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| sone on a regular basis makes the adrenal and thymus glands ''lazy.'' The adrenal glands can actually shrink so much they no longer operate efficiently and barely function even after discontinuing cortisone. |
| Herbs For Pain |
| Most herbal sedatives that encourage sleep double as muscle and nervous system relaxants and pain-killers. These include valerian, hops, skullcap, chamomile, kava and crampbark. Herbs provide a solution to pain because they gradually heal the nervous system instead of just suppressing pain. |
| While they do not provide the dramatic relief of pain-killers like morphine, they do offer a safer and more permanent approach, and often are even more effective in the long run. Compounds in kava have been found to stop muscle spasms up to ten times better than the common anticonvulsant drugs without dulling the mind. Turmeric, Chinese skullcap, African devil's claw and South American pau d'arco can reduce painful inflammation just as well as the potent drug phenylbutazone. Compounds in turmeric and licorice have proven even more effective than cortisone in reducing inflammation, and without unpleasant side effects. Ginseng and bupleurum gently stimulate the natural production of cortisone and make it longer-acting by slowing its breakdown and deactivation in the liver. While pharmaceutical cortisone shrinks the adrenal glands, licorice and buplueurum strengthen them and even slow the damage from taking cortisone. 25 |
| Muscle, arthritic and headache pain are all reduced by inhibiting prostaglandins that cause pain with herbs such as turmeric, ginger, meadowsweet, GLA |
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