Natural Remedies: Do They Work? If So, How Fast?

Natural remedies? Home Cures? Cureology? “Cure” + “Ology”, literally means “the study of cures”. What might work and what might not? Listen! This is a key construct to attaining your health without a lot of useless detours. Are you patient enough to look and look, or do you want to know what will work now?

Natural health solutions are all around us, but unfortunately many natural remedies are complete fiction, will not help you and may even hurt you. Other home cures are grounded in credible scientific principles as put forth by Mother Nature. Some remedies work way better than others. Which ones are they? Cureology is a method by which to help you get to the bottom line and find the best natural remedy solution fast. So, how does this work?

Cureology uncovers the best natural remedy information available from the world’s scientific literature. The problem is that the internet and the published science screams INFORMATION OVERLOAD! So, a science based review is in order, followed by an explanation or summary in plain English.

We live in a “we want it all and we want it NOW” time. So, if you have a health issue, it stands to reason that you want it gone, and fast! If they are effective, just how fast do natural remedies and home cures work? Now, we all know that surgery can remove a “problem” (e.g. appendicitis or tumor) and it is over and gone, other than the “ouch” time recovery period. Along the same lines, if you have a serious allergic reaction, medications like epinephrine (e.g. EpiPen) can immediately prevent serious results and even avoid death. Can you expect the same?

What about another example, antibiotics? Well, it may not be “results in a minute”, but in a few days the infection is probably on the way out or gone. For more chronic conditions, like diabetes and blood pressure, prescription medications can modify the symptoms and maybe get you out of immediate trouble (like avoiding a stroke if your BP was something sky high like 220/160). But what about natural remedies? How fast should you expect plausible home cures or a natural remedy to “work”? Remember, sometimes the tortoise beats the hare and is the better answer in the long run.

Natural Health vs. Pharma Health

Let’s figure this out logically and scientifically. Clearly there are natural remedies and home cures that go a long way towards getting you back to health and keeping it that way. In that regard, we all know the concept that natural health is better than drug induced “sorta-health”, at the expense of complications and side effects. Plus, as we all know, this “sorta-health” or “pseudo-health” is usually just masking symptoms and disasters, which may be necessary for a while, but is not where you want to be in the long run. So if you’re trying to avoid prescription drugs, or trying to reduce your dependence on them or just want a natural remedy solution to your current health problem, when should you expect results?

What Goes Up Goes Down… Faster

Think about it this way. How long did it take for you to develop the problem? Are you having your first ever hay-fever attack or are you a diabetic with hypertension, which has taken years or even decades to progress. Or is it something in between, like starting to get indigestion a little too often or passing a kidney stone which has taken maybe a few months to form? The longer it takes for something to become a problem, usually the longer it takes to get to a lasting solution. That’s not to say that you have to wait years and years to get your blood pressure under control naturally, but it won’t happen in a few days either. If you are expecting such a result, then you are looking at natural remedies to be a natural “drug” and that is not what you really want. Why?

Natural substances that actually have the potency of drugs can be very dangerous as they are not purified and can have unpredictable major side effects, just like prescription drugs or worse. In some cases it is OK to use these, but only under the guidance of a licensed and experienced medical practitioner who knows how to balance the risk and benefit and keep you out of trouble. Keep in mind, that at the biochemical level, natural substance “drugs” and synthetic drugs are all still chemicals (i.e. small molecules that have specific actions on your body). You don’t want to overdo it and try to fool Mother Nature’s balance that was set up for your optimal health. Having said that, certainly some natural remedies and home cures act faster than others at normal non-pharmaceutical quantities. More on that in a minute.

Natural Health Naturally at Normal Speed

Looking at natural remedies from a non-emergency point of view, the best overall scientific data is for the medicinal and health promoting value of various foods. The reason? It’s a more stable and long standing solution to supporting health. You can eat your way to good health, including appropriate supplementation for key micro-nutrients missing from your diet, but it will not happen overnight. Having said that, one can look at a seminal article published in the most mainstream of journals, JAMA, to see that even when you are really old and set in your ways a dietary program change can produce miraculous results. In this study, among men and women, 70-90 years of age, a Mediterranean diet showed a 50% reduction in all cause mortality. Folks, drugs that can do that simply do not exist! So, for longer term problems, like diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic degenerative conditions, diet and healthy lifestyle will go a LONG way to help you. But, don’t stop taking your doctor recommended prescription meds overnight. Work with your doctor to reduce the need for these as you embark on healthier diet and lifestyle.

The Bottom Line

The longer it takes for something to get bad, the longer it will take to get it better. Again, you can mask the symptoms with either drugs or some higher dose “natural remedies”, but that is the anti-natural health way to look at things and this approach can harm you. On the other hand, for simpler problems that come and go more rapidly, natural remedies can be effective and fast. Be the steward of your own health, but please don’t try to be a doctor. Sometimes simple things are not so simple after all. Not seeking medical attention is a bad idea, but if simple problems are offered complex pharmaceutical drug solutions when a natural method is available, get a second opinion. These pharma quick fixes may be fine, and in some cases what you need to relieve a symptom fast, but if a natural remedy that is scientifically based is available it may be something to consider in prevention and natural health support. Assuming it is an effective natural remedy, the speed with which it helps depends upon the condition.

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