Chickweed
is reported to curb the appetite and aid in weight loss. As a diuretic its
medicinal properties aide the assimilation of other herbs and help them process
and dissolve of fat. My personal experience is that Chickweed is a better
appetite suppressant than the over the counter products on the shelf
today.
Some say that Chickweed is purely an 'old wives' tale' remedy for
obesity. But in fact, there's supporting scientific evidence that Chickweed may
indeed be beneficial to weight loss, when included in a healthy lifestyle
included proper diet and exercise. Basically, as a mild diuretic containing
saponins, Chickweed emulsifies the fat cells and assists them out of the
system. In Healing Wise by Susun Weed, it says that Chickweed is an
excellent metabolic balancer with a potentially regulating effect on the
thyroid.
Dandelion
root is an excellent diuretic as well as a good source of vitamin C and
potassium.
Senna,
Cascara
Sagrada,
psyllium
husks and flax seed are helpful purgative herbs to cleanse the colon,
but should not be used for more than 2 weeks.
There's also hoodia,
of course. It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate
and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they
found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.
Phytopharm had spent more than $20 million on research by late 2004,
including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising
results. These volunteers ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than
those in the control group. Consider that the average American man consumes
about 2,600 calories a day and woman about 1,900. "If you take this compound
every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we've seen that very, very
dramatically," says Dixey. But be careful... no one has demonstrated that the
resulting product is safe. And many products claiming to contain hoodia only
have minute amounts of the active ingredient.
And last but not least,
Stevia.
Cutting out sugar will definitely aid in weight loss efforts. Stevia contains
various glycosides, particularly stevoside, give stevia its sweetness.
Stevoside is somewhere between 100 and 200 times sweeter than sugar. Early
reports suggested that stevia might reduce blood sugar (and therefore
potentially help with diabetes), although not all reports have confirmed this.
Even if stevia did not have direct antidiabetic effects, its use as a sweetener
could reduce intake of sugars in such patients.
Index of Herbs for
Health
Index of
Herbs
