Home Remedies That Work

Every so often, I’ll see an article online or in the print media that talks about those miracle, often-misunderstood home remedies that actually work.  They are sometimes written with a flair of, “OMG! Did you know that you can do X, Y or Z or A, B, or C?”  This continually surprises me, not because the mainstream media is talking about it, but because they seem so surprised about it.

In this article, posted today on the front page of Yahoo’s website, the author talks about honey, meat tenderizer and oatmeal, among other things.  Honey is great for sore throats, she says, and can be used to treat small wounds and burns.  Not the burns that hurt, of course, she caveats, but minor burns.  If it is a “real” burn, you better go to the doctor.  Okay, I can buy going to a doctor if the skin is falling off your body.  As natural as I try to live, a friend of mine fell into a fire a couple of summers ago and by morning, it was a race to see which member of our party could break camp the fastest.  The winner got to take little miss Fire Fairy to the ER in town, several miles away through the Utah desert.  Sometimes, you just need a doc.  For me, however, even if the burn has associated pain, I’m going with the honey first.

Oatmeal is great for eczema.  My grandson has terrible eczema and his mother has been treating him with oatmeal almost since he was born.  Why?  Because it works and has worked for easing the discomfort of skin conditions for eons; probably since the very first guy with a rash fell into a vat of soaking oatmeal shortly after the dinosaurs decided to kick off.  And yet, people still think it’s a “new age” thing.  (For all of you ladies who pay through the nose for expensive face mask treatments, I’ll betcha oatmeal is somewhere in the ingredients list.)

Meat Tenderizer can be used on stings.  I don’t know about you, but I grew up on the ocean.  Every summer (and many winters) found my family gathered on the sand at the water’s edge.  Depending upon where we lived at the time, we might take the trusty old Winnebago right down on the sand, or we might just hang out on blanket and frolic in the tide.  With ocean dwelling, for the most part, comes jelly fish.  Ouch.  When Mom packed the beach bag it contained certain things religiously.  Zinc Oxide?  Check.  (That was before SPF 50 came out, thanks.) Towels? Check.  Toy bucket (not shaped like a castle – we’ll build our own!) Check.  And Meat Tenderizer.  She had a bottle in the kitchen for … you guessed it… tenderizing meat, and a whole separate bottle just for the beach bag.

This is not new stuff, here, folks.  Home remedies, and all-natural remedies do work.  They have worked for years.  Most of the pharmaceuticals the big pharm companies spend millions upon millions of dollars creating start with home remedies; natural sources.  Ever watch the movie “The Medicine Man” with Sean Connery?  He’s researching cancer treatments in the Rainforest of South America, being paid by a huge pharmaceutical company. 

Natural remedies simply go back to the source.  Aspirin is based on White Willow Bark.  The trick is that it has been synthesized and re-manufactured adding chemicals that having nothing to do with killing that nasty headache.  Why not just buy a bottle of White Willow Bark from your local natural health store? 

It really isn’t hard math we’re talking about.  Before you spend your hard earned money at a pharmacy (or your insurance company’s money, even) consider researching a healthy alternative to the chemicals and who-knows-what-else that is being fed to the American people; to the people of world.  Do you really want to put that into your body?

Tennille McCormick Webster is the owner and operator of Grandma Tilly's Tinctures and Tonics in the Wellspring Center for Holistic Healing, Price, Utah.