My Experience with Home Herbal Remedies

Over the years my children and I have been amazingly healthy. There have been however, a few times that we have used some simple home herbal remedies. They were an amazing alternative for us and I want to share some of my experience with home herbal remedies with you. I hope it will encourage you into checking into natural options for an unusual situation.

My first experience with a natural home herbal remedy didn't happen at home! My oldest son, Dustin, was a child filled with ingenuity from the start! He would think outside the box and come up with unusual solutions to challenges. We were at a local rodeo and the children were participating in a calf scramble. A calf scramble is an event where all the children in the crowd are invited to enter the arena and chase some 20 calves around until all the ribbons tied on the calves' tails are pulled off. The children exchange the ribbons for a dollar, then return to their seats to enjoy the remainder of the rodeo. Well....Dustin decided that since all the other children were chasing the calves around the arena, they would eventually come back around the circle. He stopped cold, turned around and took a stance. He was ready and waiting for the calves stampeding toward him! Mind you he wasn't yet 7 years old! Needless to say, what goes around, comes around, and the calves were no different! When they reached him, he lurched toward the tails of the first calves with his hands grabbing at anything he could grab! He missed, landed face first into the dirt clods and promptly was stepped on by the other 17 calves! He was flat and not moving, and I took off running full speed for the only arena gate! He was unconscious and bleeding from the head. The rodeo clown scooped him up and ran toward the ambulance. I grabbed his little brother's hand and followed! Poor little Dillon was only 3 and his feet probably never hit the ground! We got to the ambulance and Paul, the EMT, a family friend, took a look at him. He was conscious now and crying because he didn't get a dollar!! Paul told us that head wounds bleed like crazy and if it would stop pretty quick we wouldn't need to go get stitches. Paul sent me to the concession stand to get a bag of ice. Running the concession stand was Dale Scott, a lady from church who just happened to own an herbal shop in town. She gave me ice and told me to bring Dustin back over immediately. I did as I was told! She put him on the counter, wiped the gushing blood out of the way and broke open two capsule-like pills onto the gash. It was about a half inch long gash about an inch above his ear. The bleeding stopped immediately. Completely. Dale explained that the capsules had ground cayenne pepper in them. She told me that the cayenne acted as a cauterizer. It actually sealed the blood vessels with a type of "burning" technique. She said it also would completely eliminate the possibility of infection and would heal without a scar. The powder formed its own type of scab and therefore the skin would not form a scab and therefore there would be no scar. She said to keep it dry for a couple of days and it would fall off naturally. No more worries!

I was amazed and prayed that it would work! Dustin was quiet through all of this, then said, "Mommy, can I come back tomorrow and catch a calf?" Silly Boy!!! Dale was right...the bleeding stopped immediately and permanently, there was no infection (as dirty as a calves hoof is??), it fell off naturally and without a scar. The only way you know where the gash was is with his military haircut it shows as a tiny spot which does not have any hair growing in it. Oh, by the way, the clown brought him 3 crisp $1 bills. He was thrilled!

Many years later, I fell,broke and skinned my leg. I will have to write a hub on it! It was an amazing healing, but when the skinned area began to show signs of infection I pulled out the cayenne pepper from the kitchen cabinet and poured it over the entire area. A week later, the cayenne scab began to flake off and the infection was completely gone and I have no scar. It was a win, win situation. I use ground cayenne pepper now for every cut and scrape. It works every time. I especially love how handy and accessible it is. I take it in our overnight case on trips. I have a container of it in the glove box of our cars. I make sure each of my children have it in their homes. It is an essential both for cooking AND for first aid.

A few years later Dustin (yes him again) was at a youth group event where they had taken their B.B. guns, added a PVC pipe piece to the muzzle of the gun and inserted foam darts which they then played a game of dart tag. It sounded harmless enough. An adult was supervising the renovations of the guns and all guns were checked for B.B.s so it should be safe. About 2 hours into the evening, I got a call from the Youth Minister. Dustin had been helping one of the girls with her gun. It had jammed and he was checking it over. He put his fingertip over the end of the gun and pulled the trigger to see if there was any air passing through the muzzle. Well...there just happened to be a B.B. in the chamber! Dustin had shot a B.B. into his index finger tip. It had stopped bleeding, but he thought we should have it checked.

I picked him up and headed over to the Freeman Urgent Care Clinic in Joplin, MO. They took several x-rays and then told us that the impact of the B.B. at close range had broken the bone in his fingertip. They could surgically remove the B.B., but the B.B. was moving and the digging for the B.B. could actually do more damage than leaving the B.B. in his finger. The Doctor said that the B.B. itself would offer no complications over time and would be a non-issue. They splinted his finger and we left.

A couple of days later, at church, I was asked what the splint was for and I told them about the B.B.incident. Dale (our friend from the herb shop) overheard and told me about C herb. She said it was a herbal method to remove foreign objects from the body. She suggested we try it especially since the wound was still open. I went by her shop and bought a 2 inch tall vial of the mud-like substance. We were instructed to put a tiny bit of the C herb on the wound using the tip of a toothpick. We applied it twice a day, without washing or removing any prior applications, and kept the wound covered with band-aids along with the splint. Dustin said he could feel a pulling sensation in his finger. By the way, he did not have any other medication or treatment during this time. About 2 weeks after the incident, Dustin made the statement that he didn't feel the pulling sensation any longer. He wondered if it would be better to take off the accumulated scab of the C herb and start over. We were at a basketball game, so I turned and asked Dale what she thought. She said it couldn't hurt. Dustin promptly went to the bathroom and scrubbed off the C herb scab. He came back to the gym with the biggest grin ever! He stuck out his finger and amazingly there at the surface of his finger was the B.B.! We tried several methods, a magnet, a needle, and a butter knife to get the B.B. out of the pocket the skin had formed around it. Finally, we took a small lock key pressed it under the B.B. and popped it across the room! It was so cool! We learned that this herb could even help in the removal of shrapnel as many as 20 years after the fact. No wonder it worked on this B.B. with the open wound! The cost of the vial was about $25. It was the best investment I ever made! Much cheaper than surgery and there were no complications.

Text Copyright 2011 Deborah M. Carey