you might not know from reading their labels. Because we care about you and your health we use a neutral spirit made from food.

A frequently asked question is what herbal extracts are and why do they contain a natural or neutral alcohol. Herbal extracts are herbal plant foods that have been diluted in a liquid that dissolves and or suspends them. They are "natural medicines."

An herbal extract can be made with something which allows an herb to dissolve in it. This can include most common liquids, such as distilled water, vinegar, wine, glycerin (sugar and fat compound most commonly derived from animal tissue) or a neutral alcohol. When you put an herbal tea bag into a cup of hot water, the color, taste, and aroma which dissolve into the water make an herbal extract (or water extract). However, some parts of the herb in the tea bag do not dissolve in water. Water will not dissolve the oily, waxy, detergent, enzymatic or hormonal content of the herb. Vinegar, wine and glycerin will dissolve a small amount of this.

The fact is, a combination of distilled water and a neutral alcohol is the best fluid known for dissolving all parts of an herb. A water and neutral alcohol extract provide an herbal food in a "predigested" form. It should be noted that when you get the full strength of an herbal food, a little goes a long way. So don’t overeat. This is a "natural medicine" made from an herbal food. The concept of moderation is the key. Extracts are intended to be used to supplement the diet with herbal foods in an easily absorbable form. Most people are not even aware that they may be carrying around as much as ten pounds of rather disgusting debris coating the surfaces of their digestive canal: stomach, small and large intestines. This debris forms a barrier between the food which is eaten and the absorption of the needed nutrition. This means the digestive system needs some help. When you take a look at the digestive canal of the adult, you see a tube or pipe about 26 feet long which is often clogged or very slow to empty due to debris or worse yet, if not eliminated, this putrid barrier film can itself be constantly reabsorbed back into the body. Not only is this barrier of debris bad for absorption of commonly eaten foods, but also herbal powders, herbal powders in capsules, herbal pills, and vitamin tablets. An efficient method is needed to get herbal foods absorbed through this barrier film and dissolve the barrier itself. Otherwise, herbs will not nourish and act like the health food books say they should. Herbal extracts solve this puzzle. Not only can they cross the debris barrier, they do so rapidly and help to dissolve the barrier in the process. This eliminates the problem of having to take "114 tablets and capsules per day to finally get something through the debris barrier and dissolve it". As a matter of fact, an herbal extract can be applied externally right over the area where required. This, of course, would be difficult to do with a capsule of powdered herbs or a tablet.

Depending on the quantity, a neutral alcohol performs different functions when introduced into or put on the body. In minute quantities (drops), it acts as a carrier for whatever is dissolved in it. This goes so far as the alcohol content actually showing up as reduced, when a complex is formed from the distilled water, herbs and alcohol. These dissolved herbal food substances are very easily absorbed by the body. In larger quantities, alcohol acts as a stimulant. By the glassful, alcohol acts as a depressant to body functions and an intoxicant. This constitutes abuse rather than use. A person can tell the difference.

Dr. William Donald Kelly, author of many books on natural ways to become more healthy, tells us that the human pancreas (principal digestive organ of the body) actually produces a small amount of a natural, neutral alcohol on a constant basis so that we will not freeze. As a further observation, most mouthwashes and deodorants utilize a fairly high percentage of alcohol which acts as a carrier for mouth and breath cleansing substances or deodorant. In many cases, these are extracts of cleansing and aromatic substances. The alcohol acts as a carrier. If a person can use a mouthwash or underarm deodorant, they can probably use an herbal extract without a problem. If they cannot use them without a problem, then they should probably use capsules, tablets or teas.

A fair question might be how much neutral alcohol should an extract contain? Roughly, a mixture of one-third neutral alcohol and two-thirds distilled water will dissolve enough of the herb so that a person gets the proper nourishment in a few drops of the extract. When you add more distilled water, then you need more extract to do the same thing. An extract could be made with so much distilled water that you would have to consume bottles of the extract to achieve the same nutritional value you could get in a few drops of a one-third neutral alcohol extract.

With kindest regards,

Dr. Eugene C. Watkins B.S.ed., M.S., N.D.

The Center for Building Better Health Naturally, Inc.

This paragraph contains a brief description of the reasons for alcohol...

Key Benefits For Using Alcohol

Natural Grain Neutral Spirits are an alcohol commonly distilled from grain and is also known as neutral alcohol.
Herbal extracts are herbal plant foods that have been diluted in a liquid that dissolves and or suspends them.
Water will not dissolve the oily, waxy, detergent, enzymatic or hormonal content of the herb.

CLARITY OF EXTRACTS

Some of our liquid herbal extract products are naturally "cloudy" in appearance due to the character of the herb or herbs dissolved or suspended in them. No matter how long they set, they will never appear completely clear. Note: these dissolved or suspended particles make the product do what it is supposed to. Occasionally, there will be some settlement of the herb or herbs dissolved or suspended in the liquid around the sides of the bottle or on the pipette (eyedropper). The explanation for this is that, with some herbs or combination of herbs, their particles float in the extract liquid during the filtering process and later settle some. Temperature and pressure changes can and do influence this occurrence during and after making an extract. Also, it should be noted that herbs and good herbal extracts contain some natural oils, and some of these oil droplets may appear on the surface of the herbal extract. Both the particles and natural oil droplets could be removed, but then the extract would not be as strong. This is part of your guarantee that we put as much herb or herbs as possible into your extracts. This same occurrence can also be observed in natural juices where some settlement occurs. Shaking the juice or herbal extract prepares it for use with its full taste and effect.

COLOR AND TASTE OF HERBAL EXTRACTS

Herbs come from nature, and just as no two apple crops from one year to the next, or even any two apples from the same tree taste exactly the same, so it is with crops of herbs. This is part of the endless and wonderful variety which nature provides for you. You may, therefore, notice slight differences in color or taste from one year to the next. It’s something like your mother’s potato soup. She can use her recipe and the same ingredients two days in a row and the soup is always different, but always good. Rest assured, all of our herbal products do measure up to our known and established standards of quality and excellence before they are approved for use. This is so you can rely on them and have what you expect from them when you use them.