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Natural Remedies of Arabia
saudiaramcoworld.com — Wether you are in Doha, Dubai, Manama, Salalah, Jiddah or an obscure country village, when you step into an herbal medicine shop or wander through the traditional suqs (markets), you will find vendors of herbs, spices, bark, twigs, rocks salt intended for culinary, cosmetic or medicinal purposes. What are these products? Where do they come from?
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- Workster, on 10/12/2007, -24/+2This is such a interesting page.Those Arabians had so much oil that they used it for medicine and baking.Maybe in reality George W. Bush is shooting himself up with it and the whole war in Iraq is a effort to feed his black gold addiction.
- dbre2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Is this posted in the health section or politics? Where in this article does it mention bush or the war in iraq?
- billyboobs34, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2mmmm Camel Balls...
- 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2So where's the windex and WD40?
- alex.will, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Good find. I think Western medicine could learn alot from the herbal treatments used in Chinese/Arab medicine.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5I'm not too sure I want to eat ground up tiger bones and have a witch doctor chanting over me. Maybe it's just me though.
- ShrimpCrackers, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Warning: Chinese Herbal medicines, besides being notorious in Asia for killing off thousands of people a year, and being totally unregulated, they may also irreversibly damage your liver and other internal organs. These medicines and their cures can be dangerous and because they are not tested and regulated. Again, case in point: the hundreds of deaths in Singapore and Taiwan alone are a testament to this.
It becomes more apparent when you live in Asia that you should not believe these literal snake-oil salesman on the miracle cures that all this stuff produces.
I'd be really careful. - BarryG, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4Yea, forget technology and science, lets learn more about snake oils and tiger claws as cancer cures. Brilliant.
- polyGone, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Man your not supposed to eat tiger bones! They're transdermal!
- abid786, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Yea, forget technology and science, lets learn more about snake oils and tiger claws as cancer cures. Brilliant."
whats wrong with looking into them for a POSSIBLE cure? if you do proper research, it might prove useful somehow... - alex.will, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Thank you abid.
I wasn't saying that we should switch to those types of medicine or that we should stop using science, I was mearly suggesting that perhaps Western medicine could learn a thing or two from them. - WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@ shrimp crackers
"Warning: Chinese Herbal medicines, besides being notorious in Asia for killing off thousands of people a year, and being totally unregulated, they may also irreversibly damage your liver and other internal organs. These medicines and their cures can be dangerous and because they are not tested and regulated."
Your fear-mongering 'warning' is duly noted. Contrast your beliefs against the tens of thousands who are poisoned and die every year in the US as a direct result of taking those famous, patented, synthetic western medicines. It takes a special kind of blindness to ignore the fact that those medicines are largely untested, due to the huge amount of corporate money in the chemical industry.
Final testing usually consists of paying off doctors, with plenty of vacations and 'speaking tours', to get them to give your new medicine to their patients, even when it is not needed.
The REAL killer, that you might watch out for, is IGNORANCE, and an unwillingness to really LEARN and do things with AWARENESS, rather than acting on your fears and beliefs.
As medicines go, the ones without the backing of gigantic corporations are generally probably safer, and are often more effective. Naturally, since herbal drugs can be very potent, they must be used in the hands of a qualified practitioner, or, when possible, the one using them must ACactually do the research, and learn about them!
But if you just want to go to a filthy-rich, money-grubbing, lying western 'doctor', and avoid having to learn anything about your actual illness and the cure, then you probably deserve all the poisons and false hopes and financial ruin you will get!
I also laugh at your lack of undertanding, considering that you are most likely someone who willingly consumes produce that was grown with tons of pesticides, and so you are destroying the delicate balance of hormones and neurotransmitters in your own body, from all the filthy residues in your non-organically- grown diet of ignorance and beliefs!
you pretend to be concerrned about liver-toxicity of all the natural cures, without examining them or the actual facts of your own pathetic situation.
Am I right? Or will you just react and try to supress this, as you supress any truths that require a 'self' examination? - Leadhyena, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Thank you ShrimpCrackers... too many people in this country don't understand the drug-approval process and how vitally important it is. I wanted to quote the Wikipedia article on the process but found it was extremely biased. I am flummoxed at how many intelligent people are so against the FDA, regardless of the political wrangling they get from time to time.
Chew on this: It takes at least 5 years of intense testing to get any drug approved for use by the FDA. And why is that? Because these people want to be really damn sure that this drug/procedure/treatment/device won't kill people. And to stem the rant about Type 2 errors, let me go on the record and state that I prefer Type 2 errors (drugs needlessly banned) over Type 1 errors (dangerous drugs approved) any day. There are warning labels on many of the "wonder drugs" out there that state that "This drug has not been approved by the FDA to cure, treat, or diagnose...". This is not because of a lack of cash (makers of Trimspa making more than their spokeswoman, inheritance or no). This is because scientific trials, boring as they are, really do mean something! They prove that a drug has a good probability of doing what it purports to do, and not being a load of bullsnot that your great-great-great-grandfather (god rest his soul) believed in. And these confidence men who sell these snake-oils filled with "herbs" have to rely on placebo effect, new-age mysticism, and the rambling of ancient medics who believed in "spontaneous generation" to sell their drugs.
It blows me away how many people blow their savings on pseudoscience, when it could be a waste of money at best, and their death knell at worst.
- lucask, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"What are these products? Where do they come from?"
the earth, hence the term "natural" remedies.
/slap - Scientifik, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5A scimitar to the back of the neck, thats a cure all.
- manfrin, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2I heard a program about spices and dyes in Arabia on NPR, it was really interesting. Heard it on my way to an indian casino where I won $300.
- CraigJ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11wow. that's relavent.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8...and then there was this one time, when I went to the mall, and I bought a t-shirt because it was on sale. Then I left the mall and went home to wash my new t-shirt. Oh yeah, and ice cream tastes good too.
- haggie, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2slaughtering infidels always makes me feel better. nothing like a jihad during cold & flu season to help fight off those pesky seasonal bugs.
How did this get a single Digg?- abid786, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5wtf are you talking about?
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Maybe he's been taking some of Arabia's natural hallucinogens.
- Koosebane, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2I had acute arabia once.
I just shook it off with chicken soup and plenty of vitamin C. - drenader, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"The banana plant is the world’s largest herb. It is often mistaken for a tree, but does not have a woody trunk or boughs."
Damn, I learned something. - Krispy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Digg has some of the most remarkably ignorant user base. Sometimes I really wonder what the hell am doing here. But if all people like me leave, Digg will turn into a sandbox for 6 year old Nazis. And that would be sad.
- vonskippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"and that would be sad"
Sad like "your dog/aunt/favorite tv show" died sad,
or,
Sad like myspace, mtv, all lawyers, the music/record companies, and most government officials died sad?
- vonskippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"and that would be sad"
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2From article:
"Alum is a compound of several metals, including aluminum."
That was a sloppy way of describing it. Why didin't the author do the minuscule amount of research required, and just write that alum is potassium aluminum sulfate?
So already, I am expecting this author to be overly fascinated with 'beliefs' , rather than having objectivity.- Leadhyena, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Because it requires a little bit of research to realize that herbal medicine is a sham, and anyone who promotes it must not have done that research.
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@leadhyena
Anyone who reallly did some research, instead of just making ignorant statements against all herbal medicine...might realize certain truths.
e.g. A certain western Dr. Lister was credited with having discovered antiseptics. His basic formula of a liquid antiseptic is still sold today, under the brand name Listerine.
The main ingredient of listerine is Thymol, an essential oil that occurs in THYME, and certain other herbs. note, in the article, that Ajowan seeds are 40-60% thymol.
Note also, that you are completely closed-minded and stuck in your own arrogance, hiding your own ignorance.
The only sham here is your presentation of yourself as anything more than just a fragile, insignificant ego-image, hiding your own lacks and inadequacies.
Generally, western drug companies just try to alter natural compounds, to make them patentable! They usually make them weaker or more toxic in the process.
It's all about making money.
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"An oil distilled from anise is what gives licorice candy its flavor."
While anise oil is often an additive, licorice actually is made from a root called 'licorice root,' glycyrrhiza glabra.- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anise is used as a cheap substitute for real licorice. On the plus side, real licorice apparently lowers testosterone levels dramatically; can't be havin' that!
- rajwon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
oh did I mention ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ? - uz2surf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This was very informative.
- Koosebane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It seems herbal remedies tend to deaden the sense of humor and cause an unsightly and swollen sense of self importance.
Here's a clue:
Some of you don't need remedies like these to make you feel better. Yanking the stick out of your ass would be much faster, cheaper and more effective. - khaled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2A constructive, non-political topic about Arabia, thats good for a change...
- oleg600, on 06/23/2008, -0/+1Bowtrol Colon Health Support and Probiotics system was developed for people with sensitive digestion, particularly a sensitive colon. Looking at http://bowtrolbuy.weebly.com/
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