Why Consider Herbal Cures and Natural Health? Part 1

*Note: Please see this discussion of what is meant by “herbal cure.”

Why use herbal cures and natural health modalities? Because they can provide genuine relief for a good deal of human suffering, and perhaps more importantly, because they work.

It’s no secret that America’s conventional healthcare system is in crisis, and alternatives are desperately needed. Further, given the outright, unapologetic greed evidenced by the health insurance industry,  and apparent price gouging in at least some quarters of the healthcare delivery system  (especially pharmaceuticals)  it’s also time Americans started taking back their power.

Millions of Americans are suffering and some are dying today — this very day! — because they lack healthcare insurance.  This lack of insurance accounts for 45,000 deaths per year, according to a Harvard study.

The same study also found that the uninsured carry a 40 percent greater risk of death than those who have healthcare insurance.  That’s incredibly high.

Many more are suffering — and also may be among those who are risking death  — because they are underinsured and therefore can’t afford appropriate care. They may not be able to afford high deductibles, high co-pays, services not covered by their plan or insurance company, fear of reaching annual or lifetime caps, inability to pay for prescriptions, etc.

But even for those who can afford healthcare there are significant dangers — from conventional healthcare itself.  As one Canadian headline read, “Modern Medicine Can Kill.” Indeed it can, and in quantity.

From a quote on the American Iatrogenic Association website:

“Based on the findings of one major study, medical errors kill some 44,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Another study puts the number much higher, at 98,000. Even using the lower estimate, more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS.”

In fact, iatrogenic (medical error-caused) deaths are the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States, just behind cancer and heart disease.

And could there be any more damning testimony to the potential harm people subject themselves to when they become patients of conventional medicine than the fact that mortality actually declines when doctors go on strike?

A scientific study by Emory University reviewed articles about “five [doctors'] strikes around the world, all between 1976 and 2003. The strikes lasted between nine days and seventeen weeks. All reported that mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. None found that mortality increased during the weeks of the strikes compared to other time periods.”

The study tries to find reasons for the decline in mortality that do not implicate conventional medicine, but even if their speculative causes for the declines are true, they are unlike to account for all the improvements in mortality.

There are alternatives, and it’s time Americans took back their power and availed themselves of all the wonderful, time-honored, all natural, God-given healing available from Nature’s own pharmacopia.

Why Consider Herbal Cures and Natural Health Part 2