If you are one of those people who get rained on a little and get bogged down by the flu the next day, you are probably sick of having coughs and colds and sick of taking medicine over and over again. Sometimes, it is good to know that there are a lot of herbal remedies that are available, effective, easy to use and can replace the mundane cough syrup and escape its side effects.
Bronchitis is a serious medical condition. If you present the symptoms for this, please consult with your physician as soon as possible. These herbal treatments are here to help but are not guaranteed cures for conditions as serious as bronchitis.
Coughs
There are a lot of traditional and herbal treatments for coughs and some are indeed stranger than others. The more common ones that are still widely used today involve using honey and lemon. Other herbs include garlic, onions, lavender, thyme, linseed, nettle and dock. Still others are cabbage, carrots, turnips, comfrey, rosemary, balm, glycerin and peppermint. Among all the herbs, eucalyptus is still the most popular cure.
There are many recommended herbal drinks to treat a cough. One remedy is boiling coltsfoot in water with garlic and brown sugar. An infusion made of coltsfoot leaves sweetened with honey is also said to do the trick. Another treatment is syrup made by boiling coltsfoot leaves with equal amounts of plantain leaves and honey. An herbal drink for coughs was based on a mix of dried sage, honey and vinegar. Another was based also on dried sage but with brown sugar and ginger in water. Another cure was formed by mixing and heating butter, vinegar and honey; also was mixing hart shorn, almond oil, hyssop, sugar and water. Another cure for coughs is an infusion made of hyssop, mullein, ground coriander and marshmallow leaves.
The older traditional cures were stranger. One of the folk cures concerns boring a hole into a lemon and filling the hole with honey. The lemon is then roasted wherein the juices are collected and fed to the patient. A stranger remedy involved boring a hole into it and the hole was filled with brown sugar which is then left to sit overnight. The next day, the juices that were collected are given to the patient.
Some of the older cures are harder to come by. One example of these cures is a mix of the juices of leeks and fresh breast milk of a nursing mother. Another less palatable remedy involved boiling two or three snails in barley water. You may not want to go through all this trouble for a cough.
Bronchitis
Bronchitis is the inflammation of the bronchioles of the lungs and is a lot more serious than cough. Actually, the cough is reduced to one of the symptoms of bronchitis. Although most cases require the treatment of antibiotics, there are still a lot of herbal remedies to help heal and relieve the symptoms of bronchitis.
The more common remedies for bronchitis are eucalyptus, garlic, honey, ginger, cinnamon and tea. Herbs like bugle, butterbur, caraway, angelica, borage, coltsfoot and comfrey are known to help in the relief of the symptoms. Other herbs such as chickweed, chervil, fenugreek, fennel, ground ivy, liquorices, myrrh, madder, knotgrass and marjoram are also effective. Mullein, parsley, plantain, onion, sage and primrose, thyme, white horehound, watercress, speedwell and savory are also utilized in the treatment of bronchitis.
Michael Russell Your Independent Herbal guide. | |
