By Chia Chia Cheng, L.Ac.
Take a look at your medicine cabinet. Chances are you have one or more of the following items in your stash.
- Alieve/ Advil/ Tylenol
- Zyrtec/ Claritin/ Benadryl
- Prilosec/ Nexium/ Omeprazole/ Tums
- Unfinished antibiotics
- Ambien/ Lunesta/ ZzzQuil/ Tylenol PM/ Unisom
Did you know? Pharmaceutical drugs leech vitamins and minerals from your body. This is because your body uses the vitamins and minerals stored in the tissue to process and metabolize pharmaceuticals.
Supplements and herbs made from whole foods and plants are recognized by your body. When you take products made by Standard Process and MediHerb, you are putting high concentrations of food and herbs into your body. This does two things: 1) your body recognizes and responds to the chemicals occurring in nature; 2) you are adding nutrition to your body to aid in healing.
The following products are made by Standard Process (they grow food on a 400 acre organic farm in Wisconsin) and MediHerb (each batch of herbs is tested for active ingredients). These suggestions offer basic support for you and your family. Please note: you may need more than what I have listed here. However, these are great additions to your natural medicine cabinet.
Stress Reduction
- Kava Forte $62
- Min Chex $27.50
- Cataplex G $44.50
You likely have felt an increase of stress around the holiday season. Maybe even an increase in your physical and emotional discomfort. By now you know how you experience stress in your body.
Stress can make your experience of pain worse. Stress hormones increase the sensitivity of your pain receptors, making your nerves more inflamed and reactive. Stress disrupts sleep cycles causing you to have fewer hours of REM sleep, the restorative cycle of sleep for healing and rebuilding. Using these formulas will help you increase the quality of sleep, as well as reduce how you experience insomnia.
Kava Forte provides relaxation to your nervous system without creating drowsiness or mental fog. Each tablet contains 50 kava lactones, the active ingredient in Kava. Kava reduces your feeling of anxiety and irritability by reducing the vibration of your sympathetic nervous system, aka fight, freeze or flight. If you are taking any medication for depression or anxiety, the addition of Kava is contraindicated.
Min Chex is a nutritional formula to support mood stability and regulation. This formula is mineral based. Min Chex is effective to help you reduce your experience of feeling down and unmotivated, ruminating on thoughts, and feeling depressed.
Cataplex G is a second the nutritional support for natural stress reduction. It is the nurturing and grounding aspect of the B vitamin complex. Cataplex G can help you feel relaxed and grounded during the chaos of the holiday season.
The use of these formulas can be helpful to reduce your stress, increase your enjoyment of life, and reduce your pain.
The holiday season is often a time of over eating and extra drinking as part of the festivities. Sugar and wheat are the two main inflammatory foods that are consumed during the holidays. This includes your favorite wines and cocktails. You can either reduce or cease imbibing and eating those pies and cookies. Or you can add this pain and inflammation trio to your daily routine to help your body’s response to foods that cause inflammation.
Pain/Inflammation
- Turmeric Forte $35.50
- Boswellia Complex $26/$73
- Tuna Omega 3 $25 Cod Liver Oil, $44.50 Calamari Oil, $49.50 Olprima, $40 Chlorophyl Complex $25.50/$86.50 or Hemp Oil
Boswellia Complex is a great formula for pain, especially chronic pain of the joints. It does include 70 mg of Turmeric.
Turmeric Forte is formulated to pass through the digestive system without being broken down. The turmeric is coated with fenugreek seed. As Turmeric Forte passes through the stomach the digestive acids and enzymes digest the outer fenugreek coating. The active ingredient, curcuminoid, makes its way into your blood stream. Your circulatory system then delivers it to target tissue.
The addition of oil into your diet is important to reduce inflammation. There are vegan options that are just as effective. I can help you determine which oil is the best option for your condition.
Indigestion
- Multizyme $26.50/$40
- Zypan $16.50/$50.50
- Digest Forte $30
This powerful trio will get you through the holiday feasts. They also come in handy when you eat out at your favorite restaurant. Using this combo will help you digest your meals efficiently, avoid bloating, and increase absorption of the nutrition in your food.
Multizyme is a general digestion enzyme for fat, protein and fiber digestion. Zypan is a digestive acid that is specifically for digestion of protein. If you’re over 45 years old or experience moderate to intense stress in your life, chances are your production of digestive acid is decreased. This is due to sympathetic dominance that shuts down digestion. If you are experiencing food that sits in your stomach after an hour of eating, or smelly gas that clears a room, Zypan can help you! Digest Forte is an herbal formula that helps reduce distention and bloating after eating.
Proper digestion and absorption of nutrients provides the raw materials necessary to heal and rebuild your brain and body. Getting on a digestive enzyme is a simple way to make this happen.
Insomnia
- Min Chex $27.50 or Min Tran $23.50
- Kava Forte $62
- Cataplex G $44.50
Quality sleep is so important to restore your brain and body. Sleep is what helps you retain information and synthesize the things you learned during the day. Sleep also resets your nervous system so that you start fresh the following day.
I know you’ve heard this before. “Avoid screen time at least 30 minutes before bedtime.” If you have trouble falling asleep, it’s better if you avoid screen time an hour to an hour and a half before your desired bedtime. Screen time includes your TV and anything that emits blue light. Even if you have the night time mode active, your eyes and brain are still being stimulated. This stimulation inhibits the production of melatonin, which regulates your sleep cycle. Which means your experience of insomnia will worsen.
Holding your cell phone or laptop on or near your body can interfere with your body’s own electromagnetic field. Put your device on airplane mode to disrupt the EMF emission from your device. Use wired headphones to reduce exposure to Bluetooth waves.
Insomnia can show up in other ways. If you are waking up in the middle of sleep, or waking up too early and can’t fall backs to sleep, the Insomnia Triad can help. There is additional benefit from using acupuncture as well.
The minerals found in Min Tran and Min Chex help feed and settle the nervous system. Unless you are eating kelp and sea vegetables a few times a week, chances are you’re not getting enough of the necessary macro and trace minerals. these also can help with mood regulation.
Kava Forte provides relaxation to your nervous system without creating drowsiness or mental fog. Each tablet contains 50 kava lactones, the active ingredient in Kava. Did you know? It takes 5 years to grow a kava root. MediHerb uses water extraction, the traditional way to prepare kava as it yields the highest concentration of kava lactones.
Kava reduces your feeling of anxiety and irritability by reducing the vibration of your sympathetic nervous system, aka fight, freeze or flight. If you are taking any medication for depression or anxiety, the addition of Kava is contraindicated.
Cataplex G is a second the nutritional support for natural stress reduction. It is the nurturing and grounding aspect of the B vitamin complex. Cataplex G can help you feel relaxed and grounded during the chaos of the holiday season.
The Natural Medicine Cabinet
These formulas are handy to have in your natural medicine cabinet, especially during the infamous cold and flu season.
Immune Boosting
- Immuplex $49
- Calcium Lactate $25.50
- Cataplex C $15.50/$51
- Echinacea Premium $35/$99.50
This trio is a great way to boost your immune system.
Immuplex is nutrition for the organs related to your immune system. It feeds the thymus, liver, spleen and bone (marrow) to keep them healthy and high functioning.
Calcium lactate will free you from the dependence of dairy for calcium. This is bioavailable calcium that won’t cause calcium deposits or stones in your system. All your cells require calcium to function. It’s what opens the gates to take trash out. If you have enough calcium in tissue, your cells can do it’s job of cleaning out debris and toxin. If you don’t have sufficient calcium, the trash doesn’t get taken out. Which means it sits in your cells, causing inflammation and/or premature cell death.
Cataplex C is made from actual food, not a chemical isolate (i.e. ascorbic acid). This means that Cataplex C contains all 7 layers of the vitamin C complex, easily recognizable by your body. Unlike ascorbic acid “Vitamin C”, Cataplex C is low dose high potency. You won’t be taking 3000 mg of Cataplex C. The amount you take is going to be used by your body. Cataplex C also feeds the adrenal glands. This is helpful to maintain adrenal health.
Viral/Bacterial Defense
- Congaplex $23.50/$34
- Echinacea Premium $35/$99.50
- Thymex $19.50/$61.50
While it’s true you’ll need to take more “pills” going the natural route, the great news is that your gut won’t get ripped up like it does with antibiotics. With the number of antibiotic resistant bugs currently in existence, using antibiotics as a last resort is a way to keep your gut bacteria population alive while getting rid of the virus/bacteria out of your system. You won’t have to go through having loose stools r acid reflux.
Congaplex works on either bacteria or viral infections. Echinacea Premium reduces the severity of your immune reaction, making your symptoms less severe. Contrary to popular misbelief, it can be taken in high doses and long term for continued support. Echinacea Premium is very effective in the case of rashes, eczema or psoriasis.
Thymex is nutritional support for the thymus gland, one of the organs responsible for immune response. By feeding this organ, it gets a super boost of energy that makes it work more efficiently.
Never getting sick is how people measure health. In my practice, how you recover indicates your level of health and fitness. Taking these formulas can help decrease the severity and duration of your cold/flu, without the unwanted side effects. Wouldn’t it be great to get better in a day than have it drag out for 5?
Allergy/Sinus Congestion
- Albizia Complex $31
- Allerplex $28.50
- Antronex $25.50/$42.50
Having the cold or flu can make you more sensitive to allergens and react to them. You may experience sinus congestion and/or post nasal drip either after a cold/flu or during Fall or Spring. Using a non pharma nasal spray is convenient and keeps your mucous membranes healthy. It’s like the rinse cycle of your washing machine. Daily use of Similisan homeopathic nasal spray will be useful to reduce inflammation of sinus tissue and help decongest/drain sinuses.
Albizia Complex is the herbal support for sinuses. Allerplex is nutritional support to move out clogged mucus in your sinuses. Antronex is nutritional support for reducing your histamine response. Think of it was a food based replacement for Benadryl. It won’t cause Alzheimer’s. Antronex doesn’t have artificial food coloring either.
If you haven’t done so already, make this your next project. Replace your current supply of pharmaceuticals with whole food supplements and quality herbs. You’ll prevent unnecessary vitamin and mineral loss and feel better naturally.
To read more about Standard Process and MediHerb, click here.
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