Scott J. Banks

The natural cures approach to healing and wellness relies primarily on nutrition, nutritional supplements, and herbs to give the body what it needs to achieve optimal health and to prevent and fight illness. This cheat sheet brings you up to speed on the fundamentals of natural medicine, recommends which foods to eliminate and add to your diet, and provides protocols you can follow to maintain healthy digestion, prevent or cure leaky gut syndrome, and fight off infection.

Natural medicine is any healing practice that harnesses the power of nature, including the human body’s self‐defense and self‐healing mechanisms, to ­prevent and cure illness. Natural medicine includes the following practices: Aromatherapy: Essential oils extracted from plants are used in numerous preparations, including massage oils and bath salts, to enhance physical and psychological well-being.

Natural cures can help with lots of different ailments. Leaky gut syndrome is a condition in which the small intestine becomes more porous and permeable than normal, allowing irritants, such as toxins, undigested food particles, waste products, and microbes, to leak into surrounding areas where these substances shouldn’t be.

A natural cures approach to health and healing offers numerous benefits. Before investing time, effort, and money in any endeavor, it’s a good idea to weigh the pros and cons so that you can make a well‐informed decision regarding the type of healthcare you want. Provides a user‐friendly alternative to the typical doctor‐patient interaction.

Homeopathy is based on the law of familiars or treating like with like — using a substance that causes certain symptoms in a healthy person to alleviate those same symptoms in someone who’s ill. For example, coffee keeps most people awake, but for some people who have trouble sleeping, a homeopathic preparation of coffee helps them sleep.

People generally don’t want to think about the critters living inside of them, feasting on their food and leaving toxic waste behind. The good news is that some of these microorganisms live symbiotically with your body, performing essential biological processes that keep you healthy. The bad news is that some of these microorganisms are parasites — living in you at the expense of your health.

When you have bronchitis, the lining of your bronchial tubes are inflamed, and you cough up thick, possibly discolored mucus. To relieve symptoms and speed healing, drink 8 ounces of water with fresh lemon every two hours, eat grandma’s penicillin (chicken soup), drink peppermint and/or ginger tea, and take as many of the following as possible to boost lung function and immunity: Natural Cure Dosage N‐acetyl cysteine 600 mg twice daily taken on an empty stomach Tylophora asthmatica extract (root) 15 mg two to three times daily Boswellia serrata 150 mg two to three times daily Picrorhiza extract (root) 75 mg two to three times daily Quercetin 500 mg two to three times daily Lobelia herb and seed 1,000 mg one to two times daily Echinacea root 250 mg twice daily Ginger 250 mg three to four times daily Andrographis leaf extract 200 to 400 mg daily Follow this regimen for a week, and your bronchitis should improve, but your cough may linger for about a month, which is natural.

Eating junk foods isn’t simply a matter of “garbage in, garbage out.” The natural cures approach encourages you to think about the effect this food has on your body. Junk food is bad for your body and your health because of the long-term and possibly irreversible damage it can do to your body as it passes through your system.

Natural cures can help fight infections. Conventional treatments for the common cold and other infections target symptoms and tend to impair the body’s own defense mechanisms. These mechanisms are designed to purge the viruses or bacteria from the body. Although you may need to alleviate symptoms to make it through the day at work or school, you can speed your recovery by giving your immune system a boost.