Cutting Out the Middle Man: Grow Your Own Medicinal Peppermint

Reader Contribution by Aaron Miller
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You say the word ‘health’ and a lot of us tend to think of the bad things that could happen. Maybe more people are thinking about co-pays, insurance and Obamacare in this current climate but besides that, we tend to think about the worst case scenarios. We could get cancer or have an organ fail, get an infection or need some major surgery. Even those who think positively about health do so for the prevention of those bad things from happening. Eliminating chemicals from our lives, eating natural food and exercising to keep our heart and body strong all go toward this goal. And though it can feel as if things are looking dark when you read about health in the news, statistics are actually on our side. We may get something serious in the future but the number of days we are fine vastly outnumber the days we are not. But with the major health scares making up most of our worries, it’s the minor stuff that takes up most of our time.

There are headaches from dehydration and tension that slow us down. We eat the wrong foods, or maybe just too much food, and we feel bloated or get painful stomach cramps. An insect bite annoys us for days. A small scratch heals a little slower than it used to. Maybe an old injury starts aching more frequently as time goes on. Ask anyone older than you are now and they’ll say ‘it’s all downhill from here’. And to help us with these issues our modern society has given us basically two options: buy something or deal with it. History however shows us that there are other choices.

If you are not yet gardening then you should. It has more benefits than I can write about here. Growing plan

ts can be relatively easy if you just check on them frequently. The difference between having a green thumb and not is just the attention given to the plant. And if you are gardening then growing another kind of plant is not any different than what you are doing already, so there is no excuse there. A lot of herbs we use in food can also be used as medicine so you may already have them established, but it’s knowing how to use them for medicine that makes the difference between pain and comfort. Take peppermint for example. Peppermint is probably most well-known for its flavor. You find it in toothpaste and scented cleaning products among other things. It can also be good for indigestion. You take some leaves, fresh or dried, and put them straight into a tea. Leaving them to air dry is easy and cost zero dollars. But to get more of the medicinal properties out you really need to extract the oils within the leaves. Sound hard? Not really.

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