Dr. Norman Allan's
Newsletter

Vol 7, No. 1,
Feb. 2013

*   A Herbal Panacea  
*   office hours
*   archives lots of things of interest

      
but first, the adverts...

You know, it's a good idea to come in for a checkup (discuss all those little concerns and see if there is something simple that can help) if not once a month, once a season or, failing that, once a year ...

*    *    *

I've been drinking this wonderful tea (with some broadly acting herbs that could be considered "panaceas") and when I ran out of ginger the other day and thought, I can substitute burdock, I then though, I should share this. Some of the ingredients are a little exotic, but easily found in Toronto. That's why I'm calling it...

T.O. Panacea Tea

It's brewed with Hawthorn, Turmeric, Ginger, Burdock, Haritaki, and Jaggery...
Hawthorn for the heart; Turmeric against cancer, Ginger for circulation and the gut, Burdock to detox, Haritaki for everything, Jaggery as a "healthy" sweetener.

Hawthorn

Hawthorn is the
great cardiac tonic.
Also full of vitamin C,
and tasty.

Best found in
Chinese herb shops.

Jaggery

Jaggery (or Gur) is East Indian whole sugar cane which several people have assured me is "healthy", and a great source of iron.

(If you are diabetic you might substitute stevia {or licorice - but there are some cautions with licorice})

Burdock

Once you slice (or grate) burdock it starts to oxidize (goes brown) within minutes, so before you slice the burdock add just boiled water to what you have prepared so far and start to steep. Add the burdock as soon as it is sliced.

Burdock is a liver tonic (a hepatic) and thus used as a detox herb. It is also a lymphatic.
It also has anticancer qualities. (It is the first ingredient of a famous cancer formula called Essiac)

It is a root vegetable in Korea and Japan, and you can find it in the Korean supermarket at Bloor and Manning, where it is called Gobu

I've written more about burdock (click here)

Speaking of anti-cancer herbs, new research shows that Milk Thistle protects against cancer: ...

“When you take human skin cells – keratinocytes – and treat them with silibinin (active ingrediant in Milk Thistle), nothing happens. It’s not toxic. But when you damage these cells with UVA radiation, treatment with silibinin kills the cells,” Agarwal says, thus removing the mutated cells that can cause skin cancer and photo-aging.

The thing that I find interesting here is that a relatively subtle vibration is having an appreciable (positive) effect on body metabolism and function. I am therefore wondering what the vibrational effects of chanting, OM, for instance, are? We'd need an engineer to tell us about the difference in order of magnitude between that devise and the vibrations that are set up in your body by, a) a rock band in a bar, b) by chanting, OM for instance. However, orders of magnitude might or might not be of relevance here. Subtle vibrations may be having physiological effects. One would have to look and see.

Meanwhile, the safe course would be to do the chanting. It's bound to have salubrious effects at many levels (if not bone mass and muscle mass - muscles, that too was in the article). ("Salubrious" = health promoting - forgive the use of a relatively obscure word.) "Over all the bone density of the controlled group (the reporter has got this wrong - he means "experimental group" as compared to the control group) increased by 3 percent during a year, and muscle mass improved by 4 percent."

So get chanting, OM (or what you fancy).