Food & Drink Remedies
Thousands of years ago, Hippocrates said Let food be your medicine. Foods and beverages provide relief from an amazing number of common ailments.
10 Favorite Wart Remedies That Work!
Warts are mysterious. They raise more questions than answers. We do know that warts are caused by a virus (human papilloma virus or HPV). How that virus penetrates the skin on fingers, hands or knees …
Can You Ease Sinus Woes Without Decongestants?
Hay fever and other seasonal allergies can cause a lot of discomfort. The congestion such allergic reactions cause can lead to sinus woes that seem to last a long time. Usually, medication choices are…
Best Diet for People with Diabetes Is Low in Car…
Diabetes experts have been arguing about the best diet for patients with type 2 diabetes for decades. Past and present studies now show that a diet low in carbs can help people with type 2 diabetes lo…
Can You Lower Your Blood Pressure with Food?
When the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association collaborated on new blood pressure guidelines in 2017, the cut-off numbers for hypertension got lower. That means a lot more …
Make Sure Your Vegetarian Diet Is High Quality
A vegetarian diet can be beneficial, but the quality of the diet matters. Last year, a meta-analysis of 25 randomized controlled trials covering more than 3.5 million participants found that there can…
Can a Nordic Diet Prevent Dementia?
The Mediterranean diet gets all the headlines. It is supposed to be good for your heart, your brain and just about everything else that ails you. Ask almost any health professional about the healthies…
Will Coconut Macaroons Overcome Bad Diarrhea?
We rarely know the source of home remedies, but we have tracked one carefully. The late Donald Agar wrote to us from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1998 to report a serendipitous discovery. He had foun…
How to Control Your Blood Sugar Without Drugs
How is your blood sugar? According to the CDC, 115 million American adults have prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar is elevated but doesn't reach the threshold for a diagnosis of diabetes (1…
Does Junk Food in the Diet Affect Children’…
Children in North America eat a lot of junk food. A study notes that nearly half of the calories consumed by Canadian preschoolers come from ultraprocessed foods. The investigators wanted to know whet…
How to Mix Certo and Grape Juice for Arthritis
One of the oldest home remedies in the People’s Pharmacy pharmacopeia is a combination of Certo and grape juice for arthritis. Most people have never heard of Certo. That’s because home canning ha…
Old-Fashioned Sugar Remedy Heals Persistent Woun…
When wounds refuse to heal, both patients and caregivers struggle. They suffer frustration as well as pain, not to mention the fear of a serious infection setting in. Several readers have written abou…
Can You Prevent Migraines by Changing Your Diet?
Migraines are a pain. Even worse than the pain, though, is the life disruption. Some sufferers lose days every time a headache strikes hiding in a dark quiet room. They may feel horribly nauseated or …
Which Diets Boost Longevity?
If you have been wondering what you should eat to improve your chance at a long healthy life, you are not alone. Curious nutrition scientists analyzed dietary data from more than 103,000 UK Biobank pa…
How to Make Thyme Cough Medicine
Have you ever found yourself coughing in the middle of the night and reached for the cough medicine? If your household is like ours, once in a while that bottle was emptied two months ago and not yet …
Which Coffee Compounds Protect the Brain?
If you, like many people, can’t face the day without a hot cup of coffee, there’s good news. Your daily habit may well be helping protect the brain. This has been a recurrent finding, but the late…
Will Hot Peppers Improve Your Health and Help Yo…
That headline that seems far too good to be true, I admit. Full disclosure, I must confess that I (Joe G.) am a pepperhead, ie, someone who loves (actually craves) hot chili peppers. That said, there …
Will Certo and Grape Juice Help Your Sore Knees?
People with sore joints face a terrible dilemma. Pain interferes with quality of life. On the other hand, medications like diclofenac and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can make p…
Will a Mediterranean Diet Benefit Your Brain?
The Mediterranean diet has earned a reputation for promoting heart health, as we discuss below. A Harvard study suggested it might also be good for the brain, especially for people with type 2 diabete…
Coconut Defeats Daily Diarrhea
We were surprised back in 1998 when we got a letter from a reader about coconut. Donald Agar of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, had suffered with Crohn's disease for 40 years. He discovered through serendi…
Home Remedies That Work When Modern Medicine Fal…
Modern medicine has come a long way from bloodletting and lobotomies. The Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement got its start in Canada when physicians at McMaster University began asking tough quest…
The Cookie Cure: How Coconut Macaroons Became a …
Some home remedies refuse to fade away — not because anyone is promoting them, but because people keep writing to say, “This actually helped.” One of the most enduring examples we’ve encounter…
Show 1420: The Cooking Oil Controversy Spotlight…
This week, we dig into the cooking oil controversy. For decades, we’ve heard that we should be using vegetable oils rather than butter, lard or other fats (possibly even olive oil). Oils from corn, …
Can You Use Oil of Oregano with Confidence?
For years, readers have been telling us that they use oil of oregano as an antifungal or antimicrobial agent. Scientists have found data to support this use. For example, oregano oil applied topically…
Saturated Fat Reconsidered: New Research Challen…
Have you ever heard the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks"? It's not true. Many old dogs learn new tricks with the right training and motivation. It turns out that it could be a lot harder…
Does Dark Chocolate Provide Healthful Cocoa Flav…
Whenever a new study comes along to demonstrate that yes, chocolate does have health benefits (see one here), nutrition experts step forward to caution people not to start gobbling chocolate under th…
Can Restricting Eating Time Help Control Blood S…
People at risk of developing type 2 diabetes may be able to reverse this process by restricting eating time to a nine-hour period every day. Other approaches that seem to rely on the same body process…
How to Brew Green Tea for Maximum Benefit
You can brew green tea simply by plopping a tea bag in a cup and pouring hot water over it. Or you can make it into a complex ritual such as a Japanese tea ceremony. When it comes to getting the most …
How to Eat for Better Blood Glucose Control
When public health experts point out that nearly one-third of American adults have prediabetes, we figure that we could all benefit from an appropriate diet for better blood glucose control. After all…
Are There Natural Remedies for Constipation?
Constipation is a very common complaint. While doctors rarely become concerned about constipation unless the patient seems to have obstructed bowels, sufferers find that this problem really affects th…
What Are Pros and Cons of Cinnamon for Blood Sug…
Millions of American adults have prediabetes. The CDC defines this as having fasting blood sugar over 100 but less than 126 mg/dL, the cut-off for a diagnosis of diabetes. Learning that you have predi…
Can Elderberry Juice Really Fight Flu Virus?
Elderberries and elderberry juice have long had a reputation for fighting the flu. Most physicians undoubtedly have considered this just another old wives’ tale. One reader remembers how her family …
Better Diet for Poor Americans Is Not a SNAP
Poor diet may underly a wide range of undesirable health problems, from obesity to diabetes and heart disease. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was designed to help very low-income…
Pomegranate Juice and Rosuvastatin…a Surpr…
Do you know which foods might react badly with your medications? As a graduate student in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan over 50 years ago I was intrigued by food and dru…
Study Shows No Need to Shun Coffee to Keep Heart…
Coffee has a bad reputation when it comes to irregular heart rhythms. For years, cardiologists have warned patients with atrial fibrillation to avoid coffee. They worried that caffeine would aggravate…
DASH Diet for High Blood Pressure
For nearly 30 years, nutrition scientists studying dietary outcomes have noted that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products can help people control their blood pr…
Beets Lower Blood Pressure
Doctors love scientific explanations for how things work. That is why they are quick to prescribe medications for a variety of conditions. FDA approval provides reassuring evidence of effectiveness. U…
Beating Back Garlic Breath with Parsley or a Spo…
Garlic breath can be a real social disadvantage. As delicious and healthful as garlic may be, the consequence can really put others off and even cause trouble within families. What can you do? Taming …
How Can a Man Tell if He Needs More Testosterone…
Historically, the FDA has been quite clear that it does not approve routine prescribing of testosterone, even if men have low levels of this hormone. Here was the official word from the feds: "None of…
Fresh Onion Juice for Kitchen Burns
If you have ever reached into the oven without a potholder in place, you know why first aid remedies for burns are popular. Let's start with the official first aid advice: Get the burned skin under co…
How to Harness the Healing Power of Garlic
Certain time-honored remedies have had such a reputation in folk medicine that it can be difficult to determine how much of the reputation is hype and how much could be supported by science. Garlic is…