"home remedy" news and stories

Many of the plants I read about and see can be used for tea. Some must be dried first, and some can be used dried or fresh. I would like to start with the most common ones first. These plants can be found almost anywhere. I found these three growing in my yard upstate.

While mowing the lawn Sunday, I smelled the familiar spicy-minty smell of ground ivy, also known as gill-over-the-ground, creeping charlie, catsfoot, and several other localized nicknames. Ground ivy is a small ground cover that frequently runs amok at the edges of lawns and around buildings. It has fan-shaped, toothed, opposed leaves, and produces small funnel-shaped blue to violet flowers. It grows with runners, and will appear like many small vines tangled in the other weeds that grow at the edges of landscaped areas.

Crushing and smelling the leaves will confirm that you have ground ivy. It has a distinctively mint-like odor. Tea from ground ivy should be made from dried leaves. I did some research on the uses for ground ivy tea. The medicinal uses are extensive.

It seems like researchers are studying everything these days. I hadn't heard about it until recently, but turmeric may be one of those miracle foods. There have been posts on this site discussing turmeric's benefits regarding cancer prevention and Alzheimer's, to name a couple. Now there is research to indicate that turmeric is good for not only preventing heart failure but also repairing damage that's already happened.

The study has only been performed on mice, but the scientists involved are hoping that it will translate to humans. They think that it has something to do with a compound in turmeric called curcumin that's been used in traditional Asian medicine for centuries. Though nothing if definite, the researchers think curcumin may turn off genes that enlarge the heart and allow scarring.

This is all new to me. I even thought until I read about this that the spice was spelled "tumeric". Apparently, the extract of turmeric was recently a fad in Japan as a beauty and energy supplement for women. I even saw some claims of it's use as a dermatological treatment. One person had a turmeric tea which supposedly is good for skin inflammations (1/2 teaspoon in at least 8 ounces of boiling water). I am in no way advocating any of this, but I think it is all very interesting. Does anyone else have a turmeric home remedy they'd like to share?

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