Gardening allows you to have an abundance of healing nutrition right at your finger tips. I’m still growing in knowledge regarding homeopathic/herbal medicine, and these resources have helped me decide what I want to plant in our backyard to help build our immune systems naturally.
As a wife and mother of four, my first priority has always been to provide a healthy diet and promote an active lifestyle for our family. We rarely head to the doctors office. If we’re sick we lay low, push fluids and bump our vitamin intake. That being said, we spent the first five years of our youngest son’s life in and out of doctor’s offices. Fighting off 105+ degree temps was a norm at our house. In that same time period, my Husband, a ruggedly handsome fire fighter on our local department, suffered some significant lung damage on a fire call. Add to that my significant food and environmental allergies and I was quickly seeking out natural ways to heal our bodies from things out of our control.
While I am grateful for the medical professionals that cared for us during those times, I am ever grateful for our family doctor who always encouraged us to act preventively rather than reactively. He also always encouraged us to look for natural ways to do so. I truly feel that it is because of those recommendations that we were able to bounce back quickly from the things that ailed us. It is also the reason we rarely end up sick now.
So what does our life look like? How do we accomplish this?
There are three things I believe make the most difference. The first of which is our diet. Most of what we consume, we make from scratch. If I don’t make it, I try to source someone else who does. For instance, a good friend of mine use to make most of our bread. I have what can be a fairly severe allergy to the protein in milk. She makes delicious bread and made it dairy-free, just for me. We also seek to use, to the best of our ability, ingredients that have little to no chemicals used on them, organic or not. This means we grow most of the vegetables we consume throughout the year.
Secondly, we try to get adequate sleep each night and live active lifestyles. The sleep part was much harder when we had babies running around. Although now we have teenagers that like to discuss all of life’s problems at 11pm. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Active for us means sports, hiking, gardening, running/walking, other random workouts, running up and down the steps doing a hundred loads of laundry…you know, all the typical stuff.
The last thing we are very intentional about it taking very little by way of traditional medicine/antibiotics etc. We generally choose to let our bodies fight off naturally whatever ails us. We can do this because we have lived a lifestyle that’s provided our body what it needs to fight. We’ve built our immunity in preparation for getting sick so that when we do, we aren’t down for long. We also started incorporating more natural remedies into our daily routine. For instance, to help with the inflammation I experience from my allergies, I regularly drink teas that include things such as nettle and turmeric. However, this just touches the surface.
I am not an expert.
I am simply a mom, wife, entrepreneur, woman seeking to do what I feel is best for our family. That being said, there are some books that I have found tremendously helpful along the way. I am very much in the beginning stages of this journey but I am not looking back. I press onward, growing all the things, and enjoying nearly every minute of it. So here they are in no particular order other than the first five are the ones I’ve grabbed the most often as a beginner. I also would recommend grabbing the physical copy if you can. There is great value in having the actual book in hand when it comes to gardening, physical and spiritual health and wellness. I hope you find this helpful and may good health be something you pursue rather than just hope for.
My favorite books (so far):
- Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide
- Alchemy of Herbs by Rosalee De La Foret
- Fire Cider by Rosemary Gladstar and Friends
- Back Yard Pharmacy, Weeds that Heal by Rachel Weaver M.H.
- Beyong Rosemary, Basil and Thyme by Theresa Mieseler – this one isn’t so much about the medicinal qualities but it does have a ton of lovely information regarding a wide range of herbs.
- The Complete Homeopathy Handbook by Miranda Castro
- Herbal Antibiotics by Stephen Harrod Buhner
- Herbal Antivirals by Stephen Harrod Buhner
A final note on the subject…
Please remember that I am not a medical expert. The advice offered in the posting is not to be taken as medical advice but rather to give you a glimpse into how we live a healthy lifestyle. Please seek to do your own research and seek the help of a medical professional when needed. It’s also important to remember that just because something is in it’s most natural state and has good medicinal properties, doesn’t mean it will be good for your body. I have allergies to a number of plants and react adversely to them. It is always best to introduce something in small amounts, follow medical recommendations on how to use it and pay attention to how your body reacts. It is not something to be scared of, just aware of.
*I am not an affiliate for any books in this posting. I have simply found them helpful in our household.
