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Page 19
| needed, and opened the first retail health food store as a means to supply his patients with the goods necessary for a natural health care regimen. |
| Integral to Father Kneipp's philosophy was that healing comes from within and that it must be approached holistically from many different perspectives including diet, lifestyle, stress reduction, rest, exercise, fresh air, plenty of sunlight, hydrotherapy and simple herbal remedies. Health food stores have historically promoted preventive health care through these principles, in contrast to the overreliance on powerful synthetic drugs and highly invasive surgeries which are the foundation of modern medicine. With a renewed interest in phyto-chemicals, the so-called "active constituents" of plants, many of these principles are being lost, supplanted by a magic bullet, allopathic approach to using herbal medicines. |
| Echinacea fits into Father Kneipp's philosophy quite nicely. For example, unlike numerous conventional antibiotics which tend to weaken the immune system, the primary action of echinacea is to stimulate the body's own immune response so as to mobilize one's internal defenses to fight off disease. While not a panacea for all of the ills of modern society, it does hold an extremely important place within the therapeutic armamentarium of today's modern herbalists, naturopathic physicians and health food stores. Echinacea was equally important with European homeopathic physicians, who primarily used a 1:10 concentration "mother tincture" made from the entire fresh plant. Originally it is believed that E. angustifolia was used. However, obtaining seeds was difficult so interest shifted to E. purpurea, which subsequently became the focus of much modern German |
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