Options in Treatment

Disclaimer.  I am not a licensed health practitioner.  This is just another post on an item you might wish to have available if needed so that a physician can treat you and your family as best as possible.  No medication, including those available over the counter, should be taken without consulting a physician.  Information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only.  It is not medical advice nor a substitute for licensed medical care.  A qualified, licensed physician or other medical provider should be consulted before beginning any herbal or conventional treatment.


When we read about a possible treatment for whatever's afflicting us at the moment, try it, and it doesn't work, we get irritated that we've wasted time and money and still don't feel well.  We say that whatever we used was snake oil, and because we had a bad experience, so will everybody else, and no one should use that product.

The problem is, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to treating medical conditions.  We are all incredibly unique people.  Some products are going to work for us that don't work for others.  Some people are more susceptible to the placebo effect than others.  (Click here for the post on the placebo effect.)  Some people are going to have true allergies or sensitivities to a drug or herb.  Some are going to be redheads that have a lower tolerance for pain and need more pain killers to achieve the same level of relief that blondes and brunettes get. Some are going to be children without mature kidneys or livers or whatever that can tolerate whatever it is.  Some will be elderly.  Some drugs shouldn't be used by men, except as a last resort.  The same goes for women.  When it comes to pain relief and treatment for conditions, most of the time pregnant women just need to suck it up in the interest of preventing harm to the baby.

When physicians prescribe a treatment, they're usually offering that individual patient what works best in their observations of patients as a whole.  In classes I've taken, some doctors love Tylenol.  Others recommend Aleve first for pain.  When we are making decisions about what to use for any given condition, we will hopefully have a physician to help us.  But even then, they and we are going to be governed by what is available to us.  Post-collapse, when we are dealing with a medical issue, the option recommended may not be that physician's first or second or even third choice for best options for treatment.  And for the welfare of the group, he might recommend no treatment at all.  Using up your entire supply of antibiotics to treat one person's case of tuberculosis will leave the rest of the family vulnerable.  That doctor may not be comfortable with the idea of using herbs like Usnea for tuberculosis in a normal setting, but it might be your only option and then he'll be more open.  The more we study, the more diverse our stockpile, the better our options later.

My daughter Becky is taking a horticulture class, and in visiting with the professor she learned that most landscapers use the same twenty plants over and over because those are what they're familiar with.  They rarely branch out to learn about any new plants.  And so they limit themselves and their clients.  In contrast, we should begin with what we are familiar with, and learn the uses for those alternative and conventional medicines really well.  We need to learn exactly when Tylenol, Advil, and Aleve are indicated.  We need to learn them backwards and forwards, up and down.  The same goes for Benadryl, Sudafed, Zantac, and Dramamine.  We need to learn about the medications most commonly used.  If you have never used one or more of these, learn about it now.  There are alternative uses for all of these.

Do the same with herbs--lavender, chamomile, peppermint, tea tree, eucalyptus, rosemary, thyme, oregano.  Begin with what you're familiar with and learn about their uses (and use them!) really well.  Then move on to what grows in your backyard, front yard, nearby fields or mountains or streams.  If you learn about an herb that may be useful to you in a TEOTWAWKI situation and it grows in your area, plant it!  Get a field guide and learn what's growing in your parks.  Identify what's growing in the shopping center parking lots.  We saw rosemary growing all over Las Vegas.  Here in Northern Nevada, we've got Japanese barberry planted in abundance in every shopping center, perhaps because those landscapers my daughter learned about have only twenty plants in their repertoire.

From a preparedness standpoint, we will be much better off to learn about a lot more pharmaceuticals and plants and have an abundance of options so that we can work around sensitivities, allergies, dislikes, herb-drug interactions/contraindications, age issues (some things contraindicated in children or elderly), pregnancy issues, and supply issues--some fresh items aren't going to be available in winter, etc. Some herbs potentiate pharmaceuticals, extending the supply and reducing the potential side effects.

The more options we have, the better the treatment and outcome, and the less the pain and suffering.  And isn't that why we do what we do?

Links to related posts:
OTC Pain Relievers
Benadryl
Antihistamines
Lavender
Rosemary
Japanese Barberry
Placebo Effect
Usnea
Dramamine