The Health Benefits of Herbs - Lemon Balm Lemon balm ( Melissa officinalis ), is a member of the mint family. It's other names include Balm mint, Bee balm, Blue balm, Garden balm, Honey plant and Sweet balm and has for centuries been considered a "calming" herb.
Lemon balm was used in the Middle Ages to reduce stress and anxiety, promote sleep, improve appetite, and ease pain and discomfort associated with digestion (including flatulence and bloating as well as colic).
Even earlier than this, lemon balm was steeped in wine to lift the spirits, help heal wounds, and treat venomous insect bites and stings.
Today, lemon balm is often combined with other calming herbs, such as valerian, camomile, and hops, in soothing, relaxing teas to enhance the overall relaxing effect. It has some other medicinal uses too as follows:
Insomnia and anxiety
Studies have found that lemon balm when combined with other calming herbs (such as valerian, hops, chamomile) helps to reduce anxiety and promote sleep.
Very few studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of lemon balm on its own, except for topical use.
In one recent study of people with minor sleep disorders, those who took an herbal combination of valerian and lemon balm reported sleeping much better than those who took a placebo. It is not clear from these studies, however, whether lemon balm itself (or the combined action of lemon balm and valerian) is responsible for these sleep-inducing effects.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 18 healthy volunteers received two separate single doses of a standardized lemon balm extract (300 mg and 600 mg) or placebo for 7 days. The 600 mg dose of lemon balm increased mood and significantly increased calmness and alertness.
Herpes
Some studies have suggested that topical ointments containing lemon balm may assist in healing lip sores associated with the herpes simplex virus (HSV).
A study was carried out with 116 people with HSV and those who applied lemon balm cream to their lip sores experienced significant improvement in redness and swelling after only 2 days. However, other symptoms such as pain and scabbing did not improve. Both the patients and their doctors did report that the lemon balm ointment was very effective. Several animal studies also support the value of topical lemon balm for herpes lesions.
Other Uses
There have been few rigorous scientific studies conducted on lemon balm. However, many health care professionals suggest that it is beneficial for a variety of health problems. These include Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), indigestion, gas, insomnia and hyperthyroidism.
Experimental laboratory studies also suggest lemon balm does have antioxidant as well as anti-HIV properties. However further studies are needed to confirm these findings.
The Health Benefits of Herbs Garlic
Garlic is one of those plants that have been used for healing almost as long as man has walked this Earth. It's pungent aroma when used in cooking is unmistakable and the "garlic breath" that goes with eating food prepared with the bulb is the bane of many a train or bus commuter who has not eaten it!
As a healing herb, garlic is really one of the best all-rounders there is in the plant kingdom. It is antiseptic, anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal, meaning that it can be used in one way or another to heal or cure almost any ailment.
How to Use Garlic
If you have one, throw away your garlic press. That may make life easy, but pressing garlic like that destroys some of its health giving properties and the rest are thrown in the bin. Fresh garlic should always be chopped and the whole clove used raw.
Cooking or frying also destroys most of the health giving benefits of garlic, although if you like to use it that way, bu all means fry some, but retain the bulk of the chopped garlic to sprinkle on food raw just before you serve it up.
Or chop it up and sprinkle into salads to give them a healthy taste boost!
The Health Benefits of Garlic
As a blood cleanser, garlic is second to none! It is a powerful tool in the battle against high (bad LDL) cholesterol levels, and mopping up triglycerides as well as helping to remove plaque build up on artery walls. It boosts production of both red and white blood cells too, so is doubly useful for the old sangria!
Plants for Maintaining Your Correct Weight
The subject of weight maintenance is a huge subject all to itself and there are many very good, informative resources online, so to go into details on how and which plants can aid weight loss here would need a lens (or twenty) all of its own!
But I can send you off to a resource that I have a vested interest in, and one that is growing as we speak into an authoritative knowledge base that will be covering alternative weight loss methods as well as main-stream ones.
Where can you find this budding gem of knowledge? There is a highly informative website that provides a lot of useful information for maintaining a healthy weight and fitness level at: Health. It is building right now as a website and blog, so informative content is being continuously added to it, meaning it will never be a finished site, but a fluid font of knowledge that will continue to grow as more and more information is learned about this mammoth subject.
The benefits of plants and fruits for health and beauty | Plants for health benefits | benefits of fruits for beauty | Traditional medicine | herbs | spices | herbs | vitamins source | source of fiber | and mineral supplements.
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