I know that many of you have questions about herbs – the content of tablets and the quality control of ingredients, in particular. Good. It is important to be particular. That is one reason why people need to work with a skilled practitioner. I’ve investigated many brands and varieties of herbal formulas and have found companies and people who I can depend on. Cathy Margolin, L.A.c., a practitioner who I met several years ago, has developed  formulas for specific ailments. her formulas for sleep and PMS  are very popular. Here is an excerpt from an article she wrote for the Huffington Post that explains how helpful Chinese herbs can be for relieving PMS, with research to back it up.

“Herbs have been around longer than mankind. Through the ages every culture has discovered the healing properties nature provides; this has been a universal phenomenon. The Chinese began embracing natural botanicals and documenting their medicinal value circa 300 BC. The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Cannon was one of the first ancient Chinese medical texts from this era and the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (The Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica Classic) was the first to index 365 medicinal plants and compiled circa 100 AD. Some 2,000 years later, these same medicinal plants are still in use and have been extensively studied and dissected by Western science looking for keys to how they work.

A study by the Cochrane Library — an international, not-for-profit, independent organization which promotes and disseminates systematic reviews of heath care interventions — found evidence from 39 clinical trials involving 3,475 women, that Chinese herbal medicine can be used safely and has merit as therapy for women suffering with menstrual cramps also known as primary dysmenorrhea: “Chinese herbal medicine gave significant improvements in pain relief when compared to pharmaceutical drugs. It also reduced overall symptoms. The research revealed that Chinese herbal medicine was also better at alleviating pain than acupuncture or heat compression.”(1)

“All available measures of effectiveness confirmed the overall superiority of Chinese herbal medicine to placebo, no treatment, NSAIDs, OCP, (oral contraception pills) acupuncture and heat compression, and, at the same time, there were no indications that Chinese herbs caused any adverse events,” said lead author Xiaoshu Zhu, who works at the Center for Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.(2)”

Read the full article here
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